Aka Monday 27th
January - Sunday 2nd February 2020
My weeks have pretty
much settled into a regular pattern of going to work, working, coming back
home, doing some weights (with a Long Walk on a Saturday), watching some TV, listening
to some music, doing crosswords, an occasional Friday night drink and reading…I
just need to inject some more stuff, some culture, like going to a local art
gallery, the cinema, and so. Anyhow, I also:
…finished reading
‘Real Tigers’, which like the previous Slough House books was a great read, a
page turner. In a nutshell a fake exercise to test the Intelligence services
turns real and it’s left to the Slow Horses to sort out the mess. With a very familiar
politician (hello BoJo!!!) in a starring role (which goes a little way to
alleviate the shock and pain of Johnson being PM IRL). It’s bang full of
twists, double-crosses, triple crosses and violence. Along with plenty of
personal/emotional development, for our Slow Horses, like River, Louise, and the
others. I’m really enjoying this series, so much so that I also brought the second
next book in the series, ‘London Rules’ (‘cause I’ve already got ‘Spook Street’
the next story in the saga) so that get onto the story asap…
…got these New Comic
Book Day gems:
…and read ‘Criminal’
#12, which ends the ‘Cruel Summer’ storyline, ends Teeg’s life and ends the
series (at least for the near future). While we already know that Teeg dies,
the why and how’s of it were a mystery, but in this issue, everything is laid
bare. It’s hard to describe what happens in this issue without giving anything away,
but be prepared for pathos, gut-punches and emotional turmoil.
…brought some more
DC Lego Minifigures:
…brought two CD’s, a
Hank Williams Best Of, I’ve got a copy of a load of his songs from a friend,
but, given how classic so many of his songs are, I thought it was about time I
had my own copies:
… and ‘Teachings From The Electronic Brain (The Best Of FSOL)’, a Future Sound Of London Best Of, which
has a couple of great tracks, like Papua New Guinea, but most of the tracks are
merely okay and left me not feeling the need to further explore FSOL’s
catalogue…
…and I got the
latest copy of DJ Mag, which has a great article on Global Communication’s ’76:14’
album (a truly great album, a classic ambient masterpiece, that everyone should
have)…
…and my padawan, young
KOR, gave me a present, as a thank you for training her, of Oreo Bites and
vodka, which was a really sweet thing to do and a nigh-perfect way to get to my
heart…although she’s done so well that the bosses have moved her onto the next section
to train (the team is roughly broken into five sections), something which took
me, and others, at least six months to do…
…and Friday 31st
January 2020 was the 20th Anniversary of the release of Primal Scream's 'XTRMNTR' (so
it was kinda appropriate that 31st January 2020 was also Brexit day:
…but
I still can’t process that they won and are going to fuck over the entire
country). Another classic album, and possible polar opposite of ’76:14’, that
should be in every home. Chock full of heavy music and heavy themes, fear and
loathing, paranoia, anger, regret and a little hope/calm, which feels more
relevant today than it did 20 years ago…these three articles A, B and C,
explain better than I can how good XTRMNTR is…
…I also had another Long
Walk on Saturday (which involved me overcoming my fear of the steps):
…and I did this
week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a pretty good
start, an almost perfect grid as we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues
(two out of 23). Most of the answers came easily enough, and 11 across, ‘Who
Goes There’ from ‘sentry’s challenge’ was a gimme as it is also the name of the
novel that one of my favourite films, John Carpenter’s The Thing, is based on.
But I just couldn’t get from ‘sycophants’ to ‘toadies’, which seems obvious
now, but we did learn that the ‘shoulder blade’ is called the ‘scapula’….
…Tuesday’s crossword goes even better, the little grey clues
must have been well and truly warmed up and we only had to cheat on one of the
25 clues – ‘Squirrel’s nest’, which I now know is called a ‘drey’…
…Wednesday’s grid also went pretty well, we only had to
cheat on two of the 25 clues, which means that I now know that ‘Skye’ is the
‘largest island of the Inner Hebrides’ and re-learnt that a ‘French miss’ is
called a ‘mademoiselle’ (I thought it was ‘mamamoiselle’)…
…but Thursday’s crossword goes downhill a lot as we had to
cheat on a fifth of the clues. Maybe I’m distracted because tomorrow is Brexit
Day? And that’s why I missed some obvious answers, like ‘uphold’, ‘porous’ and
‘prongs’ from ‘tines’, but I did learn that ‘seraglio’ means ‘harem’ and that
the ‘coulomb’ is a ‘unit of electric charge’…
…Friday’s grid doesn’t go much better, again we had to cheat
on a fifth of the clues (three out of 18) and a lot of the other clues needed a
lot of chewing over to get to. And we did learn that ‘Penelope’ was the ‘wife
of Odysseus’…
…and Saturday’s grid ends the week, and gets crossword
solving under the Brexit transition period started, with a great result. We
only had to cheat on one of the 19 clues. We didn’t get ‘breather’ from ‘brief
pause for rest’…maybe it’s a sign of how the next eleven months are going
to like, with no chance of a rest as
Brexit will continue to dominate politics and the media…or plenty of rest as
there will be little to report on until the trade talks are well underway???
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