From A Whisper To A Steam

Bear With Me, This Will Make Sense Eventually

Or else it won't, in which case I will refund you exactly as much as you paid to read it in the first place.  Bargain!

     First off, this is not about the Elvis Costello And The Attractions song,  If anything, it references the original one done by The Icicle Works, thanks to part of the lyrics.  Art!

The source material

     Namely "Birds fly", because in British vernacular, ladies or women or gels are deemed to be 'birds', and 'To fly' means 'To Flee', because haven't you seen Gandalf's last speech in the Mines of Moria?

     ANYWAY yes their lyric also reads "From a whisper to a scream", not "steam" but I wanted to get steam in there as a method of cleaning, used where there are layers of encrusted filth to be gotten rid of.  Art!

A mystery to Steve

     Let us now jump from domestic duties to the jolly and amusing subject of abusive relationships, because that's how they start: jolly and amusing, and then by degrees they slip into mental and physical manipulation and confrontation.

     "But Conrad!" I hear you wibble.  "What is subject matter so dark and forbidding doing in the light and frothy pages of BOOJUM!?"

     You clearly avoided those items about thermonuclear weapons, didn't you?

     It's here because it begins so innocuously - the whisper part - and ends up with the destruction of all life on Planet Earth the Original Poster making a daring escape, complete with her frogs, which is the steamy or screamy bit, according to your lights.  Art!

OP also the proud possessor - or posssessssssor - of a snake

     OP had been living in the same apartment as her boyfriend, 'Slimy' - sorry, let's be grown up here - 'Steve', for 8 months and discovered a note at the back of a cupboard when she was cleaning, left there by his ex, 'Natalia'.  The note cautioned repeatedly that Slimy Steve would never clean up, ever, and that he'd gaslight whichever girlfriend was reading this and make everything her fault.  You can read this note as being the Warning Whisper.

     Well! OP took the note and read it out to SS, who loudly railed about his crazy, abusive, manipulative, untrustworthy, gold-digging ex-girlfriend, who also passed the port to the right.  OP citrically pointed out he'd not found the note in 5 years.  Also she was doing 70% of the cleaning.  Cue argument.  Art!

"What's the problem?" asked Slimy

     After taking stock, and also advice from Reddit, OP tried to bring up cleaning as a subject, which got her the cold shoulder and being initially dismissed as a silly little girl and then ignored.  As warned by Reddit, the red flags started to go up.  When OP realised the argument was in fact a closed circle she attempted to leave, at which point Slimy tried to physically block her.  More red flags than the Chinese Communist Party's anniversary parade!

     She got out and spent the night away from Slimy - I think he deserves this moniker by now - and decided to both empty her stuff out of the apartment and LEAVE ANOTHER NOTE FOR NEXT GIRLFRIEND.  Because Slimy Steve would never, EVER bother to do a steam clean.  Art!

Yes, I'm listening to "Tourist" again.  Sue me, I dare you.

     SURPRISE!  Guess who got in touch with OP?  'Natalia' the allegedly crazy ex, whom Slimy had rung - using a friend's phone as she'd blocked him - to shriek abuse at, about her malevolent interfering influence and how she was an entire lesbian witch coven rolled into one.  Well, maybe not that last, I may have been channelling 'Robothead' and his review of "The A

     ANYWAY They met for coffee and Natalia proved to be eminently sensible, down-to-earth, and worried for OP, sans psychopathy.  She informed OP that Slimy got violently destructive when angry, so it would be prudent to remove both snake and frogs from the apartment asap.

     With a bit of finagling, they got what property of her Slimy had left intact out of there, including the snake and frogs.  Art!

     Twist In The Tale: Natalia had actually left THREE notes in the apartment, 5 years previously.  One in the cupboard, one on the bottom of the hoover, and one in the toaster's crumb tray.  They checked and the crumb tray note had gone, a discovery Slimy had never mentioned.  Conrad suspects that the toaster's electric elements probably set the notepaper alight during use.

     To end with a line from OP, " - reflect on the subtle ways abuse starts".

     No word on whether Slimy Steve is still single or no.  One can only hope.

Conrad Is AMUSED!

It does happen.  

     At present I am reading an excellent work on military logistics in the Second Unpleasantness, written by <GASP!> a woman.  Art!

     It really does explain the sheer number of military involved in supporting a modern army in the field, where the 'teeth-to-tail' ratio can b

     ANYWAY Janet does endeavour to include the odd anecdote to leaven what is a potentially very dry subject.  Art!

      In North Africa, the Allies needed equine transport, which they obtained by trucking in donkeys and their Bedouin owners to Tripoli in Western Libya.  Not knowing any better, these donkeys, both male and female, were collected in a single large enclosure.

     As Janet mutedly explains 'a battle royal commenced'.  It is spectacularly unwise to keep donkeys of both sexes together, which the Bedouin knew and their Allied employers did not.

     Even after separation into different enclosures, unisex deliveries were consistently made, resulting in the same mayhem being repeated.  Again, quoting Janet: "All of this was observed with great amusement by the watching Bedouin."

     Intelligent does not mean clever.

Trees Trees Please Me

A nod to The Beatles there.  Yes, I managed to read the BBC News item about the 'Tree Of The Year' competition, which, rather disappointingly, lacks any puns.  It's a competition mounted by the Woodland Trust, which makes sense, as a competition mounted by the Seaweed Trust would be rather fish-out-of-water.  There are three oak trees from Scotland nominated: The Michael, Skipinnish Oak and The Capon Tree.  Art!

Skippy

     Before you sneer, as I did, understand that each of these oaks is over 1,000 years old, meaning that they can claim an awful lot in back-payments of their pensions.  And - do their grandkids come to visit?

Berni's Right

Right back to #2 of Bernie's epic 90-card collection of macabre artwork for FPG, this one entitled 'Foul Harvest'.  Art!

     Welllllllll not strictly true, Bern.  In the vast bulk of zombie lore*, destroy the brain and the shambling corpse stops shambling.  Besides which, if it's been in the ground so long that it's eyes are gone, how does it know to attack Doug?  Not only that, it's brain will have turned to black oozy gunk.  One also has to ask what Doug was up to, as digging up a corpse long dead is not typical Friday-night entertainment.

     No mention of media used here, so I presume this is pen and inks, with colours added.

Sanity Is Restored

Booooh!

Just to recapitulate the traffic figures for Blogger, which have now returned to what seems to be close to reality.  Art!

     It may not be as flattering but reality has a cachet all of it's own.

Finally -

I've been listening to some of my older CDs whilst typing this, as it is far, far easier to type whilst listening to music than it is to try it when playing a DVD or having a Youtube vlog playing in the background.  This time round it was 'Bon Iver' by - you may be ahead of me here - Bon Iver.  And it's 13 years old <shudder>.  

*  Trust me on this.  I've read the book, the comic, seen the film and all the television series, and written two novel-length manuscripts to boot.