Days 1010 - 1016

Aka Monday 4^th November 2019 - Sunday 10^th November 2019

 

This week:

 

…my DVD of Stewart Lee’s ‘Content Provider’ arrived, and it is just as funny and cutting as when I first watched it the BBC iplayer. If you know who Stewart Lee is , you know what to expect with ‘Content Provider’, Stewart Lee is at the top of his game, making us laugh and think at the same time, taking his riffs (that his character ‘Stewart Lee The Comedian’ is above his audience, that half the audience don’t get what he is doing, etc.) to their zenith, and is in complete control, as if every word, stance and look has been carefully worked on and planned. 11/10.

…my copy of Staz Johnson’s sketchbook, ‘Sketchy Details’, also arrived, and it’s chock full of great art, from private commissions of superheroes to Staz’s own creations (a perfect pulp mix of WWII Nazis, werewolf’s and GI’s):

…and I brought ‘Starblazer’ Vol. 1, mostly for the early Grant Morrison story, but also for the Mick McMahon art on the other story (but haven’t had time to read yet)…

…and these new comic book day gems:

…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to an okay start, I only had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 25). The little grey cells are warming up from Sunday’s rest and missed a couple of easy ones, but a couple of the clues/answers were, to me, a little miss-leading is a ‘pest’ really a ‘disease with a high death rate’? And I’ve never heard of a ‘position on a scale’ being called a ‘rating’ before, but one lives and learns…

…Tuesday’s/today’s crossword went a tad worse, it was tricky to get any of the answers in my first pass, which meant that, in the end, I had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (four out of 21). The little grey cells must have been distracted by the fireworks! As we really should have gotten ‘rueful’ from ‘penitent’, but we did learn that a ‘fife’ is a ‘wind instrument’ and that ‘dyspepsia’ is ‘indigestion’…

…Wednesday’s crossword went a tad better, with only needing to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 24). The little grey cells aren’t pulling off impressive results, but they are maintaining an okay level of crossword solving, like why had I forgotten about ponchos and drifters? But I did learn that an ‘Oxlip’ is an ‘Eurasian primrose with yellow flowers’…

…Thursday’s crossword maintained the okayness, again I had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (three out of 18). It was a little slowing going at for the little grey cells at first, with the first few answers coming slowly, but once they were down the rest came more quickly, e.g. I couldn’t figure out ‘US detective (informal) (7)’, but once I had the ‘u’ and ‘o’ from other answers, it was obvious that the answer was ‘gumshoe’. And I learnt that ‘caprice’ means ‘whim’ and that ‘Wells’ is a ‘city in Somerset’…

…Friday’s crossword went a tad worse, with having to cheat on a quarter of the clues (four out 19), mainly because my little grey cells couldn’t make the leap from the clues to the answers, flailing about in the abyss of almost knowing the answer, but not quite ☹, like I should have gotten ‘meagre’ from ‘thin – inadequate’, but onwards and upwards for Saturday’s crossword…

…and it’s upwards indeed for Saturday’s crossword as I didn’t have to cheat on any of the clues at all, a complete clean slate of getting all 24 clues. 22 of which flowed easily, like molasses on a hot summers day, but I just could get 17a ‘strongly fortified defensive place (8)’ and 18d ‘smelled disgusting (5)’ for ages and ages, literally hours, but then ‘stunk’ just popped into my mind and with that ‘s’ ‘fastness’ just followed and bing bang boom the little grey cells had solved all the clues and beaten the grid. Will this excellence continue into next week???

…NB: There was a typo/mistake with 20d which was ‘slow (anag) – bird of prey’, but should have been ‘slow (anag) – birds of prey’, which was corrected on the Guardian’s website, but there was a mistake in the correction as well, peak Grauniad!!!