First Bus Worst Bus

You Cannot Deny The Accuracy Of My Epithet

NO!  An 'epithet' is not one of those fancy injectors that people with dangerous allergies or Type Deadly Diabetes have.  You're thinking of the Epipen.

     No, an epithet is defined as defining an entity, and O my! have I summed up the pikers in four words or what.  Art!

One step up from a 'Bus Stop'

     You see, for the past three days I've ambled my shambolic way to the bus stop, to await the 07:08 bus, which hasn't turned up.  Your Humble Scribe can see the bus stop as soon as he's in the kitchen, so he knows it didn't come early; it just didn't come AT ALL.  I have crossed Rochdale Road to the far side, which allows one an unparalleled vista all the way to the centre of Royton, in order to spot the bus coming.  Sadly I have been disappointed.  Art!

Lesser Sodom in all it's tawdry glory

     The next  bus is due at 07:18.  Does it turn up at that time?  NO IT DOG BUNS DOES NOT!

     Instead it comes nearly 10 minutes late, meaning it is lapped by the 07:28 bus.  Conrad, surly and truculent at the best of times, gets his revenge by not saying "Thank you" to the  bus driver when he alights.   "Thank you for being both late and slow when there's not much traffic and few passengers, you raving bumbletuck" is too much of a mouthful.

    O I say!  I've just noticed that the bus poster on the lavishly-appointed burned out wreck says "Bad Guys" which is hilariously ironic, because what does This Sceptred Isle celebrate in the run-up to November 5th?  Why, the ceremonial torching of Guy Fawkes.  How very apt.

     HOWEVER - and you knew that word was coming, didn't you? - there are compensations to be found even in the worst of circumstances.  For example, the dreadful radio station selection at the office, or people's ghastly taste in crap rap pop, has rendered Conrad dependent once more upon The 21st Century's Best Gadget Ever - his i-pod.  Art!

O sonic saviour!

     This has gotten me re-acquainted with the 8,000-plus tracks on it, even if Shuffle thinks you want to hear everything by Mendelsohn.  

     ANYWAY Conrad doesn't bother speed-walking to the bus stop on Rochdale Road after work, because he can guarantee that the 409 will have vanished into the dark distance minutes before his scabby (and sweaty) carcass gets there.  We finish at 19:00, it takes 15 minutes to get to the bus stop, and the 409 comes at 19:13.

     HOWEVER! - and I bet you didn't expect that word twice in one Intro - tonight I was standing contemplating the mysteries of the universe and wondering when feeling would return to my fingers, because the next 409 comes at 19:35 <insert historical joke here>.

     But - what's this at 19:25?  'Tis the east, and Juliet is NO NO I'M RECITING SHAKESPEARE <drinks emergency gin> 'tis a 409, which is either ten minutes early or ten minutes late.  Art!

What resemblance does a young Angela Lansbury bear to a bus, Art?

     Conrad, surly and truculent as ever, was pleasantly surprised.  Not enough to avoid lambasting First Bus, mind.

     Blimey.  I was going to post another collection of links and instead we're over 500 words of wit, wisdom and wonder into a full-length iteration of BOOJUM!  This is what happens when one builds up a creative head of steam on a subject that one is passionate about.  Quiver in your expensive hand-stitched boots, First Bus executives, for the time is coming when I shall take over*!

The Future Is Now

This is a conceit that Conrad returns to every now and then, mostly because it's true.  We already have self-driving cars, we'll be back on the Moon in a couple of years and sooner or later the James Webb Space Telescope is going to find a small rocky planet like Earth with water in it's atmosphere.

     ANYWAY what I ran across on the BBC News website gave me pause for thought.  Art!

     Say hello to the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in South Canada.  These chaps have been conducting research into nuclear fusion, where you smash hydrogen molecules together SO HARD that they blend together into helium.  We've had fusion warheads since 1954; what these people have done is generate power from fusion, rather than blowing up Moscow.  Their success is not unique, because it's been done lots of times already; nuclear fusion as a power source would be far, far cleaner than nuclear fission, without any carbon footprint, which is why so many institutions have tried to manage it.

     What LLNL have done is to get more power out than they put in. This is proof that the process can be made successful.

     We won't have the world of "The Expanse" tomorrow or next year, but - it's going to come!  Art!

Bags first ride on the "Rocinante"

"The Sea Of Sand"

We have zipped across the galaxy, back to the bio-vores home planet that the Doctor rather tellingly dubbed 'Wasteworld', where various locals are worried about one thing or another.

But how he had underestimated that alien, Thedoctor!  Cunning and clever simultaneously, that one.  Sur strongly suspected that there’d been an error in translation, that Thedoctor was simply named Doctor, or maybe even Doc.  His level of intellect presupposed a bisyllabic name, perhaps even a monosyllabic one.

          A most worrying foe.  Just to try and fool his fellow aristocrats, Sur ordered the announcement to be made that both heretic Sorbusa and alien Thedoctor were dead, killed by valiant and watchful Warriors at the trans-mat.

 

Farmer Imgelissa nodded to his assistant, Nurbonissa.  The younger bio-vore used his rake to prod forward another youngster.

          ‘Is it true?’ squeaked the newcomer.  ‘Aliens walk amongst us?  That the time of the Warrior is coming to an end?’

          Imgelissa paused for a moment, remembering the strange, huge bio-vore encountered in the shallows.  A throwback, what the aristos called a “heretic”.  Then there was the small alien creature, obviously intelligent and self-aware, who foretold that the Warrior culture was doomed to die.

          No alien life-forms had ever walked on the barren lands of Homeworld, not in ten thousand years of recorded history.  Yet the first to do so spoke of what every Farmer dreamed about: freedom.

     You can see the Doctor's mischief at work here.  That chap knows how to sow chaos!

Lord Peter's Crossword

Conrad is a bit stumped by this one.  I think I've got the right 'clue', yet the solution makes absolutely no sense compared to the solution.  I dunno.  I'll put it down and you can muse over it yourselves.

"If me without my head you do, then generously my head renew, or put it to my hinder end, Your cheer it shall nor may nor mend (5)"

     And the solution is "PLAUD".  Say what?  It seems to be an archaic word for 'APPLAUD'.  Clap, readers, clap!

"The War Illustrated"

And we move further forward into late 1943.  The Axis by this point in time are indisputably losing the war, yet refusing to recognise the fact.  Art!

    This picture brings forth one of the most telling problems the Allies had in Italy; that the rivers principally ran from mountain ridges in the centre of the peninsula, to east and west, which meant they made terrific barriers if the retreating enemy blew up the bridges, which they have done here.  Of course - obviously! - it also forced the Allies to learn how to bridge rivers more efficiently and effectively, the end result being what you see here.

Finally -

So much for a 'quick ten-minute set of links'.  Here we are over an our later.  Ho hum, Conrad is a creative one.

*  Alan Carr and Russell Brand better also be looking for a secure bunker somewhere.