Days 2015 - 2021

Aka Monday 25^th May to Sunday 31^st May 2020

…and it’s back to working from home this week…which involves a lot of working round others as no-one seems to understand, or can be bothered with, giving up some peace and quiet so that I can work…but like working from the office, working from home has fallen into a steady routine. Alongside my work laptop I have my personal laptop, so that I can listen to music, podcasts, Netflixs, etc., and while waiting for my work apps to connect with the work server, buying stuff, checking emails and updating/working on this blog. Aside from working and going food shopping I also:

…got some good stuff through the post; ‘Batman: Curse of the White Knight’ #8, ‘Aorta’ #2, 'Plunge’ #3 and 'The Three Amigos’ ’25 Miles’ CD:

…’25 Miles’ is a big beat cover/remix of Edwin Starr’s ’25 Miles’ and yes it is a bit obvious, straight up party music, but I like it, a lot, and it doesn’t (in my opinion) cheapen the Mr Starr’s original version. Some remixes/re-edits can trample all over the original, but this updates the original for modern ears, making it more of a foot stomper (and yes that pun was intended!). And the b-sides are a remix by Loop Da Loop, which takes things in a ‘ardcore direction, before dropping the tempo a touch to something a bit more disco, and ‘What You Gonna Do’, a nice mid-tempo party track, perfect for a little boogie to or just some gentle head nodding.

…read Simon Roy’s ‘Jan’s Atomic Heart and Other Stories’ and ‘Green Lantern’ # 7 - 12 and Annual #1 (2019):

…‘Jan’s Atomic Heart and Other Stories’ is a collection of short stories by Simon Roy, all with a space or future theme/setting, ranging from personal stories of claustrophobia (and how it affects relationships with co-workers) to political thrillers. A great collection of well-written and illustrated stories that anyone with an interest in stories about people and/or sci-fi should have on their shelves. 8/10. The Green Lantern issues are written by Grant Morrison, illustrated by Liam Sharp, lettered by Tom Orzechowski and colours by Steve Oliff, with the Annual written by Grant Morrison, illustrated by Giuseppe Camuncoli & Trevor Scott, coloured by Steve Oliff and lettered by Tom Orzechowski. Both the series and Annual are just pure sci-fi comic stories, with the creative teams just going full out and throwing all kinds of weird and far-out ideas (both new and old DC characters/concepts given an update), from beings who are living radio signals to “higher beings” using human souls as drugs to the recreation of the universe! 8/10.

…went for a Long Walk on Saturday:

…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and after last week’s meh performance Monday’s crossword gets the new week off to a good start as we only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24). Although it is slightly embarrassing, as a crossworder, not to get that the answer to ‘over – not down!’ was ‘across’…the answer was literally right in front of my face! We don’t do well with the more cryptic clues, but we did learn that a ‘system for teaching singing’ is called ‘Sol-Fa’ and that a ‘sylph’ is a ‘slender graceful female’. Not a bad start to the week…

…Tuesday’s crossword keeps things level, as again, we had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24). As 1 across states most of the clues were a ‘piece of cake’, although, if we’d spent a bit more time on them, we might have gotten ‘ado’ from ‘bother’ and ‘brutal’ from senselessly cruel’. But we did learn that a ‘Nutria’ is also known as a ‘Coypu’, which is a small rodent native to South America…

…and Wednesday’s crossword takes us almost to the moon as we just had to cheat on one twenty-oneth of the clues (one out of 21). The little grey cells are back on tip-top form and just ploughed their way through the clues. Except for ‘open-topped glass container’, which we didn’t know is a ‘carafe’, but we do now. Hopefully we’re back on the right track…

…and maybe we’re not, Thursday’s crossword takes a slight dip as we had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 23). Would have gone better if we hadn’t have plumped for ‘appropriate’ for ‘pertinent (8)’ we might have noticed that it had more than 8 letters in it and we might have gotten the right answer of ‘apposite’ and the same with ‘lively Spanish dance (8)’, we immediately thought of ‘flamenco’, but we didn’t bother to check that the intersecting letters fitted with the other clues. If we had we might have changed our answer to ‘fandango’, but we did learn that ‘Copernicus’ was a ‘Polish astronomer d.1543’…

…we take a little stumble with Friday’s crossword as we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (four out of 21). Three of those four we should have gotten, we went with ‘tardy’ instead of ‘tarry’ for ‘linger’ and we totally forgot about ‘gruyere’ for ‘hard yellow Swiss cheese’, I only know three Swiss cheeses: edam, emmental and gruyere, and I totally forgot one of them! Even worse we forgot that ‘tub’ is another word for ‘bath’! We got the rest of the answers by taking our time and using the intersecting letters, e.g. we couldn’t think of the answer for ‘swindle (4), but when we got the intersecting ‘c’ from ‘recital’ it became obvious that the answer was ‘scam’. And we learnt that ‘Bhutan’ is a ‘Himalayan kingdom’…

…and Saturday’s crossword ends the week on a bum note, as we had to cheat on a third of the clues (seven out of 23). We probably should have done the crossword before we started to enjoy the sunshine (with a few drinks…or more!), which left the little grey cells a tad…fatigued 😊 Which meant we missed a few obvious answers, but we did learn that a ‘Sundew’ is an ‘insectivorous plant’, that ‘aviaries’ are ‘enclosures for birds’ and that a ‘Chamois’ is a ‘mountain-dwelling antelope’. Onwards for next week…

Days 2008 - 2014

Aka Monday 18^th May - Sunday 24^th May 2020

…and we’re back in the office this week…and it’s pretty much the same routine as before, get all the work scanned on so people can work on it at home, and do the work that can’t be done at home and then leave around lunchtime, get home and do the rest of the shift working from home…but it is nice to get out of home, to get a change of scenery and speak to people who I’m not related to! Non work-related things that happened this week include:

…buying the latest Lego Star Wars magazine, well two copies actually, for the free minifigures, I got two copies because the minifigures are of troopers, rather than main characters, it’s better to have two of them, as just one looks lonely (although the Imperial Snowtrooper looks a little Klan-like with just the hood and no jacket/cloak!):

…my Mum asked me to take £100 out of her account for her and I said no problem, easy peasy, plus it means I can pop back to the local Co-op. The first cash machine I go to is outside the Co-op, but it isn’t doing receipts, but that’s okay because there are three other cash machines on my way home. 

The next cash machine I try takes my Mum’s card and accepts my request for £100 and then spends the next few minutes just whirling and then it announces that it isn’t working and gives me back the card. But with no indication on rather the request has gone through or not and whether my Mum has been stiffed for £100 and we are going to have to spend ages getting the money back. The third cash machine takes the card, but before I can tap in an amount it spits the card out and announces that it isn’t working anymore. The fourth cash machine I try works fine and from the receipt it looks like the second machine transaction didn’t go through and we won’t need to mess about getting the money back. Which is nice.

…on the way into work I saw this sign:

…and it made me wonder if the youth no longer use the word ‘lush’ for drunks and alcoholics. Is no-one watching or reading Noir anymore! 😊

…and more new comics arrived:

…which makes things feel a tad, a mite bit more normal…

…I’d done some extra hours Monday to Thursday, so that I can finish early on Friday and enjoy the nice weather and relax in the garden for the afternoon, which I did:

…I enjoyed some drinks, some crisps and reading ‘Rick and Morty’ #55 to #60, which is the end of the current series and in which we see the end of a Rick and Morty (or do we???):

…the main stories were written by Kyle Starks, illustrated by Kyle Starks and Marc Ellerby, coloured by Sarah Stern, and lettered by Crank! and the back-ups were written by Magdalene Visaggio and Terry Blas, illustrated by Ian McGinty and Benjamin Dewey, coloured by Sarah Stern and Benjamin Dewey, and lettered by Crank! And they capture the feel and tone of the show spot on. With plenty of action and humour and pathos. 8/10.

 

…on Saturday I went for a Long Walk:

… and my copy of Alex de Campi’s ’The Scottish Boy’ arrived:

…a tale of Knights and love, which I back on Unbound ages ago, because like the blurb says Alex writes good stuff. The only problem is that my to-read pile already has a few books on it already and when I say a few I really mean a few dozen!

…watch finished watching ‘Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries’, and it was a bit sad to reach the end, but at least there was the follow-up film, ‘Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears’, to enjoy. And it is a fun enjoyable romp involving exotic locations and long hidden secrets (all in the grand tradition of the Peter Ustinov Christie films, like 'Death on the Nile'):

…which spurred me to also watched ‘King Kong’, ‘The Rocketeer’, ‘The Shadow’, ‘The Mummy’ and ‘My Favourite Brunette’, all of which shared the same aesthetic:

‘King Kong’ is about a film crew filming an exotic adventure movie, but things don’t go according to plan and they end up travelling to a faraway island, finding and capturing a massive a gorilla and bringing it back to New York to put it on display, where things don’t go according to plan. ‘The Rocketeer’ is about a hotshot flier finding a rocket pack and keeping it out of the hands of Nazi’s, all while save the girl (and being saved by the girl). ‘The Shadow’ is about a bad man who has been taught mysterious powers to fight evil and his battle with against the son of Genghis Khan. ‘The Mummy’ is about a bunch of adventurers who accidently awaken a Mummy and their attempts to stop the Mummy from resurrecting his beloved and taking over the World. And ‘My Favourite Brunette’ is about a wannabe detective getting involved with a real case of kidnapping and maybe even murder! And there is a bit of a pattern there, the films are mostly set in the late ‘20’s to early ‘40’s and mostly with a touch (or more) of the supernatural. And the good guys always (eventually) win and there’s a strong element of tongue-in-check, on at the very least the tongue is in the vicinity of the check. And there’s probably an element of escaping from the problems of the modern day into the certainty of the fictional past. Plus, all five are top-notch entertainment and well worth watching.

…and I did today’s G2 Crossword:

…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a dire start as we had to cheat on a quarter of the clues (six out of 24). We just couldn’t get a good grip on this grid, maybe it’s the due to the hot weather, making it difficult to get a good night’s sleep and putting the little grey cells out of step? Whatever the cause, we did learn that the ‘Ural’ is a ‘river flowing through Russia and Kazakhstan to the Caspian’, that ‘Anathema’ is the ‘formal curse leading to excommunication’ and that the ‘leading European imperial dynasty from the 13^th century to 1918’ was the ‘Hapsburg’ dynasty…

…Tuesday’s crossword went a tad better, we just had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 23). After the Monday’s terrible performance, the little grey cells have rallied themselves a bit, although we should have gotten ‘crop up’ and ‘outcry’, from the clues ‘appear’ and ‘exclamations of opposition’ respectively and we went for ‘smell’ and not ‘scent’ for ‘get wind of’ and we learnt that a ‘coppice’ is a ‘dense growth of small trees and bushes’. Is this the start of an upswing? Let’s see…

…could be, Wednesday’s crossword goes really well, we just had to cheat on a thirteenth of the clues (two out of 25) And it would have gone slightly better if we had gone for ‘thorny’ rather than ‘thorns’ for ‘causing difficulty (like a bed of roses?), but we did learn that ‘Palermo’ is a ‘city in Sicily’. I think the key to this improvement is down to taking our time and using the intersecting letters as a double check on our guesses…

…or maybe not, as Thursday’s crossword took a slight dip and we were back to cheating on a sixth of the clues (four out of 24). Two of those four were silly misses, we should have gotten ‘wolf’ from ‘eat hastily’ and ‘escort’ from ‘accompany’, but we did learn that ‘Christchurch’ is ‘New Zealand’s second largest city’ and that the ‘Yellowhammer’ is a ‘species of European bunting’, a so-so performance, but still, just about, okay…

…and we bounce back with Friday’s crossword, only having to cheat on an eleventh of the clues (two out of 22). Maybe the sunny weather has the little grey cells amped up and on tip-top performance? Or it’s down to taking our time and double checking that our answers make sense with intersecting letters. And we learnt that ‘extortionate payment demanded from a tenant’ is called ‘rack rent’ and that ‘blood poisoning from a local bacterial infection’ is called ‘toxaemia’…

…and things take a tumble with Saturday’s crossword, as our performance was affected by a hangover (from enjoying Friday’s good weather, in the garden, with a few Blue Lagoons and some Rick and Morty comics), meaning that we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 26). We did miss out a couple of obvious answers, such as ‘ham-fisted’ from ‘clumsy’ and ‘personnel’ from ‘staff’, but we did learn that a ‘demitasse’ is a ‘small coffee cup’, that ‘entr’acte’ means ‘interlude’ and that a ‘tournedos’ is a ‘small round thick beef fillet’. A bit of a meh week, hopefully next week will go better…