Whisky Makes You Risky

I Did Have An Alternate Title

"'Twas On The Beast Of Stephen" except there are bound to be umpteen Stephens reading this who will object, and yet not even Comment, the swine.

     ANYWAY as you may be aware, we here at BOOJUM! occasionally go on a deep dive into a particular subject matter.  Conrad recalls the series of instructive items on bathy-technology and how it has evolved over time, all in connection with "The Kraken Wakes".  Art!

     A great cover, but totally misleading, which is a theme we will return to.

     ANYWAY, Your Humble Scribe mentioned whisky cask investments recently, which is a far more complex business than it sounds.  A fact not helped by the number of scammers who have gathered to fleece potential investors.  Art!

BOOJUM!: Whisky No More!

     These whisky scammers are what we're going to do a deep dive into today, although time and Word Count does limit how much I can detail of these disgustrous degenerates.  Art!

     Proof I have not spent the afternoon playing Solitaire Mahjongg and reading Reddit accounts of Prorevenge on Youtube.  These are my notes, which are based off outlines on the informative 'Whisky Invest Direct' website.  I must also mention Jim Budd, who writes for the "Decanter" website, and who put into print a verrrrry telling fact nobody else has mentioned before.  Art!

Since the early 1990s, drinks investments have been a popular alternative investment as profits can frequently be exempt from tax. This is because drink is generally viewed as a ‘wasting asset’, but unfortunately this also means that these investments are not covered by the Financial Services Act. Consequently, there have been a number of short-lived, dubious companies set up and many unwary investors have lost substantial sums of money.

     Let us now take a look at one of the earliest of these felonious farradiddles.  Art!

     Back in the early Nineties, NSC scammed over 1,100 investors out of £3.2 million, by grossly over-charging for the casks they had bought.  Typically NSC bought a cask for £500 and sold it on to the dupes sorry 'investors' at £3,500.  Culprit Number One: Stephen James Cleeve.  It was his idea to tempt sheep sorry 'investors' with a guaranteed 18% return on investment.  This wholly unrealistic number crops up many times in association with scammers.

     Once SJC had his company wound up by the Department of Trade in 1997, he was forbidden from being a company director for 8 years.  Art!

Sleazy Stevie

     Ol' Steve stuck to doing what he knew best, ripping people off, because his next business venture was another alcohol-based scam, 'Forrester and Lamego' which tried to flog over-priced champagne and port in the same way NCS did.  Feeling that he needed to branch out, perhaps, Ol' Steve then switched to swindling people out of money over land purchases with 'European Land Sales Partners', which tried to sell land to the gullible sorry 'investors' which was either never going to be developed by local councils or was on flood plains and would never be built upon (unless "The Kraken Wakes" came true) and then 'Commercial Land'.

     Do you see a trend here?

     In 2010 Ol' Steve attempted to become an MP in UKIP, which was still a going concern 15 years ago.  They plainly hadn't done due diligence on his background, as his illegal shenanigans proved to be a source of undiluted horror to them.  He was promptly dropped as a candidate.  That seems to be the end of his political career.  Then, in 2016 - Art!

     According to my Googling, he seems to have kept his nose clean since 2010 and presumably his income as a chairman keeps him in champagne and whisky.

     But, of course - obviously! - he was not alone.  O noes.  Let me introduce Stephen Dunne (I did warn about the Stephens), whom was another director at NSC.  There is very little information about this cove, bar the fact that he was an undischarged bankrupt, and as such - Art!

• Business Activities:

  You are automatically disqualified from serving as a director of a company, managing, or promoting a limited company without court permission. 

     Ol Steve The Second thus had to operate secretly.  I could not track down any more details about the man, possibly perhaps due to his ability to operate covertly.  However - Art!

     O Irony what big sharp teeth you have.  This ⇈ is Stephen Dunne, the South Canadian attorney, whom Ol' Steve The Second ought to have retained.

     Normally this is where I'd stop the Intro and move onto other items.  Not today!  I took ages making notes about these criminals and you're going to reap the benefit like it or not.

     And so to - Stephen Jupe.  Honestly, I'm not making these up!  Third time's the harm.  Art!

     You may note, with a sinking feeling (another "The Kraken Wakes" reference for you) that there is no such thing as the 'Grandtully Distillery', because this is yet another Stephen Scam.  Mr. Jupe ripped off 4,000 rubes sorry 'investors' to the tune of £4 million.  Once again he was doing the off-of-ripping by charging investors three times the purchase price of a whisky cask, and promising returns of 18% again, that fantasy return guaranteed to generate £££ in the minds of those he was defrauding.  Art!

How to strangle cats the Stephen Jupe way!

     The thing is, the whisky he was deceiving about was utterly novel to whisky markets, meaning it had no history, tradition or provenance about it, and was thus essentially worthless.  Whisky, you see, is an extremely conservative and traditional industry that deems your brand to be a whiskerless newbie unless you can trace your distillery to before the Highland Clearances.  Or, A Long Time Ago in less controversial terms.  Art!

     This, ladies, gentlemen and those unsure, is a 'Swivel Conspiranoid Loonwaffle", because my go-to term, "Swivel-eyed Conspiranoid Loonwaffle", makes the AI Art Generator throw bth a rod and a wobbler.  Art!

     ANYWAY the picture is there because Ol' Steve The Thrice based his defence on a bizarre conspiracy theory that involved "Decanter", the Serious Fraud Office and the Department of Trade in a joint effort to destroy Ol' Jupe The Poop, because those invisible pink and purple ponies that living in his lightsockets were affecting the pistachio harvest of the Sanjak Of Novi Pazar.  Or something.

     He also based his defence on an alleged advert in "Decanter" that they, along with a ton of magazines from that year, proved 'twas but a fig-roll of his imagination.  Art!

Justice is served, along with a nice fruity rosé

     In 2004 the wheels of justice, grinding slowly as usual, sentenced Jupey to five years in jail.  Here in the UK, as probably elsewhere, this means half the sentence is served and then the miscreant is released 'On Licence', meaning any, and I mean any-in-the-slightest-degree, transgression, gets them recalled to serve the rest of their sentence.

     I cannot find any more about Jupe after 2004, which might mean he has gone straight - some hope! - or that he has learned to be more discreet.

     However! and a word that eventually had to crop up again, Jupe was a member of yet another previous fraud, which goes all the way back to 1989, and a supposed stockbroking firm 'Fox Milton'.  Art!

     Fox guarding a chicken coop.  What can possibly go wrong?

Again About Abotage

Yes, I Deliberately Omitted The "S"

Because I can, and once again, whose blog is it? and if it were spelled properly the alliteration of the "A"s wouldn't work.  So there.

     What came to me a scant few minutes ago but inspiration about sabotage from the depths of my mind, this time from artwork from an album that I've seen yet never heard from.  Is that enough 'From's?  Art!

This will wind Wonder Wifey up

     Or, perhaps I am merely playing with you and I've omitted another single letter from the title and should instead have a picture like this one - Art!

     Okay, okay, enough mucking around with letters and titles, let's get to the meat of the matter in this missive.  Art!

     Say hello to what is widely agreed as the best record the Sabbs ever made, their 1975 platter that proves from drama comes creativity, or farmers with llamas, one of the two.  The title was a deliberate reference to the legal problems they were having at the time, as they had sacked their old manager and were trying to get out of grossly unfair contracts.  Now indeed throve the lawyers, who were clustering to serve writs upon them and for them, not respecting the holy sanctity of the recording studio in their quest for blood money*.  Art!

     Even the band acknowledge that the cover art was pretty awful.  It came out of extremely rushed photographic sessions, where they were supposed to be doing preparation shots and which lacked their promised black leather clothing.  Once these shots had been taken, they were approved for printing before the band were informed and when they discovered how naff the artwork was, the sleeves had already been printed.  Kind of sabotage, nicht wahr?

     Moving sideways, Conrad has another tale about sabotage, of the self-sabotaging kind, which probably won't be long enough to make up the whole of this Intro.  Let me see how much I can 'creatively expand' it, also known as 'padding out'.  Art!

     Here you see members of the Sabbs, their management and their road crew, the last of whom are the hairy haulage humpers who ensure bands get to play live, and whom are frequently larger-than-life characters in their own right.  They tend to be insular, opinionated, mostly male and don't normally possess even as much as a strand of Politically Correct DNA.

     The Original Road Crew member narrating this tale, hereafter ORC, had over 20 years of experience in Stage Management, and two degrees in the field to boot.  They and their - no pronouns used no idea of gender - family moved to Florida for a SM job where the position was vacant, on the say-so of the company's Vice President, who said that the senior SM job was theirs for the taking and only needed a rubber-stamp from the big boss, who owned the business.  He was absent on a trip, which is why the VP jumped and made the unofficial offer.  Art!

     What could possibly go wrong?  O you had to ask!  

     When the big boss returned, he had with him what the South Canadians call a 'resumé' and what we here in the civilised lands call a 'Curriculum Vitae', for the high-school graduate daughter of his best mate.  So, she was 18 years old, thus probably half the age of ORC and lacking any of the work background of the grizzled road crews.  Big boss claimed she had 'behind the scenes experience as a stage manager' and she would be taking over the senior SM role.  Tough luck, ORC.  Art!

It's in - er - Romanian.

     ORC knew their businesses better than either big boss or teenaged manglement, because she knew there would be - ah - 'considerable resentment and pushback' from the roadies, who would detest having an inexperienced teen as their manager.  Within three months she saw adverts in the trade press for every single position at the company (bar senior Stage Manager, one presumes rather cattily).  Three months after that, the business went bust.

     What an entry to put on your resumé: "I destroyed the business in which I got my first break as a tage anager, in six months".  SMH**.

Whoah, Look At This!

One of Conrad's besetting sins, as we all know, is a weakness for buying collectible books, and last year he discovered the "Official History Of Australia In The War Of 1914 - 1918".  There are 12 volumes in the series and I already have 6 of them.  Art!

     £44.52 is a decent price, but £21.46 is on the steep side even from Ockerland, as I've seen other volumes of identical size costing only £11 P & P.

     What I was excited about is that this is Volume I, which I haven't seen for sale in this edition previously.  Volumes 1 & 2 both deal with the ANZACs at Gallipoli, which is an era absolutely bound up with the creation of modern Australia and New Zealand, so Conrad expects them to be clutched tightly in their Antipodean owner's hands, never to be released.

     No, I haven't weakened and bought it, because I have a will of iron.  Can't deny I wasn't tempted, though.

Progress Report Of A Sort

Yes, back to Grumpy.  NO! not one of the seven dwarves from That Film We Shan't Name Again Today (Unless Something Juicy Comes Up), that constantly complaining German corporal whom wasn't enjoying the Second Unpleasantness at all.

14 September 1944

The Anglo-Americans are at Hasselt, Eupen and Metz.  Daily, enemy artillery fire.  Enemy patrol breaks into 4 Company sector.  Enemy air activity increases daily.  Saw an interesting example of a newspaper from liberated Antwerp.

Conrad's Commentary:  There's a lot to unpack here.  For one thing, the Scottish, Welsh, Irish and Canadians would object to being dismissed when describing the Allied armies, and matey seems unaware that the French and Poles were there wearing tanks, too.  The crack about artillery fire is evidence that the British were facing matey, because they liked nothing more than to ladle artillery shells all over their opposition all day long, and the night, too.  The line about air activity also acts as a weather report: the weather needed to be good for Allied air to operate, and then they operated at high intensity.  Interesting use of the word 'liberated' and I wonder if this is an accurate translation, because it rather admits that the Teutons were an unwanted illegal immoral occupying force.

Matey's missive

     Just as an aside, you may have realised that we've been venting about the usual suspects for a few days, just as an exercise to prove that BOOJUM! may be but lightly associated with logic and common sense, but we can still be creative when needed.

Proof They Do Things Differently In Korea

I mean, inevitably, South Korea.  The Norks probably still haven't got past the cultural wonder that is the potato, or POTATO! because it's food and filling.  Art!

    Conrad is pretty sure this picture would be NSFW in the land of Norks, as it would border on pornography or anything equally illegal.

     ANYWAY Art!

     This is the President who tried to declare martial law in order to - I dunno, help out his mate's car showroom or something?  Sork Presidents have a track record of committing crimes as soon as they get into office, must be a Prez occupational hazard, he said, looking across the Pacific Oc

     ANYWAY the Sorks take their democracy, which has been hard-won, verrrrry seriously.  So here they are celebrating as their Constitutional Court - go on, you never knew they had one, did you? - impeaches him.

     HA!

A Mordant Memory

Conrad has just been reading about a Reddit tale on Youtube where the Original Poster inadvertently let it slip to her nieces that Santa Claus wasn't real, sending their mother, her sister, into a frothing rage about it.

     The nieces were 11 and 13.  Art!

     Dog Buns, how would South Canadians take the scene where Terry haltingly recounts Bob telling him that there was no Santa Claus?  Bob sneers back at Terry for him being a big baby.  Terry ripostes "You told me he was gored to death by his reindeer!"

     And with that I bid you good night.

*  Art!

**  "Shake My Head"

The Sinister Super-Susurrus Of SABOTAGE!

You Can Tell This Intro Is Going To Feature Language Derivation

"Susurrus" comes from the Latin <spit hack> 'Susurrare', meaning 'To whisper', so if it's a 'Super-' variety then that means it's enormously loud.  Is that clear?  Splendid!  As for "Sabotage", that comes from the French 'Saboter', idiom for 'To muck things up by being clod-hoppingly clumsy', or more exactly for 'To clatter in sabots' (wooden shoes or clogs).  Art!

     The kind of sabot that will definitely give you a right clattering.  

     ANYWAY the word 'Sabotage' can be taken to mean "The deliberate destruction, disruption or damage of equipment, a public service, etc. as by enemy agents, dissatisfied employees, etc."

     Please note that people may accidentally sabotage themselves, usually by being witless manglement idiots promoted beyond their stupidity level.  One's thoughts turn to a certain purveyor of clockwork wind-up motors or some such shizzle, or how the wicked wicked wicked EU refuses to help solve South Canadian issues over ova.  Art!

     ANYWAY I wanted to talk about the performance of actual physical sabotage during wartime, and an event that was utterly novel to me.  I am referring, as previously threatened, about the 'Black Tom' incident.  Art!

     Kudos to "The History Guy", who can always be relied upon to provide interesting and unusual insights into corners of history that have been forgotten or never reported in the first place.  Art!

     This is the location of 'Black Tom', so-called because it's original, undeveloped state resembled that of a tom cat's arched back.  Black Tom was a load of rubbish, very much so, being an enormous amount of landfill waste and refuse, dumped over decades around an original rock.  By the 1880s it had grown substantial enough and large enough to be developed as an artificial island of 20 acres.  Art!

     Note the piers and jetties and railroad lines allowing freight shipment.  Large warehouses were constructed along the piers to store New Jersey's outgoing or incoming freight.  By 1916 the Great War was really entering full spate in Europe, which sought munitions from South Canada.  The Central Powers of Austria-Hungary and Germany were prevented by the naval blockade imposed by Perfidious Albion from acquiring anything from technically neutral South Canada.  Great Britain (as we were known then) and France, on the other hand, ordered as much military kit as they could afford, so the warehouses and depots and rolling stock on Black Tom were stuffed to the gills with explosive ordnance.  Art!

Swinging Tom

     On the night of July 29th, the barge 'Johnson 17" was moored off Black Tom, as the captain didn't want to pay a $25 docking fee, so all the 100,000 pounds of ordnance remained on the barge, rather than being off-loaded into a warehouse.  There, they would have joined 2,000,000 pounds of other ordnance.  Or, 45 tons added to 893 tons.

     What could possibly go wrong?

     "At 00:45 a.m. the guards first noticed the fires -" is what can go wrong.  The fires seemed to have started in the furthest rail cars of ammunition waiting to be unloaded, and from there the flames spread to the Johnson 17.  The 45 tons of ordnance-containing Johnson 17.

    Stopping only to sound the fire alarm, the guards looked to guard their own skins first and fled.  Art!

     The first thing to explode, at 02:08, was the barge, which went up with such a bang that it woke people in Philadelphia, ninety miles away.  Next to go were railcars, at 02:38, and explosions kept occurring all morning.  Hundreds of thousands of windows were shattered, debris and shrapnel impacted buildings a mile away, and the Statue of Liberty had her arm damaged by debris.

     When the official investigation began, their first question was: what caused a series of explosions causing $20 million-worth of damage?  Art!

     The Teutons.  After all, all that ordnance was going to be used against them, so why not get rid of it before it crossed The Pond?  The sabotage device used was the same size as a cigar and used a time-fuse to delay detonation, after which it used a thermite core to melt it's outer casing.  Conrad cannot find any pictures of these devices, only the chap behind their use.  Art!

     Captain von Rintelen.  He was such a successful saboteur that Perfidious Albion conspired to have him recalled to Germany aboard a neutral ship, which they then forced to dock in England, where he was arrested.

     Post-war, it was proven that Wilhemine Germany had been responsible for the sabotage at Black Tom, as determined by a commission looking into war guilt and debt.  A judgement for $50 million was issued, which the Nazi Germany of 1939 sneered at and refused to pay.  A considerably meeker Federal Germany paid up in 1953, to the tune of $93 million, which payments only ended in 1979.

     There you go.  Black Tom - it went down a bomb.

Now It Can Be Told

Your Humble Scribe has finally finished "22.11.1963", which I'll avoid giving spoilers about, because you may want to invest several weeks of your time in reading it,  After a verrrry long and detailed description of Jake's experiences in 1963, we then get the conclusion, which then hastily wraps up the consequences of Jake's interference in time, also introducing a couple of plot twists from out of left field.  Art!

If they took all the bells and whistles off, close to this -

     Jake and his pal Al were so dead, absolutely unequivocably set on averting the Kennedy assassination that they fell into the Bolshevik's Blindness Befustication; which I may not have enlarged upon before.  The Bolshies, you see, concentrated all their efforts and energies and planning and strategy and tactics on seizing power, without thinking about what to do afterwards.  Thus with Jake.  He never stopped to think about the consequences, beyond "Eldrad must live".  Sorry, "Kennedy must live".

     Another one for the Dead Books Pile.

The Wehraboos Won't Like This

Conrad is posting extracts from a journal written by an anonymous Teuton corporal in September of 1944, from the collection of various documents that appear in "Blood And Steel".  He was part of 12 Company of the 719th Infantry Division, thus a plodding regular division lacking any glamour or cachet.  He seems to hold himself to a much higher standard than his fellow Teutons.

12 September 1944

Enemy patrol breaks in in our sector!  Smoke bombs and mortar fire.  They take a sentry from 3 Company with them.  This causes a hunt for partisans through all the houses in the village.  The wanton destruction and plundering is indescribable.  There are no more decent or respectable men left around me.

     Conrad's Commentary:  Ah, now they're 'partisans' no longer 'terrorists'?  I wonder where this change in parlance comes from, as the former implies a more efficient paramilitary operation.  The 'search' seems to be an excuse for looting amongst abandoned Belgian houses.  Rather a far cry from the disciplined Teutons of 1940, hmmmm?

"Trog"

Conrad was introduced to this Doncaster slang yesteryon, and presumes it is as novel to you as it was to me.  It means 'To eat excessively', which is Conrad's normal mode of food consumption, so quite applicable.

     It did, of course - obviously! - make me consider a previous encounter with the word 'Trog'.  Art!

     I think I've seen this as a late-night program filler.  It involves the troglodyte of the title, and ends up with him getting shot, perhaps?  'Twas a good forty years ago since I witnessed it last so don't quote me.

     Then there is the plural.  Art!

Close enough

Talking Of The Dead Book Pile

Merely to prove that it exists, and that I've been dealing with a few real breeze-block works of late, Art!

     There's at least 2,500 pages-worth of book there.  See!  See what I am sacrificing!

     Of course, I now need more fiction to fill the gap these have left.  Either Abebooks or the charity shops beckon.  Laterz, pilgrims!

Good Morning, Elong!

We Haven't Slandered Or Defamed Kaptain Ketamine In A While

Conrad has only skimmed the news headlines this morning, which are more notable for the death of Val Kilmer (excellent in "Heat" by the way) than anything positive about Muskie, much to the latter's pained regret.  Art!

     This is the moment when Val's character, full of bonhomie at having pulled off a massive bank robbery, instantly changes demeanour.  It precipitates a shoot-out that is deservedly legendary for it's attention to realism.

     ANYWAY to make a tenuous link, in the scene above there is so much lead flying around that OSHA would wince in anguish.  Who or what is OSHA?  O I thought you'd never ask!

     The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is what. Art!

     This is the South Canadian federal agency entrusted with monitoring and regulating health and safety in the workplace.  It's an essential agency in protecting workers - so expect Elong Tusk to try and get rid of it - because most South Canadian employers deeply mourn the banishment of slavery.

     On to our story, narrated by the victim's offspring.  Glass-Cutting Dad, hereafter GCD, had worked in a glass-processing plant for decades, and was a master at his craft.  He'd even got a plaque from NASA for his work on the solar panels for Hubble, and an award from a church for his 15,000 hand-cut pieces of glass for a stained-glass window.  Art!

     Those panels have to work right first time, you can't recall and recut.

     ANYWAY the original owner died from old age, and his Bottomhole Offspring took over, as they often do, and proceeded to cut every corner imaginable to reduce costs.  They didn't charge for air only because they'd never seen "Total Recall".

     The literal crunch came when GCD was overseeing work on the shop floor and fell onto that very same (hard concrete) floor, injuring his back.  This is when the corner-cutting nature of the BOs came into play, as well as their servile minions.  Art!

For illustrative purposes only

    As per union and OHSA RULES AND REGULATIONS NOT AIRY-FAIRY NONSENSE WRITTEN IN COBWEBS ON POST-IT NOTES LEFT UNDER THE FRIDGE, after an accident like this the plant should be shut down, OHSA informed and an investigation conducted, with the plant not returning to operations until after the conclusion of said investo.

     But that would cost money, wouldn't it?

     There then followed a series of staggeringly stupid decisions.

     1) The Plant Manager refused to shut down the line.  The Union President, who GCD classed as 'a bottom-licker of epic proportions', and whom should have insisted the line be closed, merely nodded and did nothing.  Probably  tugging his forelock as he did so.

     2) They refused to call an ambulance because that would mean shutting down the line.

     3) GCD was shunted onto a bit of cardboard and dragged off to a side entrance.

     4)  Rather than an ambulance, they loaded him into a company panel truck, drove to the nearest hospital and dumped him there.  Art!

     

CAUTION! Not an emergency vehicle.  Not under any circumstances.

    The long medical story short is that this was the end of GCD's days in the factory, thanks to spinal damage.  GCD was happy to get a small settlement and  worker's compensation until he could hit retirement age and collect his pension.

     What could possibly go wrong?

     Hmmm, just everything from that point onwards.  You see, when the company lawyer turned up, as per instructions from the BOs, he offered only worker's compensation, no settlement and GCD needed to sign a waiver that stated he was to blame for the accident.

     It transpired that the accident had not only not been investigated, it hadn't even been reported, although everyone from PM to BOs lied and said it had.  After all, what could possibly go wrong?  Well, imagine you're Val Kilmer's character walking out of the bank with a jaunty strut - and then you see the entirety of the LAPD waiting for you.  That's how wrong it could get.  Art!

     GCD retained a personal injury attorney, with instructions to go scorched and salted earth on the company, which they did.

     What could possibly go wrong?  Well, the Plant Manager, HR and Union President were all fired, and only GCD's residual kindness prevented criminal charges being lodged against them.  The UP was also fined $25,000 and banned from his own union.

     The company really took a hit.  Remember OHSA? well, they seem to have decided to make an example of the BOs, for in the words of GCD's offspring, they descended on the plant 'like a plague of locusts'.  Thus business was hit with $6 million in fines - how much would they have lost to just shutting the line down for a couple of hours?  The whole plant was forced to close for 60 days, which also lost them $2 million in lost contracts.  They were banned from tendering for any government contracts for three years - goodbye working for NASA again! - which totalled losses of $4 million.

     $12 million down the dustpipe, which forced the BOs to sell off their company at a fraction of it's original value, to an acquisitions business from Sweden.  Art!

     The PM, HR and UP all blew through their retirement funds in no time.  UP now works in a shop, and the AI Art Generator thinks that above shows a 'spill in aisle three'.

     GCD retired early with a million dollars.  That's revengeance.  OHSAy can  you see, by the dawn's early light -

More Blasting From The Past

Is this a tailored advert?  If so, the algorithm has learned a thing or two since it began recommending 'Log Counting Software'.  I mean, a log's a pretty substantial thing, it would be hard to either miss or miscount a bundle of them.

     ANYWAY Art!

     I ask about targeting because these headliners were all big in the Eighties, so are they trying to appeal to music fans of Conrad's age?

     Conrad further noticed that "The Stranglers" are performing and so is their former frontman, Hugh Cornwell.  One would like to be a fly on the wall backstage when they encounter each other.  Conrad further further noticed that there's no prices given.  How very remiss.

On The Home Stretch

Your Humble Scribe has reached page 650 of "11.22.1963", which always seems odd when typed out.  As predicted, Ol' Steve is having his hero and heroine go down to the wire in terms of dealing with Lee Harvey Oswald.  I mean, where would the word count be if Jake merely walked up to Lee in the dark and plugged him dead?  Efficient and timely, yes, and the editor wouldn't have to try and cut down the 1,200 pages to something a tad more manageable, but it would kind of lack suspense.  Art!

Conrad Takes The Biscuit

And also the cake.  The Tunis Cake, that is.  Art!

     No, I don't know why the date is a year out.  ANYWAY here's the cake in all it's ganached glory.  It has to be a decade since I last made ganache and I think the double cream in this case was rather past it's sell-by-date, hence the trace of separated oils on the top.

Grumpy Gefreiter Gets Grumpier

Hopefully our little missives from the tetchy Teuton NCO are adding a little nuance to accounts of the fighting in Belgium, because as we have seen the German army had a lot of dross in their ranks.

11 September 1944

A patrol of 3 Company went to the other side of the canal in the night.  An enemy patrol was on our side at the same time.  Callenberg has been a deserter since 6 September.  Rumour of Von Kluge's suicide.  Model (55) his successor.  The Regimental Commander very dissatisfied with 3 Company's sector.

The 'Priest' is NOT A TANK!

Conrad's Commentary: The Teutons didn't like operating at night, whereas the British loved it and have practiced it ever since.  'Callenberg', whomever he is or was, doesn't seem to be infused with the dedication and discipline that Nazi Germany expected, quite.

     Von Kluge did indeed commit suicide, taking poison rather than return to Germany, where the Gestapo were waiting to have a little chat with him, as he was up to his Prussian ears in the plotting to assassinate Herr Schickelgruber.  Another one short on dedication and discipline!  Art!

     That's Model, the replacement, pronounced 'Moh-dell'.  He got around Herr Schickelgruber's constant and consistent interference by ringing Der Fuhrer's headquarters up every five minutes to ask permission to put butter on his crumpets, or to use a chinagraph pencil on his map sheets.  After a morning of non-stop pestering Ol' Schicky would lose the plot and leave him to carry on, uninterrupted.

Finally -

I've been so busy working and blogging that I've not had a chance to read about Elong Tusk's morning misery.  Allow me whilst I'm on my afternoon break, consuming both schadenfreude and cake.