Commander’s Log Sarsdate 11/06/0021 YOUR HELP REQUIRED (and points means prizes)

And The Ancient Meaning Of Porridge

Not all of us are great fans of porridge. And in fact, what used to just taste vaguely unpleasant to me now tastes positively yuk. They keep telling me a lot of aspects of my taste will return fairly close to something like normal with the eventual passage of time. Call me half empty, but cramming so many caveats (‘a lot of aspects’, ‘fairly close’, ‘something like normal’, ‘eventual passage of time’) into one supposedly supportive sentence seems to say more about what won’t happen rather than what will. But in the meantime, I have been trying to get my head around the likely mental contortions required to force down this Holy Ramekin of porridge once we capture it.

But this morning I am filled with huge optimism. The word porridge first entered the English language around 1530 AD as a corruption of the French potage. Potage in French means soup, and indeed porridge in the UK was originally also a thickened vegetable soup, even on occasions with a bit of meat thrown in.

Calum mentioned a few days ago that Sweeny McTodd’s Impossible Pie Factory is sometimes still referred to by older locals as “The Impossible Porridge Kitchen”. Combining this with my recent etymological porridge discovery I’m very hopeful that the ancient recipe for the magical porridge in the Holy Ramekin will in fact contain meat and 2 veg, not just boiled oats. This is particularly exciting because yesterday I successfully drank a small bowl of Jewish Penicillin, a.k.a. chicken and vegetable soup.

And talking of capturing the Holy Ramekin, I see Felix and Sherpa Shirl are descending to pick me up, along with the one cask for our onslaught on the summit of Ben Ramekin… Exciting times and I have updated our mission schedule to attempt the summit this coming Monday. So put the 14th of June in your diary – it may be where this blog ends (hurrah for all!).

EMERGENCY!!! But Dougal McDangerous has just hoved into view, looking very cross (probably because he’s sensed he may not get his fair share of the lethal one cask mixture. In fact, he has already ignited his breath and looks set on taking out our balloon, along with its occupants So near and yet so far 🙀.

Our only way forward now is a two pronged attack, with Felix and Shirl firing from the balloon and me doing what I can from the ground.

But we will need all your help through the magical augmented reality portal Felix has prepared. If you follow this link to Dragon Slaying For Beginners you can help us destroy Dougal.

Dragon Slaying For Beginners…the video game!

You can participate as many times as you like and the important thing is to overwhelm him with firepower – the more vigorously you attack, the more likely he is to permanently succumb.

This is an existential crisis so I’m offering a prize for the fastest destruction of McDangerous. Please put the  best time you achieve into the comments on this post along with the exclamation that Dougal makes when he expires (different times produce different exclamations)

We will announce the results on Monday. As usual, the judges decision will be final, but please do help us – our lives depend upon it!

Editor’s Note: I had resigned myself to learning how to create fake Wikipedia articles about the derivation of the word porridge as I’m really not sure I can eat a ramekin of the stuff, so it was marvellous to find that in fact I didn’t need to fake anything – the derivation is in reality exactly what I was going to fake. There must be a word for when that happens.