Days 3173 - 3186

Aka Monday 31st July - Sunday 13th August 2023

On Monday 31st July I went for a Morning Walk and somehow I hurt my leg, just a pain in my right rump, where I imagine the leg joins the hip and the more that I use that leg, the more it hurts and the hurt spreads, expanding out across my back and stomach, and the lower leg and ankle (which will last for most of the next month)…but here’s some pictures from the walk:

…which took 6,897 steps to cover 5.25km in 1 hours, 3 minutes and 12 seconds, burning 497 calories…there were no further Morning Walks this fortnight as my upper leg lower back rump area is still hurting and aching…changing topic completely we had a fox in the garden on Wednesday 2nd, just sitting/laying there chilling out:

…during this fortnight I picked up these four-colour gems:

…picked up a Lego Star Wars Darth Vader mecha (which I haven’t made yet):

…I saw a couple of films, starting with ‘Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One’:

...which was a great action spectacular, no-one does action scenes and set pieces like the MI team! And then I saw ’Becky’, a fun home invasion thriller/Home Alone hybrid, with a great, scary turn from Kevin James. I then saw a couple of Nic Cage films, ‘The Old Way’, which was a nice cowboy revenge flick and ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, which was just a terrible film, lacking in any tension or nerves. Talking of bad films, I also saw ‘Hypnotic’, which has a nice premise (super hypnotists), but completely mishandles it. A very muddled dull film! ‘Heart of Stone’, is a spy flick, kinda like Mission Impossible, but it doesn’t have much heart. It hits all the normal spy flick notes, and has a great car chase scene, but it feels like it was written by AI. I then saw ‘The Flash’, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be (or had been led to believe it would be). It’s a fun superhero flick, but I’m not sure what non-comic book readers would make of it, as it uses a lot of deep knowledge and callbacks (e.g. to the never filmed Nic Cage/Tim Burton Superman film). And I picked up ‘Evil Dead Rise’:

…which I mainly got for the extra’s, include a short film by Lee Cronin, the director, called ‘Ghost Train’, which was pretty chilling…I also got a load of great music, starting with the latest compilation from Bill Brewster, ‘After Dark: Vespertine’:

…a glorious collection of “low and slow” (if I remember the sleeve notes right) electronic music of the grooving variety, as perfect for dancing the hours away in a basement club or chilling after dancing the night away. Equally glorious is ‘Sunset 666’, the Jesus & Mary Chain live at the Hollywood Palladium, a perfect collection of noise and ’60 girl-group pop dynamics that take you away to a better place for an hour and change. I also got ‘Datura’ by Lorelle Meets The Obsolete and Dot Allsion’s ‘Consciousology’:

…which I haven’t listened to yet, but based on their past works, should be enjoyable listens. I also got a load of early Stones albums (‘England’s Newest Hit Makers, The Rolling Stones’ and ‘Out Of Our Heads*’ (both US versions) ‘December’s Children (And Everybody’s)’ and ‘Between The Buttons’):

…I’m a big fan of late ‘60s and ‘70s Stones and had dismissed their early work, as being training for when they hit their stride (‘Satanic Majesties…’ onwards till about ‘Black and Blue’). But I was wrong, there’s some really great R&B covers (‘Little Red Rooster’ and ‘The Spider and The Fly’, being just two examples) and the band sound like their just jamming and playing at a friends party or some other intimate gathering. V enjoyable listening and dancing!

…and I got some more Disney 100th Anniversary Lego, and this will be my last Disney 100th Anniversary Lego, as I finally got my 5th Day of the Dead guitarist:

…I also got the latest Lego Batman magazine, for this kick-ass Batmobile:

…and I got the latest ‘Uncut’:

…pretty much picked up this issue out of habit, as the cover CD is your usual collection of current songs (plugging upcoming albums), which aren’t much to write home about, a couple of mildly good songs (like Wilco’s ‘Evicted’ and Sparklehorse’s ‘Listening to the Higsons’), but the rest are pretty much meh. Some nice reviews, identifying music to pick up, but I’m not a fan of the artists/bands on the cover, but I didn’t know that Keef and Tom Waits and collaborated, so it has peeked my interest to check them out (what I have heard of Tom Waits hasn’t intrigued or entertained me…and after listening to some of the Waits/Keef cvollabs…yeah Waits isn’t for me, to my ears, he sounds like a ‘The Might Boosh’ or ‘Fast Show’ character), but yeah, a habit pick-up this month…

…brought this month’s Record Collector, partly on a whim, for something to read, to check out the reviews and partly because it had Primal Scream on the cover. I thought maybe that they would cover the fallout from Martin Duffy’s son, but it was an album review (which did, v lightly, touch upon it) of the Reverberations (Travelling In Time) BBC Radio Sessions & Creation Singles 1985-86, a collection of the Scream’s early singles and BBC Sessions. In a nutshell, it’s a good collection of songs, showing the Scream developing and being a counterpoint to Gillespie’s other band, the Jesus and Mary Chain. Not a bad write-up and a few other records/bands to check out...and the postie delivered the latest Kyle Starks Sticker Club stickers, aren't they beautiful:

…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and we get the crossword week off to poor start! We had to cheat on 19.05% of the clues (aka four out of 21), not a very good performance to start the week! I guess that the little grey cells were feeling super tired after the weekend! But we did learn that a ‘Kris’ is a ‘Malaysian dagger’, that ‘Benelux’ was the ‘1970 union of three European countries that abolished all internal border control’ and that ‘Cabot’ was the surname of ‘Italian explorers, John and Sebastian, who led English and Spanish expeditions to explore the New World’, so at least some good etc a ra etc a ra…

…and things pick up a tad with Tuesday’s crossword, the little grey cells are picking themselves up and we only had to cheat on 13.04% of the clues (also called three out of 23). We’re heading on the right direction. And we learnt that an ‘Aardvark’ is also known as an ‘African antbear’ and that ‘ululate’ means to ‘emit long loud cries’, which is nice to know…

…Wednesday’s crossword is a bit of a repeat as again we only had to cheat on 13.04% of the clues (also called three out of 23). It was a bit of a tricky grid, but the little grey cells mostly managed it. And we learnt that an ‘Ayah’ is an ‘Indian nursemaid who looks after children’, re-learnt that a ‘zephyr’ is a ‘light wind’ and we got slightly annoyed that we didn’t get ’alibi’ from ‘excuse’…

…Thursday’s crossword continues this week’s theme of being fairly “just okay”, as we had to cheat on 12.00% of the clues (aka three out of 25). Like, we missed two easy ones with ‘act on’ from ‘comply with’ and ‘splotch’ from ‘irregular shaped spot’, but we did learn that the plural of giant (or ‘giants’) is ‘colossi’…

…and with Friday’s crossword, we’re back to our usual damn solid-ness, as we only had to cheat on 4.76% of the clues (a la one out of 21). The little grey cells are back on track and smashed through the clues like no-one’s business! And we learnt that ‘centimes’ are ‘denominations of small Swiss coins’. Hopefully this means that we’re back on track and the land of low percentages…

…which ended the crossword week on a super duper damn fine note, as we only had to cheat on 4.17% of the clues (otherwise known as one out of 24). The little grey cells just soared through the clues, mostly, and in some cases, we literally plunked the answer out of thin air. Like with this clue, ‘____ Gordimer, South African writer and political activist, d. 2014’, all we had was the ‘d’ from an intersecting answer and all we could think of was ‘Nadine’, which is the right answer! We’ve never heard of this person, yet the little grey cells still answered it! Although we couldn’t answer ‘strongly opposed’, we just didn’t think of ‘averse’, so a little metaphorical rain on our sunny day…and I did the second week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and we get the cross week off to damn solid start with Monday’s crossword, as we only had to cheat on 11.11% of the clues (aka two out of 18). We were out-foxed by ‘Hell on Earth (where tyres get changed?), we figured it had to do with pit stops, but where does Hell fit in?, so we didn’t get the correct answer of ‘The Pits’! And we missed ‘zany’ from ‘droll’, which I think is slightly bad clue for ‘zany’, as I think of being ‘droll’ as a dry, cutting humour and ‘zany’ as the complete opposite. Either way the week is off to a damn solid start…

…and the damn solid start gets elevated to a clean sweep with Tuesday’s crossword as we didn’t have to cheat on any of the 19 clues! The little grey cells just smashed through the clues with no resistance…roll on tomorrow’s crossword…

…and we bump down to Earth with Wednesday’s crossword, as we had to cheat on 14.29% of the clues (a la three out of 21). I guess that the little grey cells were a tad worn out after yesterday’s clean sweep and we missed a couple of easy ones, like ‘skip’ from ‘pass over’, but we did learn that ‘(In heraldry) silver’ is known as ‘Argent’, maybe we’ll do better tomorrow after the little grey cells get some rest…

…and yep, the little grey cells got plenty of rest and aced Thursday’s crossword! We didn’t have to cheat on any of the 23 clues. After their rest, the little grey cells just torn through the clues like paper through a paper shredder, easy peasy…

…and Friday’s crossword goes nearly as well, but we did stumble on a coupe of clues and in the end we had to cheat on 8.00% of the clues (also known as two out of 25). And those were, in hindsight, ones we should have gotten – ‘rocked’ from ‘move rhythmically – shook’ and ‘thresh’ from ‘separate the wheat from the chaff?’ Not a bad performance, but let down by missing some easy ones…and we end one of our best crossword weeks with an almost clean sweep of Saturday’s clues. We only had to cheat on 4.17% of the clues (aka one out of 24), we only stumbled on not getting ‘impugns’ from ‘attacks as false’. A pretty sweet performance all week, but can it continue into next week…and I did some Metro Cryptic Crosswords: