Dog Buns!

Nearly Got Sucked In

Guess what was playing on the television in The Mansion's living room?  NO! "Noddy The Nazi Goes To Narnia" is not a real film.  Go and stand in the corner.  If it was a real film then it would be bolded and in fuschia.  Bafooons*.

     "The Great Escape", actually.  It was a tremendous success in 1963 when released, and one has to wonder why, since it certainly wouldn't get made today.  The cast is exclusively male and white, it's set in a prison camp - hardly the most scenic of settings - and it has an extremely downbeat ending.  It does, of course, have some classic stunt work featuring motorbikes.  Art!

Steve on a motorbike.  Don't ask me what sort.

     And I have already spent far too much time looking the film and book up on Google, so there this Intro will end, because we're looking at the traditional Sunday retrospective across the years.

2020

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2020/09/its-over-sardoba.html

2019

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2019/09/hatchet-berry.html

2018

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2018/09/id-say-youre-cursed.html

2017

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2017/09/harry-potter-and-deathtea-hallows.html

2016

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2016/09/organ-entertainment.html

2015

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2015/09/its-peter-capaldi-gieing-em-laldy.html

2014

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2014/09/eating-for-charity.html

2013

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2013/09/hasty-but-tasty.html

*  If anyone is interested I can write a treatment for only twenty-five thousand smackers.

Did Arnold Rimmer Die In Vain?

Arnold Judas Rimmer, Just To Be Clear

You know, the cowardly, nit-picking, treacherous <Mister Hand redacts a long list of negative personality traits> hologram from "Red Dwarf", whom is the utter antithesis (been wanting to use that word for days now) of the genial layabout Dave Lister.  A hologram courtesy of one of science-fictions cheapest yet most effective special effects.  Art!

AJ, as nobody called him, ever

     The reason I bring this up is because 1) You don't get many television programs that use Esperanto and 2) They got around censorship notions by creating the artificial swear-word "Smeg".  For your information this had already been done in "Judge Dredd" with a wide variety of intriguing future swears, and was yet to come in "Battlestar Galactica".  Conrad himself has invented future swears for his "Doctor Who" fan-fictions you fnorping plabby moojs.

     If you will excuse me for a minute, I bought a whole load of remaindered chicken thighs and legs last night and need to cook some before they go off*.

     Thus Your Humble Scribe had to pinch himself when he came across an advert for a fridge.  Art!

     I has hastening forth to work and thought I might have mistaken the marque as a variety of "5 Meg" referring to some variety of Digital Devil Box (or mobile phone if we're being formal).

     But no.  There really is a manufacturer with that as their brand.  "Smeg".  Either they had no idea or knew and didn't care.  Conrad unsure if he would ever purchase one.

He would.  In a heartbeat

There's Been A Murder ...

You can just imagine Private Fraser from "Dad's Army" intoning the phrase above and waggling his large, expressive eyebrows whilst dramatically rolling his "R"s.

     Which has nothing to do with murder-mysteries as read by middle-aged men, for Conrad has just finished "Death At The President's Lodgings" by Michael Innes.  It's rather slow, I have to say, and whilst it does give one a sense of how Oxford University ran in the Thirties, it is glacially paced.  The resolution is so complicated I can't even allude to it without increasing our daily word count to 3,000 words plus.  Art!

     There are lots of editions, so some of you are still human - oooops I beg your pardon - so some of you out there have been buying it.  

     "The Franchise Affair" by Josephine Tey was far more enjoyable.  It was not only well written, it was interesting and stylish.  Unusually it didn't involve murder; rather, a fifteen-year old schoolgirl accused two women of locking her in an attic for a month, starving and beating her.  A country solicitor more used to wills and conveyancing takes them on as clients and soon finds himself conducting an investigation quite outside his normal lifestyle.  Ms. Tey has a style I like and I shall be looking for more of her work in future <Wonder Wifey cringes at the thought of the Book Mountain acquiring a new, higher peak>.  Art!

You are looking at a critical plot point!

Back At The Bridgewater Hall

I shall finish off my review of Nick and Warren, since I have space to do them justice here.  I made a note of the songs they did, a fair few from their recent "Carnage" album (if that's what the young folk call them nowadays), including "Hand Of God", which was MUCH more intense than the studio version, and "White Elephant", that one with the high Tut Factor due to all the swears, as well as a cover of T Rex's "Cosmic Dancer" (which seems very strange as a selection, but which worked) and of course "Carnage" itself.  Plus some other stuff I didn't recognise.  I may have to work on that.  Art!

Nick being a balladeer

     They came back to do two encores, by which time Conrad was looking at his watch and wondering about the last bus.  And a young lady came down to the front to ask for Warren and Nick's autograph, which they immediately gave, nice to see people not being precious about it.

     And that's the last of my birthday present, pretty apt for musicians who used to be in The Birthday Party.

You What?!

It may come as news to you that Jon Pertwee, the debonair actor who portrayed The Doctor in the BBC's premier dramamentary "Doctor Who" was a very naughty schoolboy.  He got expelled a lot.  In order to make pocket money whilst still at school, if not actually on the premises, he took part in a fairground exhibit known as the "Wall Of Death", which, if Art will put down his plate of coal -

     The idea is that, as long as the rider keeps their speed up, momentum will overcome gravity and they can zip along.  If their forward speed drops, so will they.  Jon used to perform with a sidecar -

     And in the sidecar sat a toothless lion.  Just for effect, one presumes.  Mind you, I bet it still had claws, so Wall Of Possible Death still holds true.  And it must have been well-used to the routine, because forcing a lion to endure sitting in a sidecar whilst wazzing around at silly speeds strikes Conrad as a very dubious proposition.  Lions have a way of saying "No" that leaves one in tatters.

     - excuse me, just had to go wash sticky chicken residue from my hands.

     Where were we?

Finally -

Despite being down for a 10:00 start tomorrow and being due to do that work at home, Your Humble Scribe still has to be up and out almost before sunrise, travelling in to The Dark Tower.  For, on Friday at mere minutes to clocking out time, I had to dash to the toilet, pack all my stuff away and close down my laptop.  Unfortunately this last minute rush meant I put the power lead and earphones for my works laptop into my locker, where they remain <sad face>.  If I am out of the house by 07:00 then, given that buses in the morning are a lot more frequent than they are in the evening, Your Modest Artisan has three hours to make it.  I think it's just do-able.

<heaves weighty sigh>

     I know what you're thinking - why not go in on Saturday or Sunday?  Because nobody's worked a Saturday in The Dark Tower for a year and a half, and never on a Sunday, so I've no idea if my pass would work or not.  Conrad not happy at a wasted three-hour journey.

And with that we are done!

*  They should be good for a week or two, right?

Two And A Half Inches Of Either Pleasure Or Fear

I Lead With A Heavy Sigh Here -

WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS!

There, that takes care of business.  I put the above in as a precaution, because I know what fearful lecherous perverts - or should that be perverted lechers? - you lot are.  Minds in the sewers, let alone the gutters.  

     What I refer to is that seminal conspiranoid-loon-busting volume "Reclaiming History" by Vincent Bugliosi.  Yes yes yes, a name made for puns, except he could probably invert the pun and have you serving five years for defamation, because he was that good a prosecuting attorney (as the South Canadians call their barristers).  Art!

     The thing is, this is an immensely thick volume that it going to take weeks to get through, and so I'm going to have to resort to a collection of links rather than a thousand words of wit, wisdom and wonder, since otherwise I'll still be stuck on the Foreword in December.  I know I usually resort to this format on a Sunday, but once again, whose blog is it?

     For your information, because I know what fearful perverts skeptics you are, allow Art to present a little evidence.  Art!

     Two and a half inches thick.  I measured it.  So, without further ado or procrastination -

2020

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2020/09/smokin.html

2019

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-morphology-of-eschatology.html

2018

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2018/09/id-say-youre-cursed.html

2017

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2017/09/harry-potter-and-goblatte-of-fire.html

2016

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2016/09/more-of-strange-love.html

2015

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2015/09/thats-not-bill-shatner-its-gerald-ratner.html

2014

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2014/09/of-greek-and-bezique.html

2013

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2013/09/technology-two-faced-monster.html

The Coincidence Hydra Got New Dentures

 We Have Not Been Excessively Troubled -

 - by the big green beastie, not since our purchase of armoured underpants.  Still, being defied and defeated seems to have made it more determined to chew into Conrad's tender and succulent (I imagine) buttocks.

      First of all, let us change tack entirely and bring in our first visual pun.  Art!

Man.  Tea.  Python.

     I don't have anything else to add that is specific to "Monty Python's Flying Circus" - or do I?  Because I'll bet you military history ingoramuses are unaware where the "Flying Circus" bit comes from.  We obviously can't leave it there, can we?

     Okay, cast your mind back to the First Unpleasantness, where aerial combat took place on a large scale for the first time ever.  Perfidious Albion created the Royal Air Force out of the Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Flying Corps, for example, on April 1st 1918, a date the other services have never let them forget.  On the Teuton side of the lines you had Jagdgeschwader 1, under the command of Manfred Von Richthofen.  Art!

     As you can see, their planes were painted every hue of the rainbow, with an exuberance that the more stolid commanders of the RAF wouldn't have tolerated.  Hence it's being somewhat sardonically dubbed a "Flying Circus" and in the Biggles short-story

     ANYWAY back to the fascinating anecdote.  I couldn't take a picture because the coincidence was upon my phone itself, being the four-letter word that is generated as proof of a valid e-ticket on First Bus' application: SKEW.

      And what came up as a Cryptic Crossword solution? I've thrown the paper away and can only remember that the clue involved 'no hair' and the solution was SKEWBALD which I'd never heard of before, even if I'd actually seen it.  Art!

     There you have a skewbald horse.  "A horse spotted with white and any colour apart from black" says my Collins Concise.

     Okay okay okay this Intro might be reaching but now you know a bit more about both horses and the First Unpleasantness, and a small win is still a win.

     Motley, I noticed that the vivarium door was ajar earlier.  Keep a weather eye open.

A Theme Just Not How You Were Expecting It

For no particular reason Your Humble Scribe had the theme music to "633 Squadron" ringing around his head on Friday morning.  Perhaps because I'd been looking at my playlist on Spotify and there's a bunch of film themes there.  I wonder if - hang on - Yes!  found it and am playing it in the background RIGHT NOW.  Art!

Give up, Teutons, the Mozzies are here!

     The film was a colossal success, despite it's rather downbeat ending, and having an epic theme tune can't have hurt one bit.

     Hmmmm another mention for the RAF.

A Buccaneer Just Not How You Were Expecting It

Yes, "it" not him, because Lo! we are talking about the Blackburn Buccaneer, and I've had this one written down in my notebook for several days, so that's proof I never set out to create today's blog with a theme present.  Art!

A buccaneer being very near

     No, it's not taking off or landing, otherwise the landing gear would be visible.  This is how high it would operate in the North Sea, coming in under the radar net of Sinister warships and hitting them with nuclear missiles, which is logical enough as that's how it was designed.  Conrad recalls a journalist on exercise with a Buccaneer squadron, hearing one of the RAF artificers describing loading nuclear bombs as being 'buckets of instant sunshine".  Quite.  Said artificer was very blase about his aircraft, which must have been over 20 years old by that time: " - they built 'em out of box girders and railway sleepers back then".  Robust, you see.  Art!

     Interestingly enough, they were used on a couple of occasions to screech over the rooftops at Mach 1 in order to enthuse the locals and cause the opposition to need a change of underwear; once when Belize, just prior to independence, was being threatened by a Guatemalan invasion (which never happened) and again in Lebanon during peace-keeping duties.

     We may come back to the Buccaneer.  I bet you can hardly wait!

Finally Nothing To Do With Aircraft

Although I bet the real thing has warning lights situated high on the structure to prevent any low-flying aircraft from discovering where they are, suddenly.  Art!

     Progress so far in the construction of the 3D Empire State Building Puzzle.  I've cut the box top away from the bottom so I have a picture to work from, if needed, whilst all the remaining bits are in the bottom box.  What I'm doing is referring to the schematic outlay and indicating which bits I've gotten and completed, rather than trust to box art that omits the sides and top-down views*.  Art!

     As you can imagine this is very fiddly and time-consuming, just the kind of task Conrad is good at yet which other people would consider cruel and unusual punishment.  All I can say is that this is what would have made me an excellent codebreaker at Bletchley Park.  It has, incidentally, meant that my planned wargame to get re-acquainted with the "Blitzkrieg Commander" ruleset has been postponed.  O well into each life a little rain must fall**.

Finally Finally -

Hmmmmm in light of that last crack I think the rainclouds might be moving away - hang on a minute - I think the rainclouds might be moving away mustn't scare them into returning must we.  This might mean Edna gets a constitutional trot and I can go boldly striding forth in my Crocs, rather than having to contort my fat feet into shoes only just barely big enough for them.  When it's raining my socks tend to get wet in Crocs because they have plenty of holes in them.  By design, I hasten to add, not through excess wear and tear.

See?

     You might (if you were reaching desperately for a pun) call them RAFs - "Royton Airy Footwear", which is where we came in.

*  This makes me VERY VERY ANGRY.  Just thought you'd like to know.

**  Unless you live within the bounds of This Sceptred Isle, in which case it's a lot of rain.

Abhor Yashmak Mystique!

No, It's Not A Challenge Or Instruction

In fact, being quite the stinker, I'm not going to explain today's title until later on <tweaks moustache ends in eeeevil fashion> and you'll just have to put up with it.

     For today's Intro we are going to return to the - ah - 'imagineer' Frank Tinsley, he of the Baby Battle Buggy fame (or infamy).  It seems that with Frank, the wish was father both to the thought and the artwork and he considered that if if could be drawn, it could be built.  Art!

Maurits Cornelius says ye nay

     Sadly, this is not the case.  Half of M.C. Escher's stuff is proof of such.

     ANYWAY let us see if we can screensnip the relevant pictures that Ol' Frank came up with for hydrographic transport.  Actually not so much 'transport' as 'flinging at the heavens hopefully'.   Art!

Hope Springs

     Here's the answer to a question nobody asked, about how to irrigate the "parched deserts of Southern California" and to be fair Frank is only articulating the suggestion of an engineer.  His plan was to build 400 power plants one mile apart, which would - er - shoot giant geysers of water across the mile-wide gaps.  As you can see from Frank's illustration, the geysers would be aimed high over hilly terrain, but would be flat-trajectory over the level plains.  Art!

SoCal desert terrain

     You may have already spotted the design flaw here: a column of water shot from a high-pressure pump will inevitably and unavoidably spread out and disperse over distance and the greater the distance, the greater the dispersal.  By the time this water reached the next geyser for collection and onward transportation, it would be nothing more than a fine mist.

     That's not all.  Each of those 400 pumping stations would cost £200, 000 and those are 1952 pounds, for a total of £80,000,000.

     

A station.  For pumping.

     It would, of course - obviously! - be far cheaper and simpler to just use pipelines to transport the H2O across the landscape.  Readily available technology already in widespread use, no need for mist-spraying giant geysers.  Art!

     Motley, I've got my slippers but I cannot find my 

Piratical Propensities

What do the following have in common?  BEEN BEAN BARN CRANE RUNE NEAR BRAN BREN CANE BANE CAREEN NACRE CANCER.  

     I shan't keep you in suspense; they all contain the letter "N" and are derived from the word BUCCANEER which was the 9-letter word I couldn't get, in a word puzzle.

     Of course, we can't leave it lying there, can we?  The word has French roots, going back to the sixteenth and seventeenth century, when freebooting folks on the island of Hispaniola would smoke meat in order to preserve it, which they would sell to the pirates cruising those waters.  To smoke meat in French was to "Boucaner" and over time the word was applied to the pirates themselves.  Art!

A rough, tough buccaneer, rather spoiling the image by wearing a skirt.

It's The Nexus Of The Crisis -

And the origin of Storms, which is a lyric by Blue Oyster Cult that we can use to introduce another thrilling description of last weekend's Crisis Point.  Art!

     The British redcoats arrive at St Charles and surprise the French, who managed to get onto the roof of that building behind them with remarkable speed.  The whole affair was poorly handled and only provided further evidence that young Arthur should never have been allowed to go off and be 'advised' by conniving French players; that boy is far too fond of diplomacy when we needed BLOOD AND BAYONETS!  I can see him at the consulate in Saint Petersburg after the assassination of Tsar Putin gets a bad cold and retires.  Next!

     The Woebetideus have landed on Edward Henry Island, and are only being kept away from the Arab's delapidated castle by dint of cannon shot.  The W's may not have many modern weapons, but O my! there are a lot of them.  Art!

     The French show up to shell advancing Woebetideus, just because they can.  Proof, were it needed, that one cannot trust the French.  Art!

Edward Henry Island

     A desperate landing by the Woebetideus next to the fort goes badly wrong.  Good idea, bad execution (excuse the pun).  Meanwhile, over on the island of Petit Woebetide ...

     British regulars and privateers in numbers are making life miserable for the Spanish allies of the French.  By the time I left they were being pushed back almost into the flames of the campfire, and were just shy of breaking and routing.  In which case the British could investigate that astonishingly stout and sturdy 'storehouse' that couldn't possibly contain gunpowder, grog and jewels - or could it?  This success was entirely due to the bloodthirstiness of Tom, none of that namby-pamby negotiating here!

       At which point I had to leave, as I needed to get to a garage to check my tyre pressures.  Which were perfectly fine thank you.  Still, it wouldn't be Crisis Point if I didn't have a bit of car trouble, would it?

Conrad And His Rampaging Rancour

Okay, as you may have guessed, today's title is composed of dodgy Codeword solutions that, AGAIN, surely stretch the limits of permissibility! and I am ending that line with an exclamation mark, NOT a question mark, because it's indisputably true.

"ABHOR": That is, to not like very much.  Or, to dislike a very great deal.  And when was the last time you used this work in conversation?  Never.  It's use is reserved for The Telegraph correspondents talking of their feelings about instant tea, which is an abomination beyond belief.

Abhorrent in every regard.  BEGONE, ABOMINATION!

"YASHMAK":  You what?  A Turkish raincoat?  Mongolian yak stew?  Yiddish for 'A clip round the ear"?  Hang on, let me Collins Concise it rather than guessing -

"The face veil worn by Muslim women when in public" I see - that would prevent them from eating yak stew, wouldn't it?

Their loss!

"MYSTIQUE": To have cachet.  If one looks up "cachet" it says "See 'mystique'".  Not to be confused with Mustique - Art!

      Mind you, it's possible to argue that there is a certain mystique about Mustique, if we're being oblique.

Finally -

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten Nick and Warren, we will be coming back to them, O yes indeed!  We will also definitely be following up more Frank Tinsley artwork because I've checked up and not only is there loads of same, it's all pretty bonkers stuff.  And now, since we have hit the Compositional Ton, it's time for goodbye.

     Goodbye!

The Coincidence Hydra Tries It On Again

Conrad, Of Course, Has No Fear!

Well, let me qualify that a little before we proceed.  Your Humble Scribe is, of course - obviously! - terrified of spiders, because the ones that scuttle out of cover up here in the wilds where The Mansion is located are more like an octopus wearing a fur coat than anything else.  I have seen - and am polygraph-ready on this - one of these monsters calmly strolling back to it's lair with a mouse cat pony clutched in it's hideous arachnoid maw -

Nightmare fuel!
(From the documentary "Eight-Legged Freaks")

     ANYWAY Conrad was somewhat surprised this morning to see a resurrected  post from Facebook dated 4 years ago, where he was holding forth about the Equinox - and if you're not happy reading about Greek or Latin and how they directly influence the English language then you may move on - because this can be translated as "Equally Dark" since it refers to a day with twelve-hour portions of light and darkness.

     Conrad, being wilfully abstruse and partially obtuse and made up of lexicographical abuse, apparently took it upon himself to call this 'Lightism' because just as the equinoctial day is made up of equal parts darkness and light - which is where '-nox' comes from - just so is is made up of light and thus we could have had the 'Equilux' - I don't need to explain that, do I? - 

LUXembourg

     And, Lo! what crops up in my list (my long, long list; O how long a list it is) of Codewords that push the boundary of acceptability but "EQUINOX".  I think you can feel my pain as two of the alphabet's rarest letters combine in a single word.

     There is no truth in the rumour that the Coincidence Hydra is looking to have obsidian fang extensions.  As if such things exist!     

     Ah - motley.  Let's wrap a pig carcass in flak-jackets and see if obsidian-tipped arrows can do any damage to it, which of course they won't, just asking for a friend.

For cutting bread

BOOJUM! Reviews Films

And perhaps a bit of television as well.  You can't sue us for breaking the Trades Descriptions Act because we are legally embodied on Mars, so your solicitors need arms 78 million miles long.  Shall we commence the dance?  Anything but "Yes" will be ignored.

"GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE": Egad, the very idea!  Conrad cannot calmy and cannily sip milkshakes any more THANK YOU SO MUCH DIABETES but remembers those happy days when he could.  None of the recipes he made involved gunpowder.  Gunpowder, you see, consists of carbon, sulphur and potassium nitrate, all of which taste HORRID.  Not only that, putting this into a mechanism that generates considerable kinetic energy via friction is dangerous. Really, do you want the epitaph on your tombstone to read "Gunpowder Milkshake His Life Did Take"?  Art!

A seething septic swill of sewage*

"ONWARD": Hmmmmm do you know, Conrad suspects that this is a very old bus poster that pre-dates the lockdown because 1) it was very faded and 2) I'm sure we've covered this before.  So it's not so much 'Onward' as 'Backward' and appears to be an animated film set in a snowy environment.  I say, Norway, do you know anything about this?  

Norks, ice-sculpting

"Y The Last Man": You WHAT? Damme, you and the Coincidence Hydra are testing my armoured underpants today.  Conrad only recently bought the entire eponymous comic book series and will have to re-read it again, since by the time I reached the end I'd forgotten the beginning.  If you want to know, this is the tale of Yorick, the last man on Earth when all the other 50% of the male population all drop dead simultaneously, bar his Capuchin monkey.  The comic series is spread out over 5 years, so one questions whether this television series will manage to sustain interest quite that long.  We shall see**!

Yorick and &

     All we need now is for a publishing house to commission an adapter and an artist to work on "Earthman Come Home" and Bob is your father's brother.  I think Danny De Vito would be excellent if cast as Mayor John Amalfi.  Your mileage may vary.

Conrad Froths With RAGE!

Yes, I know what you're thinking, "Again?" yes AGAIN! because if the envelope-expanding Codeword compiling coprophobes keep on construing complex conundrums as credible, then you get Conrad waxing wrathful.  Let the Chlorine Trifluoride of criticism commence!

"OYER": NOT NOT NOT to be confused with "Oyez" because that would be silly.  No, this word derives from the fifteenth century "Oyer and Terminer" which were terms for courts held in the counties of This Sceptred Isle, assigned to judges, which predate today's County Courts.  WHAT ARE WE NOW LEGAL HISTORICAL EXPERTS?

Oyez, oyster.  Close enough.

"TRIPTYCH": Egad!  How obscure can you get? - that's not a challenge, by the way.  Let me Collins Concise it.  Ah - "A set of three pictures or panels, usually hinged so that two winged panels fold over the larger central one" and of course t has a Greek root.  Once again, how wilfully left-field can you get?  Art!

     One has to say that it sounds like an off-peak method of travel on the London Underground.  If they ever come up with it as a way of billing passengers, I want a royalty!

"OPPUGN": What on Earth?  Your Humble Scribe has heard of "IMPUGN" but this is the first time he's ever seen OPPUGN.  A recourse to the Collins Concise reveals that it means to be able to eat unlimited ice cream washed down with handfuls of boiled sweets whilst gorging on cake SORRY DIABETIC PORN THERE I meant that it means 'to call into question'.  O how dull.  Art!

Diabetic coma imminent

Finally -

Your Humble Scribe is listening to U2 via his headphones, which he described to Darling Daughter last week, whereupon she broke into mocking laughter.  This is because they are battery-powered, and one has to remember to turn them to the OFF position or the batteries die and they won't work.  Not only that, the headphone jack is somewhat loose and you will find Bono suddenly stops singing mid-verse, necessitating a bit of pluggery-sorcery.  I may need to buy a pair that came out after 1997.  If so, I shall keep you updated.

When they proved they had considerable depth

*  Only half an Egon Ronay star

**  Or not.

A Little Insight

Into My Creative Process

I don't especially care if you're not very interested in how the mind of Conrad works - because it does, contrary to a whole lot of expectations - for it's MY blog and the tale needs to be told.

     First, the urge to throttle mercilessly had to be overcome.  Your Humble Scribe has been subject to the vagaries of First Bus this week, which tonight meant the 83 turning up in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell fifteen minutes late.  Of course there were an immense number of passengers to accommodate, with people getting on and off at every single stop.  Art!

"Ssssssso what?" said the First Bus spokesdemon when asked for a comment

     Thus we were late into Oldham bus station and I missed my connection.  The next 409 never appeared and it was 18:55 before the next one did, at which we passengers hurled ourselves at the doors in pathetic gratitude that it had arrived at all.  Mark my words, First, when I take over you <Mister Hand redacts a 2,500 word screed involving war crimes and torture> and make them into patë with a garnish of

     ANYWAY onto the meat of the matter. One compensation of working in the office is being able to chat to Shelli (she of the cello), on whatever subjects come to mind.  What came to mind were bobble-head dolls, because Conrad had noticed these bizarre entities in HMV.  "I have some of those," Shelli informed me.  "Freddy Mercury and Sansa Stark."  Art!

     She didn't see any common link between the two, until Conrad quoted "Freddy Mercury" and "The Iron Throne", at which Shelli promptly linked both by virtue of the band name Queen and Sansa becoming Queen.
     Well, how can I put this politely?  NO! 

     What I meant, and you will have to trust to my chemistry knowledge here, is that mercury is a heavy metal, and so is iron, and even if it weren't the Iron Throne looks as if it masses a couple of tons.  Art!

CAUTION! Polish with extreme care

     You can argue, quite tellingly, that heavy metal was invented by The Jeff Beck Group, which is another music for a different kitchen.

     Motley!  Ready the Thermite Cannons and prep the Lava Moat, for I hear the sinister susurrus of steam locomotives a-circling The Mansion.

Evil swine

Woe Is We

For Lo! we are back to Crisis Point 2021, and the machinations and shenanigans upon Grand Woebetideus, Edward Henry Island and Petit Woebetideus continue anon.  If you recall, Conrad was playing one party of British, and their leader, Lieutenant Merkin Muffley Munro.  We had become involved with a landing party of Spanish infantry, who - Art!

Before

     These Spanish curs were pretty good shots and every one of the British above was either killed or routed off the table.  

     Ooops.  Art!

     Here we see the cart containing the beautiful Countess Cwerinska, a widow stranded upon the Woebetides, whose life has been saved by Lieutenant Munro's gallant sacrifice as he threw himself in front of a musket ball that would have surely killed her.  Instead it killed him.  Oooops, again.

     But - what's this?  Art!

     The Countess has been captured!  Arthur, our gallant British leader, impels his forces forward to attempt a rescue, alas too late.  He even offers to buy the Countess back but Will, the player commanding the Spanish, has a shrewd idea  that she's a hot-ticket item and won't even negotiate.

     Good for Will; you see, the Countess was actually a French spy with instructions to slip away from the British as soon as possible and rendezvous with the landing force, which was Conrad's second set of objectives.

     I also have to say that young Arthur demonstrated an unfortunate willingness to negotiate with the enemy, instead of getting stuck in with the bayonet, which made me nervous whenever Phil 'Forked Silver Tongue" Gray took him off to one side for a little chat.  He'll learn.  

Back To Kevin Tinsley's - Er - "Tank"

You remember, that peculiar vehicle designed to be a kind of quart-in-a-pint-pot armed assault wagon, taking the place of the Poor Benighted Infantry.  Art!

     Note that this - er - 'baby battle buggy' mounts a cannon that looks to be at least 30 mm calibre*, plus two machine guns, and a mortar and a flamethrower.  Where do they store the ammunition?  MG ammunition comes in cans, for your information and I don't think there's room for a single one here.  How do you aim the cannon and mortar?  This was way back in the days before computer-assisted sights and digital vision aids.  By guess and by golly?

     Ah yes the suspension.  Three independent motors, meaning triple the chances of a malfunction.  Not only that, the weight of this puppy is spread over a very small track 'footprint' meaning a high ground-loading, in turn meaning it is likely to bog down on soft ground.  

     Hmmmmm colour Conrad not impressed.

Conrad: Like Nitric Acid - Still Fuming

I've been bottling up the rage and rancour for a few days, as you may have noticed I've avoided venting spleen about Codewords.  Reticent no longer!  Let the bilious invective commence -

"EPOCH": Say what?  The ONLY people who use this word are palaeontologists when they discuss various periods of prehistory such as the Pre-Cambrian or the Ordovincian one, which is why they don't get invited to parties.

     Should I even Collins Concise it?  O go on.  "A point in time beginning a new or distinctive period".  From the Greek, OBVIOUSLY. 

"EFFIGY": After the Collins Concise, "a crude representation of someone, used as a focus for contempt or ridicule".  Ah yes, a word that has an outing once per year here in This Sceptred Isle on November Fifth.  Other people further abroad have more opportunities.  Art!

In the bad old days this would have triggered a Sinister invasion

"FIBULA": It's a bone.

Told you so

     WHAT, ARE WE ALL SURGEONS NOW? 
     

Finally -

Conrad is making progress with the 3D Empire State Building, working from the inside of various parts of the structure.  I have definitely mislaid some pieces so I shall have to bite the bullet and go through about 700 remaining bits to try and track down those gone absent.  Art!

*  Apologies for using <hack spit> metric