In More Than One Sense
We'll get onto the meat of the matter shortly. What Conrad wants to start with is a phrase that is comprehensively disproven by our relating a tale from Youtube's Reddit channels, to wit: "Good fences make good neighbours". Not in this torrid testament they don't. Art!
This is the South Canadian poet and wordsmith Robert Frost, in his youth and when he had joined the ranks of the Grumpy Old Men. His poem "Mending Wall" is where the phrase "Good fences make good neighbours" comes from. So now we are all better informed than we were five minutes ago.
This story begins when the Perceptive Diligent Poster, hereafter PDP, answered a knock at his door one evening, to discover two owners of the funeral home further down the street. We shall dub them Devious Pedantic Dodoheads, hereafter DPD. Yes I did have another name for them that began with "D" but we are staying Safe For Work. Art!
They informed him that they had purchased the neighbouring lot and were going to turn it into a car park; could he sign (unread) this three-page document agreeing to it?
Perhaps understandably, given how litigious South Canadians are, PDP declined, as it was already night. DPD refused to leave it with him overnight, tried to pressure him into signing and were chased away off PDP's property. Art!
Up went an 8' foam core fence, which PDP looked at askance, as they had taken the time and trouble to research city and district ordinances and codes about what was permissible and what wasn't. The DPD had also left up the old wooden fence, stating that it was on their side of the property line, PDP had better not touch it under pain of sudden death, they would sue him unto the fifth generation, etcetera.
Cue PDP looking up city code, which forbade having more than one fence on a property line. The DPD had to hire workmen to dismantle the old fence and PDP wouldn't allow them access to it from his side, so they had to go over the eight foot concrete fence to work. Art!
After that, with PDP feeling justifiably cocky, he got in touch with the city commissioners, because a concrete foam-core fence was against city codes, which required a solid masonry fence. They sided with him and DPD had to tear down their nice new fence, doubtless wishing to see PDP as a client of theirs in the very near future. Art!
They put up a temporary chain-link fence, which kept blowing down, risking PDP's chickens getting loose from his yard. DPD unhelpfully told him to sort out the problem himself, which he did by welding all the fence sections together. The temporary fence thus became semi-permanent but no longer blew down. Art!
To speed up the process of a new, permanent and opaque fence being erected, PDP took to hanging out in his back yard by his fire-pit, clad in nothing more substantial than a 'Borat' style luminous green Speedo. Anyone arriving at the funeral home's car park probably saw a lot more of PDP than they were comfortable with, because one doubts he was a male model.
When the new fence was erected, DPD's workers trampled and destroyed PDP's rose bushes and sprinklers. Again, the city commissioners sided with PDP and ordered DPD to pay for replacements. I should think so too!
When the fence finally went up, DPD only stained their side of the fencing, which - you may be ahead of me here - was forbidden by city ordinance, so DPD had to pay to stain PDP's side of the fence, too.
All in all it took over five years for this fence saga to play out and in the end PDP found that his property value had increased substantially thanks to the stained, presentable, sturdy, code-compliant and very tall fence.
"Good fences eventually make good neighbours". There, Mister Frost, fixed it for you.
More Thoughts About "11.22.1963"
Conrad is now past Page 600, and guess what? What Ol' Steve describes as 'obdurate history' has really come to the fore, because, as our hero Jake has discovered, history doesn't like to be changed, amended, thwarted or otherwise diverted from the normal track. Art!
There's James Franco as Jake, blending right into 1963. Or 1958, which is the fixed date he arrives in. Your Humble Scribe is deliberately avoiding viewing any of the eight episodes so as not to spoil the ending.
I was wondering about Al, Jake's acquaintance who discovered the time portal. He had the original idea to prevent Kennedy's assassination, and ended up with a terminal case of cancer back in 1961, forcing him to abandon his plans. Is that obdurate history's influence again? Because it doesn't seem to be taking any prisoners.
Tread lightly, Jake.
Conrad Doth Bake A Cake
I've had the recipe for 'Tunis Cake' written down for a few months now, and finally went ahead and baked it yesteryon. The story goes that the recipe was discovered by a soldier of the 8th Army in Tunisia, whilst that nation was being liberated from the Axis yoke. Said soldier was a Master Baker NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK in civilian life, so he tried making it himself and sent the recipe home to Blighty. It proved to be popular because it didn't require dried fruit, which was hard to get hold of in rationed Britain, and it mixed the flour with ground almond to stretch it further. Art!
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| Gluten free! |
There it is in the tin, naked and unadorned. The recipe calls for a ganache topping, a topping I've not made in possibly a decade; you bring double cream to the boil and add in a load of chocolate and stir the two together. It solidifies eventually but can be worked when fresh. I've added the topping as of this afternoon and need another picture to bring you up to speed.
Also Brought Up To Speed
Your Humble Scribe has been playing a different iteration of Solo Mahjongg, as mentioned briefly on the blog a couple of days ago. Art!
This one has a timer and countdown. You, the player, have ten minutes to either solve the puzzle or hit a brick wall, and so far Conrad has hit plenty of brick walls. In fact in all the games I've played I have never won a single game, only ever getting perhaps 90% completion rate. BUT I WILL NOT BE PUT OFF! just so we're clear.
Our Journey With Bernie
Mister Wrightson, that is, has now detoured to the FPG trading card 'Frankenstein' subset of 1993, which is tricky to illustrate as the internet automatically assumes one is referring to his hardback labour of love. Art!
Thus I have not been able to find the first card in the series, only the second: "Wretched Condition", which, if Art will do the honours -
"I remember coming home from seeing 'Frankenstein' and drawing crude pictures of the monster. I no longer have the pictures but I remember them a a line-box head with nuts and bolts sticking out all over his head".
I think that's a pretty close approximation to what Ol' Bern wrote.
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