Pub-a-dub-dub

Trying to Tolerate Tabloid Tat
     There are always some vapid "celebrity" pictures in our pub quiz, but Conrad does not lower himself to trawl the bottom-feeder news sites that feature banner headlines about single-name persons he cares nothing about.  No, instead he brings along Darling Daughter Sally for that, since she is worryingly familiar with the biographies and photos of these peripatetic pond-scum.

Darling Daughter Sally.  In winter plumage, since you ask.

Chips
     Or "fries", for any of our Trans-Atlantic apple-pie fiends.  We here in the UK call them "chips" after "chipped potatoes", which is more accurate tonight because I made sweet potato chips.  There were a couple of the tubers waiting to be used up, but when you make chips they get coated in oil and baked in the oven.  Thus not fries.

Before

They have the texture of a carrot rather than the good old King Edward* so slicing them up takes a bit of practice.  After half an hour in the oven -

After

There is no third picture since they went in minutes, despite Wonder Wife deciding that she couldn't manage many - Darling Daughter's fingers moved too fast to be seen.

Th-th-that's all, folks!
     As I said, we are off to sample some bitter and try to win without Googling.  Fortunately the scones got made last night, and tonight I got some squirty cream and extra butter to go with them - we already had strawberry jam.

So - Tanks?
     Oh go on, then

Come back Sigmund Freud, all is forgiven ...

This is a Sturmtiger, a giant naval rocket launcher fitted into a tank chassis.  Looks more like an article from Warhammer, to be honest.

Now, I really must be off!

Baker and bibliophile

No It Isn't A Messy Eater
     "Lover of books", I'll have you know.  That's number ten arrived, the last of the second-hand ones ordered this month to replace the cull of Operation Apocalypse, so no more trawling Abebooks until next payday.

"A Rhyme"
     Or so reads the entry for one of today's blog themes.  Conrad has been shockingly lax in not coming up with one, but he can plead extenuating circumstances.  How about one of Hilaire Belloc's, from "The Bad Child's Book of Verse"?

     "The whale that wanders round the pole
     Is not a table fish.
     You cannot bake nor boil him whole,
     Nor serve him in a dish.
     But you may cut his blubber up
     And melt it down for oil,
     And so replace the colza bean,
     A product of the soil.
     These facts should all be taken down
     And ruminated on
     By every boy in Oxford town
     Who want to be a don."

Obviously it was perfectly acceptable in the 1920's to chop whales up to light your dining room.  Greenpeace?  Not present for another 60 years.  Ecology?  Away with your Latin nonsense!  Sustainability?  None of that Bolshie drivel!

You didn't know, but this is the cetacean's equivalent of a two-finger salute

The extenuating Circumstance
     Allow me:

Yeah, it is SpongeBob.  A hero for the ages, I tell you.

Mary Berry's scone recipe amended by Conrad with cherries and raisins.  Although the recipe said "makes 8 - 10" I managed to get 24 of the little buggers out of the dough.  There were noises from interested parties earlier, so I shall need to go and check how many of the 24 now remain.

Work Temperatures
     This has been a sore point in all the offices I've worked in, and my current Unidentified
Friendly Organisation is no different.  Conrad, hailing from a planet in the constellation of Ursa Major, is able to survive temperatures of -30 Degrees Centigrade wearing a tee-shirt, shorts and sandals.  This contrasts wildly with many of his work colleagues, who sit in the office wearing thick coats and complaining that their coffee has frozen solid in the cup.  Come summer I have to go work in the fridge, but at present conditions are quite balmy and pleasant and I don't have to break out the iced drinks until mid-afternoon.
this month.

To you, an icy hell.  To Conrad, a cosy little nook.

So - Tanks?
     No.  Instead we have this:

"Prepare to die, Authority, by my laser - oh hang on I've not been fed yet.  Reprieve."

Another curious life-form present at BOOJUM! mansions.  We've had wolves, the guard hog, the hard hog, monster mutant messenger mice and now we have Felis Mortalis, colloquially known as "Laser-Eyed Cat".  Lethal to burglars, and also makes a good substitute barbecue.

Righto!  Off to count scones!

Ha! Take that, Muse!

The spirit of artistic inspiration, not the group
     This morning I bethought to myself, listening to Kayo Dot during the drive to work, "I need to come up with themes for the blog before I sit down to write it."  Which is a fair enough decision, given that scribing such inspirational and well-rounded thoughts and nicking other people's photos can take up to an hour.
     So!  Here we have a pre-plotted BOOJUM! and the first topic is -


Weather
     This is a traditional British ice-breaker, obsession and (mentioned in early blogs) surely a reason why our ancestors went abroad to conquer hotter countries with more predictable weather.  Yesterday we had an icy-cold, frosty start to the morning; today we have chilly wet weather and tomorrow might bring a heatwave.  Yes, really.  If we aren't having floods then we're suffering droughts, and hurricanes and tornadoes have recently appeared as occasional British weather.
     There are sound scientific reasons for this variation - our position as an island off the Continent, bordering the Atlantic Ocean, the jet stream, the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic Oscillation.
     One thing about rain and darkness; it does create poetic light effects with illumination from traffic and streetlights and other signs.  Best observed, however, from inside a car.

I bet he's thinking "Oooh, look at the subtle and convoluted interplay of water ripples and car lights."

Traffic
     Nowhere near as bad tonight as last night, despite being wetter.  This may be due to Conrad filling up his petrol tank last night; typically the meter was in the red whilst I sat, gnawing my thumbs, waiting to get to the nearest petrol station before the engine died.  Tonight, with a full tank, no jam.

Traffic.  Jamming.  Oh, come on, you knew I'd pull that one!

Seagulls
     No, not A Flock Of, although they were in a flock.  This flock was in Harpurhey, about as far from the sea as you can get (metaphorically anyway).  My mind - yes I was driving but Conrad can manage two simultaneous things well - pondered on this.  Do these urban scruffs no longer visit the seaside?  Do they hand around like hoodie gangs with feathers on urban street corners?  Why do they still have "sea" in their title?  Wouldn't they be better called "scavgulls"? Or "ganterpies"?  And do they taste good in a pie?


Seagulls.  Never really trusted them since seeing "The Birds"

Pumpkinless
     Given the wince-inducing puns Conrad posted for Halloween, some readers might think "Good!".  But, counters this blog's creator, lack of pumpkin means lack of Halloween Pumpkin Cake, which I tried today, in addition to Sophie and Manisha.  It really is delicious.  The rum-soaked raisins really helped, too.
     I wonder.  How much would airmailed pumpkin come to?  Mind you, it wouldn't fit through the letter box.
     I suppose Conrad will be looking for online pumpkin suppliers soon.  I wonder also, can you grow them from seed?

(Imagine an imaginary pumpkin in this space)

At my bequest, Sophie's request
     Only two people across the floor (all 150 of them) have realised that they can ask me to make a cake for Friday - and lo! it will be done.
     Today Sophie asked for cherry scones - and with scones, you have to make sure they rise enough and aren't simply biscuits with aspiration.  So I shall be looking for a good recipe.  Oh, and cherries.  What happens in December is a shortage of dried fruit as the amateurs who don't know baking powder from uranium hexafluoride buy it all up to make mince pies or Christmas Cake. 

Baking Powder, Uranium Hexaflouride, so easy to mistake one for the other

Okay, that's the blog done in 40 minutes, a saving of 20 minutes at least.  Time I can now spend on that zombie novel ...

Top hole!

Grrr. 30 minutes I'll not get back.

Traffic
     No, not the group, the phenomenon.  Whilst Traffic may have jammed, today Conrad laboured homewards in a jam, adding an extra half hour to his commute.  Thankfully he had music to prevent an outbreak of carnage on the carriageway (his mobile murder machine does, after all, have a concealed 7.62 GPMG and a 40mm grenade launcher).

Look at it.  Bilious.  Baleful.  And about to eject anti-tank mines right at you.

After that glumness, have a picture of sheer happy:

Look at them.  Almost ready for the pot, heh heh!

 - I mean, almost ready for a pat!  Damn.  Conrad not good at happy, it seems.  How about a hamster?

Huge, ferocious and carnivorous - but it's still a hamster!

Okay, enough of trying to be dead happy.



Not that kind of dead Happy ...

I'm sorry, we seem to have gotten a bit sidetracked here.  Just let me take my medicine -

Ah, yes, traffic.  Awful stuff.  Avoid if at all possible!

Quieter and Safer
     Any regular readers will know of Conrad's simultaneously childlike and deeply disturbing love of things that go bang, prefereably BANG and if at all possible BANG.  How ironic it is that he noticed a BBC news story about thorium and it's possible use as a nuclear fuel.
Herein the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24638816

A thorium-fuelled future with no loud explosions?  Incredible*!

Time, Like An Ever Rolling Stream**
     Every second ached past whilst sitting in that traffic jam.  Now, however, I sit down to script BOOJUM! and suddenly I'm in mid-river and it's a rip-tide and in forty minutes I'll have to get up and go to work.

* There is always Bonfire Night
** Yes, it is a poem - but I'm not telling you which one!  (snigger)

Got to go, that screenplay of "The Kraken Wakes" won't write itself.

Bigger! Better! Butterier!

Actually not, but "Smaller!  Worse!" Just Won't Pull In An Audience
     Are you ready, gentle reader, for Conrad's adven - no, make that Adventures in Crumpet-making? <imagine a brass tahhh-dahhh! in the background>
     Conrad has never made crumpets before, and idly obtained a recipe this afternoon.  You make up a yeasted batter, then cook the muffins in a pan over the hob, instead of in the oven.
     Simples!
     Wrong!
     First obstacle - a crumpet ring, made of metal, 3" in diameter and 1 1/2 " high.  I haven't got anything like that, but there are tins in the cupboard 3" in diameter, and after emptying a tin of beans and sausages, hey presto - no good.  The tin is ribbed and the muffin batter will thus stick and not come out.  Next, a tin of evapourated milk - no ribbing!  Emptied, washed, then it was hacksaw a hole in it and cut to size with scissors.
     This created another problem, because those cut edges are extremely sharp, even when all the protruding bits have been removed.
     Here the ruffians are:

Sitting soaking

 First attempt was not very good - I over-filled the rings and lots of batter overflowed, then when I whipped the rings over my whip-fu was weak and batter went all over, and there weren't any holes in the final product :(
     So I tried again.  Here are the crumpet rings, pristine after scrubbing:

Two shiney shiney

I used less batter second time around, and flipped with Zen precision:

They slid round the pan like skaters on ice; I did it once, I did it twice

And was rewarded with two small yet crumpet-like objects thus:

Lifetime measured in seconds

Delicious with butter!

     Not a bread product I'll be doing much of in future.  They are extremely messy and have to be cut out of the rings with a sharp knife - holding the ring in a towel to avoid severing fingers or arteries on the jagged edges, you can only do two at a time, and they are rather on the small side.  A 4" crumpet ring would have been better.
     There is batter left over, now sitting in the fridge - whether this will kill off or merely stun the yeast remains to be seen.
     On the plus side, they were very nice with butter.

Halloween Pumpkin Cake
     This went down exceedingly well at BOOJUM! mansion.  Wonder Wife is not one to be subtle or understated: if she Does-Not-Like then Conrad knows within seconds.  Well, she bloody loved this cake!
     Arse.  Double arse.  In fact, multiple arses!
     There aren't any pumpkins left in the UK now, so what can I use instead?
     Carrots, maybe.  Squash?  Turnip?  Marrow?

Tomato Salsa
     I promised Conrad if he managed to make this and the crumpets, then I could have that last can of Old Golden Hen.  The recipe called for jalapeno peppers, which I don't have any of and the shops that might have supplied were all shut.  Instead I used four birds-eye chillies.
     "Only four," I mused to myself.  "And they are very small."
     Yes, Mr Hand, I know now - small is dangerous where chillies are concerned.

Your tongue.  After Conrad's salsa.

So - Tanks?
     Sort of.  Just to balance out the preponderance of cookery items today.

No, they aren't giants - those are just tiny tanks

This is the German "Goliath", automatically proving that the Germans do have a sense of humour.  No, they weren't crewed by midgets or contorted Panzertruppen, they were steered remotely via cable.  Which frequently got cut.  And they were highly vulnerable to gunfire.  And they were expensive.  And they were slow.  And - <Mr Hand interrupts to point out a stupefied audience is not a happy audience>

Finally -

How would you feel, getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, only to come face-to-face with this?  Oh dear - no, wait a minute, what I meant -

Kayo Dot!

No, Victoria, not a "yoof phrase"
     At least I don't think so.  They are a music group.  Ian at work praised them, and promised to put together a CD of selected tracks.  Conrad, like most middle-aged men trying to cling to a long-vanished youth, was quite chuffed at this, as it might help to cement his "hipster dad" credentials.  Might.  So I have deliberately avoided tracking them down on Grooveshark or Googling about them.
     'Might take a few listens,' warned Ian.  Conrad will therefore be playing it in the car where he is his own captive audience.  At present it is playing in my upstairs lair, turned down low as Wonder Wife will instantly disparage them were she to overhear.

Kayo Dot.  Obviously!  What, you thought it might be Broken Social Scene?  Tish - how little you know!

Baking again
     I test-drove a new 2 1/2 lb loaf tin this afternoon, with excellent results. A loaf that isn't burnt, asymmetrical or with excessively droopy sides.  Given that I have to go downstairs to see how the Halloween Pumpkin Cake is doing*, I will come up with a photograph.  This bread, mind you, isn't that horrid doughy pap that comes wrapped in waxed paper.  No.  This bread will put hair on your chest, develop muscles you didn't know you had and sweep your bowels clear like an internal squeegee.

 

Behold the bread!

  

 Broken Social Scene
     After being sneeringly dismissive above, Mr Hand pointed out that I didn't know what Broken Social Scene look like either.
     Like this, apparently:

The other nine aren't present.

So now we know.  All part of your rounded education here at BOOJUM!

 <short pause as Conrad imbibes some Old Golden Hen and decides that he likes Kayo Dot>

That Zombie Novel
     It's called - working title, may need to change it - "Revelations".  There's a pun in there.  You can't tell because you haven't read it yet and this is definitely a first draft.  I was practicing dialogue with myself this afternoon, an activity easily misinterpreted by casual onlookers, so I did it in the dungeons.  The airy upper dungeons, of course!  since the lower ones have no daylight.  And occasional giant moles.

And these, but only once.  So far.

Shopping!
     As any regular reader well knows, Conrad jovially detests doing the weekly shop as Darling Daughter or Wonder Wife are guaranteed to ask "Did you get Gerschon's Travelling Matte Wallpaper Biscuit Bars?" or "Why no Elephant-Flavoured Purple Ham Shreddies?"   Lack of telepathy no excuse.
     Anyway, I ordered Wonder Wife not to help with unpacking and putting away yesterday's shopping, which contrarily guaranteed (that word again) that she would. Consequently she found the "John Carter of Mars" DVD and spent several minutes mocking Conrad's choice of film.
     What the hell, at least it's not the Asylum version!

Asylum.  Still making a profit and films.  So someone is buying them, right?

Conrad muses -
     John Carpenter is going to write and produce (directing is too much bother for him now) a TV series about a secret, hidden society of telepaths.   Mere days before production is due to begin, a group of businessmen approach him with a cheque for $150 million.  Would he like to make a film, carte blanche, no suit involvement at all, and when he hesitates they up the pot to $175 million.
     So John makes his dream film, IIRC a musical set in a nuclear power plant, which tanks at the box office but hell, he got to make his dream film.
     The TV series never gets made.  Years later John wonders if that wasn't the point after all ...

* Poorly!  Taking ages to bake and it's gone over the tin.

Right.  Off to conquer the world.  The kitchen!  Sorry, the kitchen.  The world is tomorrow.

"Last night I dreamt of Manderley*"

Actually That's A Lie, Because -
     last night Conrad dreamt of Eden Underwood, an apparently placid English country village, picturesque, tranquil, full of greenery - and evil to the core!  Yes.  There was a standing stone known as "The Barn Door", since it resembled one, set out in the fields.  Cattle avoided it, and to walk where the missing second door would be was to invite terrible retribution.  One winding country path around the village ran between earthen banks, and two bulging rocks  at one point narrowed the path so one could barely squeeze past; and if you squeezed but touched one of the rocks - oops, soul forfeit, since they were sinister sacrificial rocks!  Up by the canal was what seemed to be a - under-used - vertical climbing frame - actually a subtly-distorted copy of a scaffold where people had been hung, built in homage.  And you couldn't trust all the villagers, either, since many had an unhealthy interest in "outsiders", who might be brought into the community - or sacrificed to their pagan gods.  Conrad's character in the dream was warned by one of the non-pagan residents:  "They're interested in you.  Either for yourself, or for your girlfriend.  Beware."
     It'll teach me not to eat cheese before bedtime.  Mind you, as a background for a story ...


Eden Underwood.  Population 167 sorry 166.

On The Theme of Creepy -
     How would you feel, getting out of bed in the dark to visit the bathroom, and THIS confronts you -

"Hello!  No need to visit the loo any more, is there?"

This creation is one of Darling Daughter's, made out of papier mache and I think is hollow enough to be able - should the whimsy take you - to fit your head inside.
     No, I'm not sure quite what it's supposed to be.  We had to move it out of the lounge.  The eyes seemed to follow you wherever you went ...
 


Eden Underwood.  Population 166 sorry 165.











Our Word For Tonight
     Is "Palimpsest".  To even the most casual reader, this is clearly - clearly! - an Austro-Hungarian word referring to lighter-than-air craft dating back to the early days of the Twentieth Century, where dashing young blades from the KoK's air arm disported in the heavens over Vienna, charming young ladies out of their liberty-bodices.
     Clearly.
     Hang on, it's not?
     Bah.  Apparently it means "something - usually vellum or papyrus - that has been scraped clear and re-written upon."
     I definitely prefer the BOOJUM! definition.

You can hear those liberty-bodices being thrown ...




Eden Underwood.  Population 165 sorry 164
(163 of whom are human)



Okay, I now have to go off and sponsor Anna, who is doing a half-marathon to raise money for desperate dogs.  I swear, she cares more for those dogs than her fellow-workers.  "If I don't feed them steak and salmon, they go into a decline!" she states.  This is quite besides the parrots, piranhas, pangolins and pythons she has in her menagerie.

* From the film "Rebecca", a chick-lit forties flick you may not be aware of.  Worth a tickle.

Tomorrow: Audubon's Book Of North American Werebirds