When An Absence Is Bad

You Know The Sort Of Thing

You trot to the fridge, anticipating that steak and ale pie that you bought remaindered a fortnight ago - and it's gone!  Somebody with ridiculously strict food hygiene standards has chucked it in the bin.  Bottom!  So you console yourself with a roll made from ham that was out of sell-by-date last week, or maybe the week before.  Hey if it's not mouldy or rotten it's edible*!

     Or, another instance that has occurred to Your Humble Scribe on the bus into work - you simply cannot get that last Cryptic Crossword clue.  Once in the office you can cheat and Google for it; on the bus you're stuck and you dare not Google via mobile because people will see and know what you're doing.

     Annnnnnd another absence.  "Stranger Things".  Art!

     No fear of spoilers - yet.  It's an epic scene to end Series Four with, nicht wahr?  Very brooding and forbidding.  Series Five isn't going to begin with fluffy bunnies and rainbows, you betcha.  Whenever it arrives (absence again, you see).  Conrad may have to go back and watch Series One again, because clearly the Duffer Brothers sat down and said to themselves "How can we make a series custom-tailored for Conrad?"  Art!

     The disgusting plant blight that seems to be spreading from the Upside-Down's intrusion into our world is also worrying - will it stop spreading?  Possibly not whilst Captain Scab remains unaccounted for.  Art!

Ol' Scabby

     I am impressed with the improvement over Series Three.  Conrad was never that convinced about the whole Giant Secret Underground Soviet Base - we'll come back to that.  Art!

     To port of the Spitfire.  Yes, a piece is missing.  No, I can't find it anywhere.  It might well be on the carpet, since Conrad's huge and clumsy feet did manage to overturn the box of pieces twice.  However, the missing piece is a dun-colour that would blend in perfectly with the dun-coloured carpet in my Sekrit Layr.  O well.  You can bet it will turn up the day after I return the jigsaw to a charity shop.

     Here's another absence.  Art!

     Yes, it's that Spanish Civil Unpleasantness zombie picture.  You may not be able to quite make out the text to port; the gist is that it's not available until 11/07/22, just when I was settling down with a can of Old Speckled Hen.  Bottom!

     Now let me introduce Konstantin and his wife Natasha.  Art!

     They look stereotypically Ruffian - Konstantin is a great big hirsute brute, while Natasha is a perky blonde - and they do indeed hail from that region, but Konstantin has been making vlog entries on Youtube about life Inside Russia since the You-Know-What began, in a very thoughtful manner.  He's very obviously no fan of the regime, yet has enough wit and awareness never to be overtly critical, so he's still vlogging and at liberty.  This clip is from he and Nat's visit to a couple of malls in Rostov-on-Don, one a blue-collar variety, the other high end.  Predictably nearly all the Western shops were closed, no surprise there.  The Russian-owned shops were all well-stocked, but everything was a lot more expensive and there were hardly any customers.  Perhaps 20% of what there used to be, he mused.  Art!

Konstantin at Kinema

     He and Nat were the only people in the cinema, a place that used to be packed.  He ended on a very down note, poor bloke, which caused an outpouring of supportive Comments.

     Conrad's not going to draw any conclusions for you.  Instead I am going to visit the fridge to ensure that remaindered pie and the cod steaks are still present and correct.  And the remaindered Brie.  Plus the remaindered quiche.  And the breaded turkey escalopes.  Which will make me absent fr

Asking A Leading Question

     <excuse me, just listening to a corking track from The Music called "Into The Night" thank you Shazam!>

     

     Possibly.

     So what?  Can we change it?  Nope.  And if we did, and suddenly became aware of reality, would it look like this?

     Conrad quite happy to stay dreaming, ta very much.  I may listen to the item later on.  A snifter or ten of gin will help me cope with the hallucination of life quite handily, thanks very much.

Bring On "The War Illustrated"

Let's see what to bring up.  Only a single photograph as practiced recently.  Art!

     As other smarter people have put forth, the Mozzie was possibly the first multi-role combat aircraft, being used as a fighter, night-fighter, bomber, photo-reconnaissance, mail-carrier (to the Sinisters), anti-shipping and pathfinder.  It's not apparent from the photo above, but it was mostly constructed from birch wood in laminate form, which made it very light yet very robust.  There's a photo somewhere of one coming into land with only one wing, and another flew home with a Dutch chimney lodged in the fuselage.  Lightweight with two whacking great engines hanging off it meant it could move like stink, too.

I Shan't Desert You

Ho Ho, hilarious pun time.  Yes, here's the next instalment of "The Sea Of Sand".

A hard glitter steeled the Doctor’s stare.  Unless his intuition and Arabic were wrong, he might have very well discovered why they’d been diverted here in those last three words.

‘We’re not going anywhere, Lieutenant.  And I would like to hear your story.’

‘Go on then,’ said Roger, a little amused and impressed that anyone wanted to hear about his archaeological adventures.  He sat on his camp bed and produced a crumpled packet of cigarettes from a shirt pocket, lighting up.

The story, as he had told them, was complicated.  Archaeologists from the University of Ravenna had wanted access to the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.  Since the Fascist Italian withdrawal from the League of Nations, not to mention involvement in the Spanish Civil War, Britain had not seen fit to allow any Italian presence on Egyptian soil.  Dead end.  Until an aerial photograph taken by Count Emiliano Ricardo of a site in the borderlands of the Saharan sand sea came to Professor Templeman’s attention.  The photograph merely showed two small black structures protruding above the desert sands.

Inspired by this, the Professor had contacted the University of Lyons and Ravenna, then pestered the British government, and the Egyptian government and Department of Antiquities.  His incessant nagging got a result: the British government would allow the Egyptian government to allow Italian archaeologists onto it’s territory, to study in the Nile valley.  In return the British and French would be allowed to send reciprocal teams to sites in Italian-occupied Libya.  The majority of the British and French expedition members went to Leptis Magna; under the aegis of Professor Templeman, a smaller contingent went to the mysterious site at Makan Al-Jinni.  Things proceeded slowly, with a lack of hired labour and mysterious disappearances.  Then, out of nowhere, the war in Europe suddenly intruded when Italy declared war on France and Great Britain.  Roger and the Professor were arrested and imprisoned.

Well, they obviously got away from durance vile, didn't they?  Find out more either tonight or even tomorrow.  We'll see.

Finally -

Can't hang around pontificating all day.  There's laundry to do, and I need to make a stew, and take books into Royton, too.  Plus madam needs her walkies, don't you doggie-doo?

     And with that we are done!

*  As we have always maintained at BOOJUM! sell-by-date is a challenge, not a warning