Days 3339 & 3340

Aka Saturday 13th January and Sunday 14th January 2024

…a chilled weekend this weekend, I did Saturday’s G2 Crossword:

…and we end this crossword week on a perfect note, as the little grey cells smashed all 24 clues to grab a clean sweep! Whoop! Whoop! A supremely nice way to end the crossword week…the postman delivered these four-colour beauties:

…of these, I‘ve read ’Pine and Merrimac’ #1, a fun private eye story, setting up our detective loving couple of Kent and Parker, the lovely town of Jamesport, with hints of a dark past, and the mystery of the missing girl they are hired to fine, and ‘Tales of Syzpense’ #4, which I got for the Les Mort 13 story (Dream Weaver is a perfectly fine superhero passing on the mantle story, but nothing out of the ordinary), which is a weird, almost dreamlike tale of Les Mort 13 and their world. And it’s hard to describe, things happen, magic and mystery happen, but it has a dream-like logic to it, where everything feels slightly off. Fun times…and on Sunday I went for a Morning Walk, and it was pretty nice, cold, but not freezing and a bit hazy, like you could hardly see the works across the Thames Delta. But it was good to be up and about early, getting some fresh air and steps in, 8,261 steps in total in one hour fifteen minutes and 21 seconds, covering 6.33km and burning 602 calories:

…and I finished reading ‘Not Forever, But For Now’:

…and it was an odd read. The only thing I knew about the story is that it was about a family of assassins, and yeah, that side of things is well explored. But the story is also replete with, what I can only describe as, sexual abuse, horror and philosophy and I was thinking that as the story goes on the metaphors would be revealed and what I thought was sexual abuse is something else. Except it doesn’t. When I finished reading the story, I thought that “well, that was bit odd, not his best, but I don’t feel cheated or that I’ve wasted my time” and then I read the acknowledgements and authors note. Within which Chuck Palahniuk explained that this story is about the pain of addiction, both the pain of the addicted and the pain of those close to them”, and a lot of things slot into place, giving a whole new slant on the story. And it does a great job of convening that emotional emptiness that addiction can bring, those islands of fun and pleasure surrounded by oceans of dullness and robotic behaviour, just going through the motions until you hit land…and I watched the original (American) film of ‘Man On Fire’:

…and it’s a weird watch, especially when you’re familiar with the Tony Scott/Denzel Washington version. There’s the look of both films, the ‘80s ‘Man On Fire’ looks ultra ‘80s, while the Scott/Washington ‘Man On Fire’ looks super modern and gritty and real and much more violent. And the way they tackle the story is different, the Scott/Washington ‘Man On Fire’ feels very nature and realistic, whereas the ‘80s story feels very surface and less violent, although that’s probably just down to the times the films were made in. The biggest difference, to me, was how the relationship between Creasy and the daughter (Sam in the ‘80s and Pita in the Scott/Washington ‘Man On Fire’) is portrayed. In the Scott/Washington ‘Man On Fire’ the relationship feels natural and mutual, whereas the ‘80s version has a touch of ‘Lolita’ about and took me out of the story…