Days 2844 - 2871

Aka Monday 5th September to Sunday 2nd October 2022 

…not a big month this month, we just got a new Tory Leader and therefore a new Prime Minister and the Queen died. A very uneventful month!!! Being serious a lot of this month was spent getting used to the new medication, watching out for side-effects and trying to get back to a normal life…which wasn’t helped by another to interview for my job.

The background to the interview is that our employer is looking to make savings and it was decided that the various business support teams that supported the various delivery teams would be amalgamated into three, distinct Hubs (made up of sub-Hubs). If your job is only changing by less than 25% (if I recall correctly) you can be transferred and slotted into the new structure without an interview. Unfortunately, our jobs, we have been told, would be changing by more than 25%, which meant that we couldn’t just be transferred over, we had to go through a competitive interview process. 

The interview took place on Wednesday 14th September, and I wasn’t sure how it went. It was done over Teams, so I wasn’t in the same room as the interviewers, and it felt a bit strange. I had prepped for the interview, but afterwards I didn’t feel that I had done my best, that there were point and issues I hadn’t mentioned that I should have.

A fortnight later, on Thursday 29th September 2022, I was asked into a meeting room to discuss the outcome of my interview. Everyone looked v serious and I readied myself for bad news, but luckily it was good news, and I was told that I had passed the interview and I was offered the new post. Which I accepted. And everyone else in the team passed, except for one person, but luckily (as I write this in early January 2023) that got another job with the employer and are thriving. Now all we had was a three month wait for our sub-Hub to go live! I also had a follow-up GP appointment, the Sertraline is working well, and we agreed to continue, at this dose, and see if things continue to improve…

…as mentioned above there were some more important, national events going on. At the start of this month Liz Truss was elected as the new Conservative Party Leader on Monday 5th September and the following day, after visiting the Queen, she became the new Prime Minister. I know this would be a disaster, anyone who had paid any attention to her, and her ideas could see that. But not the 81,000 or so Party Members who voted for her. Somehow, she was able to make Boris Johnson look less incompetent. She had no ideas of her own, she seemed to just follow the hard-right winds and proceeded to almost destroy the British economy.

She was Prime Minister for 49 days and, with the help of Kwasi Kwarteng and their mini-budget, based on trickle-down economics (and supported by the IEA, who it seemed supplied most of the “intellectual” ideas for this budget), for most of that time she sowed chaos and disruption, nearly destroying the Country. Within a week or so those who championed the budget were slating it and distancing themselves from it, forcing her to row back from nearly the entirely of the budget, to sack Kwarteng and to install Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor. Just a couple of the many u-turns she had to make, until the only thing she could do was resign…although that happened next month…

Also, as the economy was almost dying the British Queen did die (on Thursday 8th September 2022, just two days after meeting the new PM, Liz Truss…). Which left many people very upset, even non-Royalists were a little shaken, some people bewiled at those people’s responses and some, Like Dan Wooten, exploiting the death for their own benefit/profile. Personally, I’m not a Royalist, but the Queen had been a constant feature for 75 years and it was a shock to see her gone and it means that a family have lost a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. And worry about what would happen with Charles as King. Will he be hands-off, will he reflect the Country as it is? Only time will time, but there is not as much love for Charles as there is/was for the Queen, and it feels like we’re one step closer to becoming a Republic. The funeral on Monday 19th September 2022 really marked the end of an era…

What was interesting were the international reactions, a lot of people pointing out the bad things the Royal Family had done and had condoned. Stuff you couldn’t really sweep away, the links with colonialism, slavery, corruption, etc, But it didn’t stop lots of other people trying to defend the Royal Family…

…on a more base, selfish level, I also picked lots of good stuff. A good haul of some quality music:

…and some quality books:

…‘Animal House’ by James Brown was an interesting read as he covers his time at the NME, including writing about The KLF, including the truth about their visit to ABBA, and the first few years of Loaded magazine, which as a reader of Loaded in its early years (at least before it became a training-wheels porno) it was interesting to read the behind the scenes stuff. ‘Love And let Die’ is another great read from John Higgs:

…using the twin prisms of James Bond and The Beatles, as the first Bond film and the first Beatles single were released on the same day, to explore how these two icons reflected changes in, and how they influenced British, and wider, culture. And I also got ’Luda’:

…the first prose novel from Grant Morrison (he has written other prose, but this is their first novel length novel). If it’d half as good as his comic book work, it’ll be a great read.

…and some quality magazines (big 'Knives Out' fan here):

…and quality comics:

…including the ’The Final Curtain’:

…which I backed via its Kickstarter campaign and it’s a great looking book (both in terms of the art and the design, it looks like an old paperback novel that you’d find in a charity shop and treasure) and it perfectly combines elements from ‘Columbo’, the early Peter Ustinov ‘Poirot’ adaptations, ‘Midsomer Murders’, and the Margaret Rutherford ‘Miss Marple’ adaptations, to create a super great fun, funny, murder mystery, capturing that comfy-murder/Sunday afternoon mystery feel. I can’t wait to read the next Spatchcock adventure!…and I did the first week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and Monday’s crossword is a clean sweep, we didn’t have to cheat on any of the 18 clues. A spot of good news after the ultra-gloomy use that Liz Truss is our new PM…

..and things take a tumble with Tuesday’s crossword as we had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (three out of 19). It was a little more…chewy than yesterday’s one, but we did learn that the ‘Rapier’ was a ‘British surface-to-air missile , introduced in 1971’ and that ‘Monrovia’ is ‘Liberia’s capital’, while being reminded that an ‘umlaut’ is ‘the dots over the vowel in Koln’…

…and things pick up a tad with Wednesday’s crossword, we only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24). Things are moving back in the right direction! And we learnt that ‘Limassol’ is the ‘biggest port in Cyprus’ and that the ‘Agouti’ is a ‘burrowing rodent related to the guinea pig’. A relatively straight forward grid after yesterday’s chewy one…

…and we’re defo on an upswing as we only had to cheat on one of the 23 clues for Thursday’s crossword. We only stumbled on not knowing that ‘Uncles’ is a slang term for ‘pawnbrokers’, which kinda makes sense in hindsight, but there was no way of guessing it, not even with the intersecting letters…

…and the upswing hits it apex with Friday’s crossword as we didn’t have to cheat on any of the 25 clues. A total clean sweep. Knocking clues over like ten pins!!! Hopefully this will continue…

…and it does! We didn’t have to cheat on any of the 24 clues for Saturday’s crossword! It was a yad chewy, but the little grey cells are firing on all cylinders and we’re in a crossword solving sweet spot! And long may it continue…

…and I did the second week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and the new crossword weeks gets off to a super solid start as we only had to cheat on an eleventh of the clues (two out of 22) for Monday’s crossword. There was a fair bit of head scratching, but nothing that the little gey cells couldn’t eventually work out…except for not getting ‘eunuch’ from ‘ineffective person, lacking force or power’ (which seems a bit of a stretch) and learning that the ‘Atacama Desert’ is a ‘dry plateau, west of the Andes’…

…and Tuesday’s crossword is way easier than yesterdays, so easy peasy that we got a clean sweep! No need to cheat on any of the 26 clues…

…despite the interview related stress (or maybe because of it?!?) Wednesday’s crossword went pretty damn well. The little grey cells worked hard and we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). There was a little head scratching, but the only stumpers were ‘asinine’ from ‘inane’ and ‘aileron’ the ‘hinged surface on trailing edge of plane’s wing’…

…and things keep rolling on with Thursday’s crossword as we only had to cheat on one of the 24 clues. The little grey cells were smoking and we only stumbled on not knowing that ‘nap’ is a ‘soft surface texture’…

…and we’re still rolling with Friday’s crossword as we only had to cheat on one of the 21 clues! We had forgotten that the ‘Eland’ is a ‘large African antelope’, but aside from that the little grey cells were on fire…

…and things take a massive fall with Saturday’s crossword, we had to cheat on a quarter of the clues (six out of 23). I guess the little grey cells have been doing to well and just got burnt out. We did learn that ‘cicatrix’ means ‘scar’, that the ‘Stontinka’ is the ‘Bulgarian monetary unit’, that ‘millpond’ can mean the ‘proverbially still water’ and that a ‘Jalfrezi’ is a ‘curry made with meat, green chillies, tomatoes and onions’. Hopefully the rest of the weekend will give the little grey cells plenty of time to relax and springback…

…and I did the third week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and Monday’s crossword doesn’t go to well, we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (four out of 21). Not exactly a stellar performance. It was nearly better, like we missed ‘co-existent’ from ‘living side by side’ by a few letters and we should have gotten ‘versus’ from ‘in opposition to’, but we did learn that an ‘alpenstock’ is a ‘stout staff used by mountain climbers’ and that ‘Japonica’ is a ‘thorny shrub with red blossoms, native to Japan’, not a great start to the week, but not terrible either…

…and things get worse with Tuesday’s crossword, we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 23). It started off okay, but we kept hitting really chewy clues that we couldn’t get through. Or obvious ones that we missed, like ‘exacerbate’ from ‘make worse’. Although it does mean that we learnt that a ‘maquette’ is a ‘small preliminary model of a larger intended work’, that ‘impish’ can mean ‘annoyingly playful’ and that ‘Redoubts’ are ‘fortifications added to a defensive position’…

…and things pick up with Thursday’s crossword, we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 23) baby! It looks like the little grey cells have bounced back…or the clues were easier! We only stumbled on not knowing that ‘macrame’ is a ‘knotting art’ and that ‘laissez faire’ can mean a ‘policy of non-interference’. The use of the word policy throw us as we’d taken laissez faire to be more of an attitude…

…and we stumble a little with Thursday’s crossword, we had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 25), which is towards the bottom of average. Maybe the worry about how the interview went is getting to the little grey cells and that’s why we missed a couple of easy ones? But we did learn that a ‘spittoon’ is also called a ‘cuspidor’, so not a total waste…

…but things perk up with Friday’s crossword, we only had to cheat on a tenth of the clues (two out of 21). Not bad going, a few clues that we had to chew over, but we got most of them and learn that an ‘angler’s basket’ is called a ‘creel’ and that ‘Kiel’ is a ‘German maritime centre on the Baltic’. Let’s hope we can keep this kind of performance up…

…and it kinda doesn’t with Saturday’s crossword. We had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 24). An average end to the week, but we did learn that ‘taffeta’ is a ‘crisp lustrous fabric’, that a ‘Jacaranda’ is a ‘tropical and subtropical bush or tree with lilac-coloured flowers’ and that a ‘small chicken’ is called a ‘Bantam’. Not a great end to the week, but better than how it started… 

…and I did the fourth week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and Monday’s crossword went mehly, as we had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (three out of 18). Which I guess isn’t that bad when we didn’t know two of those three – that ‘Qatar’ is a ‘Monarchy having a land border with Saudi Arabia’ and that ‘Sibyl’ is a ‘Roman female oracle’ – but we should have gotten ‘federal’ from ‘formed by a compact between several groups etc’, especially when we had the intersecting letters…

…Tuesday’s isn’t any better, another needing to cheat on a sixth of the clues (three out of 19) day. And those three we missed were easy ones – ‘willpower’ from ‘determination’, ‘bottle’ from ‘courage (informal)’ and ‘goal’ from ‘intended aim’ – it should have been a clean sweep, but we just faltered…

…after a poor start to the week, Wednesday’s crossword went almost perfectly! The little grey cells were firing all cylinders and we had to cheat on one of the 24 clues. We didn’t get ‘ream’ from ‘large quantity of reading matter’, which in hindsight was a silly miss, but apart from that, a return to form…

…and the little grey cells still have their grove on for Thursday’s crossword. Again, we only had to cheat on one clue, out of 23. And we never could have guessed that the answer to ‘French military cap’ would be ‘kepi’. One lives and learns… 

…and we crash back to Earth with Friday’s crossword! We had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 25), which is not good. Not good at all. A tricky grid today. But we did learn that ‘Lydia’ is the ‘youngest of the Bennet sisters in Pride and Prejudice’, that ‘otiose’ means ‘superfluous’, that a ‘settle’ is a ‘wooden bench with 6s and a high back’ and that ‘niobium’ is a ‘silvery metal used in superconducting alloys, Nb’. Hopefully it’s a temporarily glitch and we’ll be back to normal crossword solving soon… 

…and we end the crossword week on a down note, as we’re back to having to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 24). Not a good week, but today we learnt that ‘je ne sais quoi’ means ‘it can’t be easily described in French’ and that ‘gelati’ is ‘Italian-style ice cream’. Roll on next week!