Aka Monday 9th November - Sunday 15th November 2020
Lockdown II is in full swing, so a pretty quiet week again, but I did get some comics via mail order:
…I also picked up my lottery winnings (a total of £132.40), which certainly cheered up Monday morning!
...and my copy of ‘Collected Works from Driver-By Abuser’ arrived, a collection of beautiful poetry:
…as this Friday was Friday the 13th I watched 'Friday the 13th' (the remake/reboot version, which cherry picks from the first three 'Friday the 13th'‘s) and it remains an enjoyable horror flick, On Saturday I went for a Long Walk (9.93km in 1 hour and 53 minutes and 19 seconds, taking 12,647 steps and burning 958 calories):
…a lazy Sunday today, a couple of sausage sandwiches, voddy & orange, some traditional Sunday watching (Columbo, Knives Out, Death on the Nile and Ten Little Indians), some good tunes and reads:
…‘Wicked Things’ #1 - #6, the continuing adventures of Charlotte Grote and Claire Little from the excellent John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Whitney Cogar (colours) and Jim Campbell (letters).
...in ‘Wicked Things’ Charlotte has been framed for a crime and is forced to work with the Met Police, all while Claire tries to prove her innocence. And it is a typical Allison tale – a nice central story that develops our characters, introduces new characters, and is chock full of humour, pathos, and heart, which leaves you wanting more, brought to beautiful life by Sarin, Cogar and Campbell. Totally 10/10.
…Bent latest album, 'Up In The Air', arrived on Monday and I saved listening to it till Sunday:
…and it’s beautiful ambient/chilled house, just perfect of relaxing on a Sunday afternoon before the tentacles of Monday morning and work ease their way into Sunday evening. And I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a fairly okay start, we only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24). The little grey cells had no trouble wit the clues, except for those three, the rest were easily dispatched. And we learnt that the ‘direction in which the wind is blowing’ is called ‘leeward’ and ‘imperturbable’ means ‘always unruffled…
…Tuesday’s crossword goes just as well, with having to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24) (again). We did get foxed by a couple of the clues – ‘nifty device’ for ‘contrivance’ and /messy’ for ‘tangled’, but we did learn that Bertrand Russell was a ‘philosopher’ , we recognised the name, but could not remember why we knew it…
…Wednesday’s crossword goes a little poorly, we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (four out of 21). Most of the clues were speedily dispatched, but we stumbled on a couple of clues we shouldn’t have, like I’m not sure how we didn’t get ‘altruism’ from ‘philanthropy’ or ‘to-do’ from ‘flap’, but we did learn that an ‘Osprey’ is a ‘large fish-eating bird’…
…and the stumbling continues with Thursday’s crossword, cheating on nearly a sixth of the clues (four out of 23). Again, most of the clues were speedily dispatched, but some we just couldn’t get (but we should have gotten ‘capricious’ from ‘mercurial’) as we just didn’t know the answer. So lots of learning today – ‘didactic’ means ‘preachy’, a ‘gazebo’ is a ‘small building with a wide view’ (I’ve never thought of a gazebo as a building, more as a feature) and that ‘dogsbody’ is a synonym for ‘drudge’…
…and we’re wondering if we can style out the stumbling, as with Friday’s crossword, we, again, had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (four out of 21). It was a weird grid, the bottom half was straight and didn’t give the little grey cells too much trouble…but the top half was a nightmare and took ages to get anywhere with it! But we did learn that ‘Nemesis’ is the ‘Greek goddess of divine vengeance’, which gives an extra dimension to the old Nemesis the Warlock stories…
…and Saturday’s crossword ends the week with the stumbling continuing. Again, we had to cheat on four clues (out of 23) and three of those we should have gotten…maybe we didn’t give them enough time, enough pondering? But we did learn that a ‘Myna’ is an ‘Asian and Australian starling with a loud call’…
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