I'm sorry, I bet that's from Shakespeare. I know, I know, I do try to project an air of Albion, Perfidious Maybe, Humourous Certainly, but I do try and avoid the Bark of Avon, whom I cordially detest, for making school and college miserable. Ha! Take that, Shakespeare!
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| Bill the Undead. How I like to picture him. |
Conrad generally tunes out adverts on television, and in cases where he doesn't, he usually deliberately mutes the end so he has no idea what they were trying to flog. In mixed company this isn't always possible, so I ended up rather confoundedly watching an advert for "Ancestry DNA"*. What was it about?
A person states that they thought they were half-Polish and half-Caribbean, yet thanks to Ancestry DNA they turned out to be All Viking.
Genes
Hmmm. Conrad is not sure about this. You Hom. Sap. are quite welcome to analyse your own DNA, but please don't expect your humble scribe to do so. I have quite enough trouble with UNIT and Spectrum, who harass incessantly on the grounds of suspicion, MERE SUSPICION! alone.
Tom's Terrifying Thermal Threat
No, not Tom from work. As you ought to know, Darling Daughter has a Partner. This is what we call a serious boyfriend of long term, and we are happy to acknowledge young Tom in this role. He is quiet, polite and sensible, and probably wonders ruefully at the prospects of certain folks as in-laws.
Tom's current job in a lab sounds terrific - using DANGEROUS CHEMICALS in order to dispose of other equally DANGEROUS CHEMICALS!
Which has nothing to do with what follows. Get used to this, it's how Conrad operates. And BOOJUM! too. Think of it as shock-proofing your mind for the 21st Century.
Tom described the lab freezer as operating at minus 800 . Temperatures this low are not merely Very Cold, they are Dangerously Cold. So cold, Tom was warned, that poking around on the shelves was likely to result in bits of same poking digit ending up permanently separated from the rest of that person. Grim stuff indeed, and a caution not to reflexively try and catch any falling trays ...
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| But your ice-cream will be really, really cold |
"Elementary"
How can you not like a programme where the central character, one Sherlock Holmes, uses words like "Specious", "Grist", "Cadaver", "Tedium" or "Brackish"?
Sherlock is tellingly described as 'Childish and self-absorbed', which is perfectly correct, as he is prone to sulking fits, walking roughshod over other's feelings, gloating excessively - or just gloating - and generally revelling in how much smarter he is than the rest of you lot**.
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| A British hero, hurrah! Well, anti-hero perhaps. Still, a hero. |
Lucy Liu is also remarkably easy on the eyes and her character is pretty smart in her own right, and considerably less infuriating than Sherlock.
It's also refreshing to see an American television programme where a British character is the hero.
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| Is Aiden Quinn really that imposing? |
Speaking Of Which -
Over the past 7 weeks Conrad has been basting the blog with a butter of Britishness - I say, that's not bad for alliteration, is it? - all the better to bolster bypassing business.
So, let me introduce Adrian Carton De Wiart. Like many a scion of the British Empire, his origins were foreign; Belgian, as a matter of fact, though he did become a British citizen. This will, of course, have automatically re-patterned his DNA along British lines. I shall have to tell his story in bits, as retelling the whole thing at once would immediately cause you to swear I was making it up.
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| The "Elegant pirate" |
The VC, as you may be aware, does not come free with a packet of breakfast cereal. No. No indeed. The award is frequently posthumous, and the list of those awarded is rather short. So the citation goes: "For most conspicuous bravery, coolness and determination during severe operations of a prolonged nature." What it doesn't say is that Adrian was acting effectively as Brigade commander of three battalions, all their CO's having been put out of action. Earning a VC as a Brigadier is uncommonly rare, but Adrian was one of those people would have to look up the word "Fear" in a dictionary. The Official History has him leading from the front, pulling the pins from hand-grenades with his teeth - because at this stage of his career he had lost his left hand.
As for not including this in his autobiography - the publishers had to add-in a section about the action and award. After all, being British, one does not boast.
Believe me, we've only got started on this chap.
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| Adrian, 1919 Those white stripes just visible above his right hand are merely some of his wound stripes. |
* A lot punchier and pronouncable than "Ancestry Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid"
** That means Hom. Sap. or you lot in other words. Naturally this excludes me.
