Days 989 - 995

Aka Monday 14^th October 2019 - Sunday 20^th October 2019

 

A pretty quiet week this week, I..

…Lindstrom’s ‘On a Clear Day I Can See You Forever’ album arrived in the post, and it’s different to his other albums that I’ve heard. It’s more ambienty and mellow and on first listen it doesn’t quite stick in your mind. It keeps your attention while you’re listening, but when you’ve finished it’s hard to recall what you were listening too. It needs a few more listens before I can make a judgement on it:

…also in the post was ‘The Golden Cannibal Girl’, by Douglas Noble, which I’m looking forward to reading:

…in the land of books, this week I finished Sara Pascoe’s ‘Sex, Money, Power’, which was a fascinating look at sex and how it’s driving our evolution (or vice versa), full of facts and fun & interesting observations and little bits of autobiography. And I picked up Jason Arnopp’s new book ‘Ghoster’ (his first novel, ‘The Last Days of Jack Sparks’ was very good and scary, so there are high hopes for his new book)…

…and I got my new comic book day comics:

…I also brought and listened to the ‘Wu-Massacre’ album by Method Man, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon, which was okay. There some good beats and good rhymes, but not always on the same track, but it is a short album, like half an hour or so, so there’s no filler tracks either, nothing that makes you want to hit the skip button:

…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:

…Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a pretty good start as I only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 25). Would have been a better score if I’d put a tad more thought into those three missed clues. For example, if I’d thought about how the intersecting letters played with other clues I would have gone for ‘landlady’ and not ‘landlord’ for ‘person offering property to rent’. And I might have remembered about pec’s and would have gone for ‘pectoral’ for ‘of the chest’…

…Tuesday’s crossword went a bit worse, I had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (four out of 21). Again, a tad more time and thought and I probably would have gotten ‘bearskin’ from ‘busby’, ‘burr’ from ‘seed carrying pod with hooks’ and ‘counter’ from ‘bar’, but I was totally foxed by 8 across, a bit of a cryptic clue. I thought ‘a half-crown’ was referring to the old coin, a crown, and not, as it turned out, an actual crown, so I never would have gotten ‘tiara’…

…Wednesday’s crossword maintained Tuesday’s mehness, with having to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 24). Would have gone a tad better if I hadn’t been so literally with 1 across, the clue was ‘wrongful employment’ and the answer was ‘misuse’, but I thought it referred to a job/work, and using something, e.g. a tool. But I did learn that a ‘wickerwork basket’ is called a ‘creel’, that ‘eclat’ means ‘ceremonial elegance and splendour’ and that a ’virtuoso solo passage near the end of a piece of music’ is a ‘cadenza’…

…as did Thursday’s crossword, where I had to cheat on just under a quarter of the clues (four out of 18). The mehness continues! And they were mostly easy ones that the little grey cells missed, like ‘squaddie’ from ‘private’, ‘wet suit’ from ‘swimming costume’, ‘doldrums’ from ‘state of stagnation’ and ‘brigade’ from ‘army grouping’. Hopefully things will get better for the rest of the week…

…and they don’t with Friday’s crossword as I have to cheat on just over a third of the clues (seven out of 19). I just couldn’t get to grip with the clues, like how could I have not gotten ‘ambiguous’ from ‘unclear one way or the other’, but I did learn that a ‘sash’ is a ‘framework holding window panes’ and that a ‘russet’ is a ‘brownish-red apple’…

…things go better with Saturday’s crossword as I only had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 24), the little grey cells are getting back to their normal level of solving, although they should have gotten ‘eek’ from ‘expression of surprise’ and ‘in store’ from ‘awaiting one in the future’. But I did learn that ‘light bluish red’ is ‘orchid’ and that the ‘Missouri’ is the ‘river joining the Mississippi south of St Louis’…an okay end to the week…