Or Maybe An Answer, Who Knows
I was perusing Quora this afternoon, as I am wont to do - why yes, this is a different font, known as 'Roboto' for who knows what reason - and I came across a question that I think I've answered on a couple of occasions, except I can't recall if it was on here or Quora, or Youtube, or Twitter. So let me put it to you again - Art!
O. I expected an image. Sort it out, Art, sort it out!
I tracked down the questioner, who bravely hid behind their moniker of 'Anonymous' back in March of 2018, before continuing with my quest to answer their frippery. Many hundreds had already commented, which isn't going to stop me expounding my £0.27 worth.
Let us break the question down. "Is Britain a cold-" and let me stop you right there. If you get yourself righteously drunk in Kent and lie on a park bench overnight in December, you may well wake up with possible frostbite in your nose or other unprotected extremities. Art!
On the other hand -
If you do this in the Highlands, YOU WILL DIE. Not because the ferocious locals will rob and murder you; they don't need to. The weather will do it for them.
Then you have " - uninhabitable -". There are 70 million of us living here, This Sceptred Isle is patently habitable. London <hack spit> is one of the largest cities in the world, a polyglot accumulation of as many as 900 people, extending over a - hang on, someone's mucked up the decimal places. Let's resort to plain English. 'A polyglot accumulation of as many as 9,000,000 people -' although you would need to pay Conrad a king's ransom on top of another king's ransom to live there. Art!
' - small houses' does ring true. This is because Perfidious Albion is quite small and we have to be efficient with what we have. Unlike the Dutch, we don't have the option of draining our coasts to increase the liveable territory. Art!
This is the South Canadian state of Oregon, which is approximately the same size as Perfidious Albion, but has a population of 4,000,000. Or, if you like, less than half a London. This may give you an idea of the UK's population density.
Here an aside. When Conrad visited South Canada, the Oregonian city of Portland was the place he liked the most. I distinctly remember sitting on a balcony in the evening, hearing crickets (ARCHETYPAL SOUTH CANDIAN CRICKETS!) and hearing locomotives sounding their horns in the distance. It could have been a scene from a televisual entertainment.
ANYWAY I ought to point out to sneering dismissives about what the UK does not have. Our weather might be a bit shizzly, but it does not pose a threat to life and limb; Conrad confidently predicts that there will never be tornado or hurricane sirens employed in this, our fair country. Nor are we ever at risk of earthquake or volcano. Edinburgh is probably quite grateful for this, the peak 'Arthur's Seat' that sits right next to their fair city is an extinct volcano, which - you probably expected this - Conrad has climbed. Art!
It's not difficult but it does take ages.
Conrad could, obviously - of course! - go on about the lack of hostile insect and animal life here in the UK, where the badger is about the most serious natural predator, and here we append the difference between the South Canadian badger and our native equivalent. Art!
Which are you going to invite into your hobbit-hole? A British hobbit-hole, let us assure you, is not infested by either poison ivy or oak. Or termites. Or rattlesnakes. Or grizzly bears. Or cougars. Or coyotes.
Conrad Is, As Usual, ANGRY!
O so angry! As angry as -- as - as angry as usual. Yes we are back on the Codeword solution angriness, thank you so much.
AXIOMS: The second most-used letter, and the second-most under-used letter?
Not to mention that nobody knows what one of these is. Art? "A generally accepted proposition or principle, sanctioned by experience". Or, The Real Thing. Art!
Close enough
APLOMB: The ''B' is silent. So, what does it mean? Conrad is as of the opinion that it means 'silent', so let us check out the Collins Concise - "Equanimity, self-confidence or self-possession'. Close enough. After the Latin about plumb-lines and how thoroughly self-satisfied straight lines needed to be.
ANDANTE: I know, I know, it sounds like a variety of how pasta ought to taste in terms of dentition compressibility.
WRONG!
It's actually one of those terms about musical speed-as-it-is-played, not how you eat long strings of pasta. Art!
Don't blame me, this is what came up when I Googled it.
"City In The Sky"
Things are going pear-shaped in terms of pear-shaped. Which is to say, not good at all.
Davy experienced for real what he’d only
ever read about – his skin crawling.
Fumbling, he picked up his Tab and pressed the Emergency button whilst
still staring at the screen. The
on-screen message scrolled round again, and continued repeating.
Must be a recording, he realised.
‘Davy? What’s going on?’ asked an
unidentifiable voice from his Tab.
‘Um – I think
‘What!’ gasped the speaker.
Belatedly, Davy recognised it as Natalie, one of the Wardens. ‘Stay there.
Send a call to the Controllers and their Deputies.’
There were no transport vehicles aboard Arc One, only freight-carrying
electric carts, or bicycles, so people took time to arrive at the
Communications Suite. Mark Harris, then
Virginia Branson, and Constanz Abramovich, one after the other, all looking
pale and worried. Natalie and Portos,
who must have been the Wardens on duty, came in together, looking sweaty and
flustered.
‘Is it the big one?’ asked Constanz, the question they all wondered: is
this the Big Crash?
‘Possibly not,’ replied Davy, managing to maintain an air of objectivity
that surprised himself. ‘Only five
missile launches detected from
‘There will be,’ commented Harris, looking grim. ‘Count on it.’ His gaze travelled over the screens in a
practiced way. ‘They always react.’
‘Why only five missile?’ asked Virginia Branson. The Iranian generals like to boast about
their secular dictatorship’s dozens of missiles.
One has to gonetti that Professor Bonetti!
De Profundis
We have avoided any mention of the Titan submersible disaster because we do have a couple of weakly-flagged morals here. Others elsewhere have been querying why and where, as they seemingly expect things to be recovered as if this were a submarine operation in the littoral zone. Art!
Let us be clear here. The 'Titanic' is about two and a half miles down at the bottom of the ocean, where the surface pressure on any vehicle looking to spy on it amounts to a ten-ton truck per inch.
If anything goes wrong, there will be less than a vapour in response. And the response will take mere milliseconds to occur.
On which jolly note we will adjourn!
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