Conrad Is ANGRY!
As per usual. I usually wake up angry, go to work angry, come home angry and retire for the night still frothing with righteous indignation. This parade of pique is only interrupted during the day at lunchtime, when Your Humble Scribe chows down on whatever morsels he's made previously.
BUT NOT TODAY! Art?
NO.
Tell me, do these bafoons get paid to come up with copy like this? If so then there's a case to be made for dropping their wage below the National Minimum, or sending them up chimneys to earn a crust of bread and a pot of gruel. As you should surely know, "Conrad" is the antithesis of "Exercise", and if you ever see those two words paired together then a sub-editor has created a typo out of "Exorcise". WHY does the wretched and deleterious BBC insist on this editorial style? I have had to take up the critical cudgels over this matter already, so tread lightly, Auntie Beeb, for I have both a long reach and a longer memory. Art!
I forbear from comment
Can one become addicted to exercise? Conrad believes it to be entirely possible, since people have become addicted to Jeyes Household Cleaning Fluid of all things, which they sip by the spoonful, the depraved junkies*! Yes the possibility of Your Humble Scribe becoming addicted to exercise is on par with <thinks> the sun turning into Stilton cheese. Don't forget, once you build up all those muscles YOU HAVE NO CHOICE and must keep on exercising, exercising, exercising, or you'll turn into a mound of blubber. Art!
Risk this!
Tarry, Tarry Night
Beware! For my fingers are poised over the Remote Nuclear Detonator. NO that is not a typo concerning that song by Don Mack Lane (sp?), which you couldn't get away from at the time, although Conrad was pleased to see recognition of astronomers hit Number One on Top Of The Pops. <sigh> you'll need a picture to make any sense of this, won't you? Art!
Okay, that's what we're NOT talking about. You see, Conrad was tackling The Metro Cryptic this morning, which he hasn't done for months and months, and was consequently out of touch with the compiler's way of thinking. The clue I got stuck on was "Material that would stop a snake in it's tracks (7)". Initially I thought it might be an anagram of "snake in" and was trying to think of various fabrics and textiles. No luck. Came back to it at lunchtime and realised what the solution immediately. Art!
<groan> "Asp" for 'snake' and "Halt" for 'stop'. These people are sick! Sick I tell you! If you're not familiar with ashphalt, pronounced "Ashfelt" because of course - obviously! - why make the English language any easier? - it's made up of bitumen and minerals and is used in construction. Art!
You're chancing it with all that white fabric, mate
Hence this item's title. What, you thought it was all completely random? THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY!
Caravel?
Sorry, yes, another random word that popped into my head this morning for no good reason. Conrad wasn't even aware if the word was real, as my imagination is fecund and fervid enough to create convincing-looking gibberish. Look no further than 'Yesteryon', which still trips Blogger's spell-checker.
ANYWAY I had to Google it - being in the office means no access to the Collins Concise - and what do you know - a Caravel was very much a real thing. Art!
A ship, in other words, usually mounting three masts, with a sloping bow and a single castle at the stern - stop me if I get too technical - which was big news in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, being used by the Spaniards and Porks to travel across the Atlantic and
Time For Terror!
Or at least a little directed maliciousness. For Lo! we have more more more of "Tormentor".
Jennifer appeared in the staffroom, content to flit
around and make the occasional tutor suffer a shiver without knowing why.
‘Oh, Eric’s not having a fun time in prison,’ she
informed Louis, in a light and bantering tone.
‘He’s in solitary confinement for his own protection.’
‘Which doesn’t protect him from you,’ muttered Louis,
trying to be distinct and yet inaudible.
‘No!’ she crowed, that dangerous-looking aura
appearing again.
‘See me at home,’ he warned. ‘I can’t talk here.’
He tried to put on his Senior Lecturing Dad head on in
preparation for the anticipated chat with Jen.
She agreed to not interfere when he made a ready meal, a promise spoilt
by her tutting at his unhealthy eating habits.
‘Father Geoghan warned me to warn the both of us that
Eric Miller is not to be harmed. In fact
the old chap worried that even haunting is treading the borders of sin.’
‘Pooh!’ snapped Jen.
‘Whatever happened to an eye for
an eye?’
Louis leaned back on the settee and patted the space
next to him.
‘ “Physiology reflects psychology”. I made that one up myself. Good, eh?
Any misdeeds you commit will alter your spirit.’
Jen still scowled at him. Vengeance still burned bright in her
heart.
Louis switched to the second plan, going over to the
music centre and playing a CD. Travis
again, and “Follow the Light”. Jen
abruptly calmed down and sat on the settee.
‘That’s lovely,’ she sighed. ‘I have trouble with electrical and
electronics. Can’t play it myself.’
‘Listen to what it says,’ said Louis, pleading evident
in his voice. ‘Leave Miller to rot in
prison.’
Shall We? O Go On Then
Yesssss! More of lighthouses. I know there is a finite supply of them, so you'll only have to endure until Conrad runs out of subject matter, which might still take a year or two. By that time you will have forgotten all about the first ones, so I'll just start from the beginning again.
ANYWAY here's a lighthouse I've never heard of before, the Royal Sovereign lighthouse, which has a very Gerry Anderson look about it. Art!
Shades of Baba Yaga
This is a very modern structure for a lighthouse, being put to work in 1970, which is why it has a large, square helipad as an inherent part of the design, instead of having one perching precariously atop like a hat, as on the Victorian designs. When constructed, it was floated out to the Royal Sovereign shoals and sunk into position in two operations. Art!
Before
Decommissioned already, it will be demolished gradually over three years, the first deconstruction due to take place later this year. Exciting stuff!
Finally -
Conrad will be working from home tomorrow, since the execrable First Bus driving collective are on strike again and it's a very long walk into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell. Working in the office this week has once again cemented a realisation that working from home is SO much better, in that it saves at least two and a half to three hours transit time. The pikers of strikers are due to be out again for another nine days, meaning their March salary is going to be very thin indeed. Perhaps they could earn extra by writing scrivel for the BBC? Which is almost bordering on Politics, so - time to go.
Are we done? By Jove so we are!
* Absolutely true. It's the smell, the enticing smell.
No comments:
Post a Comment