Aka Monday 1st August - Sunday 7th August 2022
…well once again I’ve got very, very behind with this record, as I write it is the 28th December 2022! Behind enough that I have to include the year! So the next few entries will be big gallops through the remaining Summer and Autumn months…here we go!
So, for the vast majority of this week I’ve had a painful chest…not a massive pain, like an knife in the heart or an electric shock, more like a strained muscle, been punched in the chest kind of pain, but it’s lasted for most of this week and nothing I do or don’t do seems to relive it for long…if it was a symptom of anxiety then the Tory leadership contest certainly heaped its fair share on to the pile! It was such a long, long campaign of people who you wouldn’t trust to use scissors unsupervised telling a bigoted base what it wanted to hear. Nothing that would help this Country through the tough times ahead. Just the usual soundbites about refugees, benefit claimants, wokeness and other culture war nonsense, just anything to get the less than 200,000 Conservative Party members to vote for them. Just scum, scrambling in the muck for personal advancement, and no thought of what is best for the Country, just me and party first, second and third! Just Scum.
On a happier note my copy of Orbital’s ’30 (Something)’ arrived:
…and it’s good collection of tracks and remixes, but the new tracks don’t match or better the classic Orbital tracks, like ‘Halcyon+on+on’, ‘The Box’, etc, and the remixes don’t make the tracks soar any higher (in my eyes), but even when they are average Orbital are heads above most other bands. And it makes a great introduction to the band and a starting off point to do a deep dive into their back catalogue (which is stockpiled with classic songs and albums)…I also picked up this week’s New Comic Book Day delights, including the Kickstartered ‘Geezer’ about a fictitious Britpop band:
…and ‘For Whom The Cowbell Tolls’ arrived in the post:
…a making of/biography of the Beastie Boys ‘Paul's Boutique’ (and sequel to the authors 33 and 1/3 book about 'Paul's Boutique ), a super classic album that everyone should have in their collection. I also watched a few new things this week, first up was episode one of ‘he Netflix adaptation of 'The Sandman’:
…and it was…dry…Morpheus looks like a posh Tim-nice-but-dim…and I can’t get that out of my head and it completely removes any feeling of gravitas and grandeur from the story. I feel like maybe this story worked best as a comic in the ‘80s/’90s? I also watched ‘They/Them’:
…which is a slasher (hence the slash in the title? They Slash Them???) set at a “Gay Conversion Therapy” summer camp. And it’s a bit of a meh film, there’s a lot of potential, a good cast and story ideas, but it’s never fully realised or developed. It feels like the script needed one more pass to get the best out of it…and I watched ‘Prey’:
…which is a great ‘Predator’ film. It takes things back to basics – a Predator on the hunt, who is unknown to the humans, until their paths cross and they clash – and concentrates in telling it’s story. There’s no attempts to lever-in world-building or lay the ground work for future films (hello ‘The Predator’), ‘Prey’ just delivers an entertaining story and in doing so it naturally sets up possible future stories, but organically and not crowbarred in. Possibly the second best ‘Predator’ film…and I did tjhis week's G2 Crosswords:
…and Monday’s crossword gets the crossword week off to a damn solid start, as we only had to cheat on an eleventh of the clues (two out of 22). Physically we’re feeling dog-rough, but the little grey cells rested well over the weekend and have come out fighting We only stumbled on not getting ‘eschew’ from ‘avoid’ and we learnt that ‘tyro’ means ‘novice’. Like I said a damn solid start…
…Tuesday’s crossword goes even better, we only had to cheat on a thirteenth of the clues (two out of 26). The little grey cells are smashing it, knocking it out of the park, just zooming along, untroubled by gravity or friction. We should have gotten ‘linear’ from ‘progressive sequentially’, but we did learn that a ‘Sandpiper’ is a ‘shoreline bird’. Physically we feel knackered and worn down, with pains and aches, but the mind, the little grey cells are unaffected…but will this continue…
…and the good news continues with Wednesday’s crossword, as we only needed to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). The little grey cells zoomed through the clues like the Flash. We should have guess that ‘mute’ was the answer for ‘device that softens the tone of a wind instrument’ and we learnt that ‘Hosta’ is a ‘shade-loving plant with striking foliage, much enjoyed by slugs’…
…and Thursday’s crossword went terribly, terribly badly. I guess her physical ill-health caught up with the little grey cells and we had to cheat on nearly a third of the clues (seven out of 24). Spoiling the run of only having to cheat on two clues! A very. Very poor showing. Physically it’s been a long week, I’ve had chest pains, mostly in the centre, along the breast bone/sternum and upper abdomen, what felt like heart pains/angina, shortness of breath, tiredness and high levels of anxiety, and it’s finally taken a toll on the little grey cells! And we missed loads of obvious answers, like ‘lip’ from ‘backchat’ and ‘extravagant’ from ‘profligate’, but we did learn that ‘Tunisia’ was the ‘North African country with the 2011 Jasmine revolution led to the Arab Spring’…hopefully today was just a blip and we’ll be back on form for the rest of the week…
…and things were back to normal with Friday’s crossword. We had a horrible morning, feeling v unwell, but by the afternoon I felt great (and by late evening I was back to feeling v v unwell! A rollercoaster of a day!) and that’s when we did this crossword and we only had to cheat on a tenth of the clues (two out of 21). The little grey cells seem to have gotten over yesterday’s ill health and subsequent poor performance. And we learnt that the ‘ENSA’ aka the Entertainments National Service Association ‘put people in the spotlight during the second world war’ and that ‘buckram’ is a ‘cotton fabric stiffened with glue, used in bookbinding’…
…overall the crosswording week has been a good one, apart from Thursday’s dire performance, and Saturday’s crossword ends the week on an okay note. We did have to cheat on over a fifth of the clues (five out of 23), but that is an Illuminati score, which we haven’t had on a while (Hail Elvis, Eris and Lucifer). Most of the clues were a doddle for the little grey cells, but we came a cropper with not knowing that ‘love affairs, generally secret’ can be called ‘amours’ and we should have gotten or guessed the rest, like ‘blip’ from ‘temporary setback’ or ‘aspire’ from ‘aim (to do something)’…roll on next week, when we’re on leave from work, so can take our time with the grids, and have a GP appointment, so hopefully we can get to bottom of my ill-health…
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