How To Make Jam

First, You Need Fruit

Let's choose a nice low-hanging one: First Bus.  Then you SMASH IT VIOLENTLY WITH A HAMMER, before putting it in a pan with boiling water, and boiling and boiling and boiling it before mashing it through a sieve WITH AS MUCH FORCE AS POSSIBLE and then imprisoning it in a jar.  Forever.  There was something about sugar which I'm going to ignore because diabetes.  Art!

What's wrong with this picture?

     Yesterday Conrad took a constitutional stroll into Royton, or Babylon-Lite as we love to call it, in order to 1) get some steps in and 2) do a bit of shopping.  You know, those garlic-scented bin liners.  Then it was back to the bus stop, gloating at the fact that buses on a weekday are a lot more frequent than at the weekend.  Yeah, right.  The 14:58 didn't turn up.

     "Yeah, right.  First Bus, what can you expect?" I mused.  Silently, there were passers-by.  The 15:03 didn't turn up, either.  Nor did the 15:08.  I think they have extra services at these times to accommodate schools finishing around this time.  The 15:18 didn't turn up, either, at which Your Humble Scribe realised that not only were there no 409s en route to Rochdale, there hadn't been the usual mocking two or three en route to Ashton going in the opposite direction (I have codified this as a rule).  It was obvious what had occurred: Rochdale and Ashton had been over-run by the zombie hordes.  Art!

Rochdale Town Hall Resident's Association Meeting turns violent

     The First Bus drivers doubtless got away without harm, because zombies inevitably go for brains.

     ANYWAY at 15:20 Conrad gave up and walked home, meaning that I arrived at The Mansion with freezing hands yet sweating buckets beneath my coat (and the scarf Darling Daughter knitted for me).  Art!

View from a hill*

     To cover their collective nethers, First Bus did have a warning note on their bus stop schedule about services being cancelled at short notice.  Conrad maliciously thought up a better version:

     "FIRST BUS WILL SEND SOME BUSES OUT AT RANDOM TIMES DURING THE DAY IF WE FEEL LIKE IT WHEN WE ROLL A DOUBLE SIX ON A PAIR OF DICE"

     There you go, fixed it for you.

     It took a good twenty minutes to walk home, during which time the roads were entirely untroubled by First Bus in either direction.  Though I was expecting the zombie horde to arrive at some point.

     ANYWAY the resolution when I got into my Sekrit Layr was simple enough: First Bus drivers were on strike Monday and Wednesday of this week.  Damn.  I was looking forward to putting my Zombie Survival Skills into practice.

     What we need, motley, is a weapon that will kill quietly and at arm's length, like a pole-axe, possibly even something with greater reach ...

Speaking Of Which

That bonkers genius Colin Furze was at it last year, creating a modern trebuchet, which, if you recall, is the font name we originally used in BOOJUM! which went potty when they re-jigged Blogger and changed into Times.  This is Times: Times. which we use for captions.  This is Trebuchet: Trebuchet.

     ANYWAY back to his enormous and impressive trebuchet.  Art!

     You can judge how big this thing is by the size of the JCB next to it.  Ol' Col had reinforced the sling, allowing a great big metal ingot to be hurled with lethal force over 250 yards.  Instead of a flimsy wall made of pallets as a target, on this the second day they were using cars and a caravan.  Make not mistake, this thing is lethal and even a glancing blow from the ingot would turn you into jam.  Art!

Up -

 - and away

Impact!

     In fact it took a good few attempts to obtain a hit.  When that ingot impacted the car, it gave the engine a real wallop.  Not satisfied with hitting a car, Ol' Col decided that he would car a hit.  Art!

     They've removed the engine, yet that's still a whole car.  Even if it is a small one - the larger blue car simply didn't fit when they tried to sling it, the counterweight crushed it and the engine flew out.  Art!

The wonder of flight

     After a punishing two-day regimen of checking and slinging, finally there was a bearing failure and the counterweight fell off, fortunately not whilst anyone was on the platform.  Art!

     Ah well, onward and upward.

More "Tormentor"?  Well, Since You Insist

I did notice just now that I've stopped putting in a warning about how definitely darker this work is than the usual fluffy nonsense you read here.  If you've been reading it then you'd probably have realised this by now, and don't expect a comedy pun routine.  Without further ado -

‘Don’t mention another word!’ he barked.  ‘I tutored her.  Anyone who wants to fly down the stairs without touching them can make a comment now.’

               Jen’s help in class had dwindled to watching for hidden weapons that the students might have brought in past the security personnel and sensor equipment, before deciding not to come at all. As for Louis, his unbridled passion convinced the remaining students that picking on their strange, not to mention potentially violent tutor, ought to be left well alone.

               One of the students, greatly daring, raised a hand.

               ‘Yes?’ asked Louis, almost being polite.

               ‘Er – just telling, sir, that any nonce who ends up in prison for a crime like that, he’s got to be kept in solitary for his own safety.  All the other cons will chop his ******** off given half a chance.  They’ll throw him off balconies and stairwells, or put broken razors in his stew.’

               Louis rubbed his hands in what was only partly-exaggerated glee.

               ‘Good, good!  What a prospect, eh?  Twenty five years looking at the same walls.’  He promptly stopped gloating and pointed at a student.  ‘What’s going to stop you ending up like that?’

               ‘Me?’ squeaked the hoodie-clad teen.  ‘I’m not going to murder anyone!’

               Louis adopted a holier-than-thou attitude.

‘If you leave here able to count, then tot up all the time you spend inside.  Years.  Decades.  You will end up serving a life sentence, only spread out a bit.’

               He pointed to another teen, busily engaged in scrawling graffiti on his own hand – Jen would have intervened if the students wrote on desks.

               ‘What a shame you don’t show such application to the written work on the course.’

               The teen returned a dead, wall-eyed stare.

               ‘Okay.  I want you all to write a one hundred word report on what you read in the paper.  Avoid swearing, please, since this will form part of the report I send to college admin.’

     There you have it, raw drama in the making.

A New Crossword Jigsaw

It is just me who makes that mistake, isn't it?  I think it's because I do so many of the Dog Buns things, my mind runs along those lines by constant reinforcement.  Anyway, Art!

     It's only 250 pieces so not that difficult, except I've never done a circular jigsaw before, so perhaps I shouldn't judge it beforehand.  I discovered this morning, as an example, that Skimmed Milk functions differently than Semi-Skimmed when making porridge in the microwave.  It marched out of the tub.  That'll teach me, hmmmm?

     And with that, we are done.  Ever so done!

*  Chameleons in-joke for you there