As Usual, I Have To Apologise For Using TWO Exclamation Marks
This is bordering on Continental levels of hysteria, admittedly, yet I deem the cause to be worthy.
"What is the cause, O pudgy white-haired pundit?" I hear you query, and pausing only to say that it's the way I'm sitting, I shall explicate. Art!
 |
| Behold the Teapot, Old |
Conrad came downstairs this morning at <coughcough> o'clock, which is before mid-day so it still counts as morning, filled the kettle above and turned it on, whilst I got the makings of a cheese, ham and mushroom toastie together. After creating this probably unhealthy yet indisputably delicious breakfast item, I realised there was an item missing from this picture - the kettle hadn't boiled. Was the 'On' light on? Yes it was Wenceslas. I turned it off, then on again - years of experience dealing with I.T. doncha know - and once again it failed to boil
AWOOGAH! AWOOGAH! CRITICAL EQUIPMENT FAILURE!
For those who are new to the blog, Conrad is a big tea-drinker. I have a litre two-pint teapot which gets filled at least once per day at the weekend, perhaps twice a day when working from home, and one of those times is ALWAYS at breakfast time. Gibbering with terror and confusion, much like Tsar Poutine at the present, I had to resort to boiling a pan of water on the hob. What sordid lengths a man can be reduced to in his search for a pot of loose-leaf Darjeeling!
Actually we can do a little constructive number-crunching here. If Your Humble Scribe consumes 14 pints of tea per week then that comes to at least 90 gallons over a year. Art!
I hope we shall be very happy together.
Of course it has more mundane uses, as with boiling water for pasta or potatoes, which are definitely second-string purposes and nowhere near the almost mystic importance of TEA. Hence the two exclamation marks.
Motley, I fancy a brew, break out that Whittard's First Flush Margaret's Hope, will you? And be careful, it's about £1 per teaspoon.
It Wouldn't Go In
First of all, WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS! <deep sigh>. Really, the audience I have to deal with.
Okay, on Wednesday last Conrad decided to tram it into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell because it was the day of the weekly shop and he didn't want to get home at 19:10 thanks to Worst Bus. So, I get to the ticket machine at the King Street tram stop and -
Not working. Art!
You can see my card failing to properly insert; it should be about an inch further in, so obviously - of course! - malicious chavs have stuck a ticket all the way inside the card slot to prevent it working. I took a photo since the tram inspectors need evidence of any malfunction.
I cautioned the young lady behind me that it didn't seem to be working, then stalked off down the platform in a very Do Not Mess With The Angry Old Man style, only to see her getting tickets from the wretched device. Hastily returning, it transpired she had used her contactless phone <Conrad regards this as only a little removed from black magic> to get her ticket.
She then had me input my ticket details, used her contactless phone, paid for my tickets and refused any offer of repayment as I fumbled my wallet open.
Bless you, anonymous young Samaritan. You and your family are safe when I take over. My Ticket Tracing Task Team will be a lot less forgiving when they find theos culprits, O yes indeed. Art!
Things to come
Conrad - He Worked At Being Irked
But not very hard. You know me by now - Furiously Angry is my default state. We've not had as many ranting and tanting about Codewords as usual, so I will make up for the deficit.
"IAMB": YOU WHAT! This one threw me for a good ten minutes because it didn't tally with anything else I'd worked out a solution to. I mean, really, who the Dog Buns would ever use this word, barring an English Literature Professor licking the boots of the Barf Of Avon? Nobody, that's who. Conrad isn't even sure what it is, bar that it appears in "Iambic Pentameter" <consults Collins Concise> 'Prosody; a metrical foot of two syllables, a short one followed by a long one." That leaves me no clearer. Art!
Iamb***** annoyed
"NOUGAT": A double whammy, this one. For one, Conrad cannot ever enjoy it again THANK YOU SO MUCH DIABETES due to the very high sugar content. Secondly, isn't it derived from the French? Let me check. Aha. From the Provencal 'Nogat', itself from 'Noga' which derives from the Latin 'Nux' for 'Nut'. Art!
That disgusting dripping noise is Conrad salivating
"MULCT": No, nothing to do with fertilizers. Conrad remembers reading the word in a Jeeves & Wooster short story, where the imperturbable Jeeves relates how a pair of confidence tricksters 'mulcted' a victim for heavy damages. This puts me ahead of the field, because I bet you had no idea what it meant, did you? And be honest. It means either 'to cheat or defraud' or 'to fine', two things that are the exact opposite yet which the legal system manages without a bother. Art!
How hard would it be to mulct young Bertie?
Egad, Time For Torment!
I do apologise, my seething apoplexy over Codewords distracted me. Let us continue with "Tormentor" which everyone must love as I've not heard any criticism so far.
Once
again Louis went out for a walk.
Mere weeks ago he’d not
considered the streets worth treading.
They led nowhere. He didn’t want
to see anyone on them. Flat, grey,
empty. Now, they were a window into
life, or a life he’d cut himself off from in hatred and despair.
A rapid tapping of high heels
from behind caught his attention, since they didn’t echo or sound normal. Sure enough, a spirit caught up with
him.
‘Hellow!’ she said, pronounced
exactly like that.
‘Get alongside,’ muttered
Louis. ‘I can’t converse with you behind
me.’
She did get alongside, and he
looked at her with curiosity. Long ash
blond hair, a finely-wrought face that exhibited elegance, blue eyes and a slim
build. Her clothes seemed nearly
contemporary.
‘I’m Yvonne,’ she announced. ‘The Prof asked me to accompany you. He fears the Dark Ones are gathering to
assault you.’
Louis rolled his eyes.
‘I know, I know, it’s a bit
hackneyed, isn’t it! That’s the trouble
with us, a lack of imagination. “The
Corrupted” or “Negromals” would be better but who pays attention to an
actress?’
Louis slowed down, finding a
stone wall to sit on as if he were tired, or drunk, or mad, or all three.
‘No, you stay in front of me,’ he
told her, so that he could take in more details about her. She wasn’t conventionally pretty, possessing
more a kind of faded-elegance, and her appearance indicated mid-forties if not
fifties.
‘Mister McMahon!’ she said. ‘You are looking at me in a very calculating
way!’
‘Oh shush!’ he replied. ‘As an actress you should love that. And don’t lay the drama on with a trowel.’
For a second she didn’t react,
and Louis wondered if it was possible to mortally offend a spirit, in a kind of
paradoxical way, before she bit her lip and snickered.
Finally -
Conrad remembers when Michael Moorcock deflated Malcom What's His Face and the Sex Pistols, when they were claiming to have made 'Cash From Chaos'. "It's easy to say 'O I always meant to jump out of the aircraft without a parachute' AFTER you jumped, trying to pretend you didn't really fall out. Saying it BEFORE the act is more persuasive."
Mike
In the same way, the Ruffian High Command are now claiming that 'Part One' of Their Cunning Plan in Ukraine has succeeded, which is interesting since they never said what Part One constituted. Tsar Poutine did bray about 'De-Nazifying' the Ukraine, hilarious given his resort to the Herr Schickelgruber Playbook for ruling the Soviet Union 2.0. His trolls usually bring up the Azov battalion of extremist right-wingers, which probably amounts to 600 soldiers, from a population of 44 million. The Tsar also pontificated about 'Demilitarising' which invokes a hollow laugh from Conrad - the Ukes now have an estimated 35,000 anti-tank missiles imported from the West. I think that's ten anti-tank missiles per Ruffian tank. That's ignoring all the Ruffian kit they've acquired. Pundits claim the Ukes are now better equipped with vehicles than they were before hostilities thanks to the generous donations of their neighbour. Art!
LOW MILEAGE. ONE PREVIOUS OWNER. BUYER TO COLLECT
And with that we are done. Plus I need to break that kettle in.
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