Days 1052 - 1065

Aka Monday 16^th December 2019 - Sunday 29^th December 2019

 

This fortnight I started binge watching ‘Midsomer Murders’, which I find really enjoyable, a near-perfect bland of a mythic England of villages, Christie style posh people killing each other and a sprinkle of sark. And they instantly transport me back to Sunday evenings just before the weekend ended and the new school/work week started…

…I also started training the new person in our team, she’s nice and keen to learn, so it’s been a bit of doddle, aside from getting her IT sorted out (who forgets to give someone access to Word and Excel!!!) And her level of enthusiasm is outrageous, at least to these old cynical eyes!

…and got the latest ‘Lego Batman’ magazine and caught up on my Lego making:

…I also got these New Comic Book Day beauties:

…and I finished reading ‘The Wichita Lineman’, a biography of the song ‘Wichita Lineman’ and it’s a weird book to read, as it goes off on many diversions to feel in background information, to set the scene and make recommendations on other songs and covers of Wichita Lineman, so it comes across as more like a conversation in book form rather than a straight ahead book:

…which promoted me to pick up Glen Campbell’s last album, ‘Adios’, which also includes a selection of his greatest hits…

…I also did a bit of cheap DVD buying and got ‘Once A Upon a Time in Hollywood’, ‘Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam’, ‘Deadpool 2’ and ‘Den of Thieves’:

 

…and I got a copy of Goldie Lookin’ Chain’s ‘Guns Don’t Kill People, Rapper’s Do’, cause the CD I already had, had degraded and now has a harsh buzzing noise on it now…

…and the latest issue of ‘Classic Pop’, mostly for the article on Bomb the Bass, who is an artist I should explore a bit more – Beat Dis, Megablast (Hip Hop on Precinct 13) and Bug Powder Dust are awesome tracks…

...plus it was Christmas, when I got a nice shirt, which almost fits me, just need to lose a few more pounds, a bottle of vodka and 'The Sleepwalker' by Joseph Knox...

…and I did the fortnight’s G2 Crosswords:

Week 1

…and Monday’s crossword went a bit skew whiff, and I had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 25). Some of the answers came straight away, but most I had to chew over. Like, I’d be 50% sure that I had the right answer, not enough to write it down, and I had to wait for some intersecting letters to make sure enough to write down my answer. And I learnt that ‘ramp’ is another word for ‘swindle’, that a ‘small area surrounded by water’ is an ‘islet’ and not an ‘inlet’ and I re-learnt that a ‘broom made with twigs’ is called a ‘besom’…

…Tuesday’s crossword continued Monday’s mehness as I had to cheat on a fifth of the clues again (four out of 21). Again many of the clues were chewy and I wasn’t 100% confident of my answers, like going for ‘noisiest’ (which I misspelt) for ‘with too much sound’ instead of ‘noisily’, but I did learn that ‘Trumpery’ means ‘superficially appealing actions that make no sense’, that ‘Lido’ is the ‘main barrier island in the Venice Lagoon’ and that a ‘guillemot’ is a ‘small auk’…

…while Wednesday’s word-puzzle went much better, I only needed to cheat on an eighth of the clues. The little grey cells are waking up, and the answers just came tumbling out, one after the other. Except for three. I should have gotten ‘siren’ from ‘vamp’ and ‘fervid’ from ‘fiery and passionate’, but I did learn that ‘addled’ refers to ‘(of an egg) went bad’…

…and Thursday’s titanic puzzler went even better, I only had to cheat on a ninth of the clues (two out of 18). Although I should have gotten ‘groom’ from ‘recently married man’, except that I thought ‘groom’ only applied on the day of the wedding, but I guess that that is very recently married! And I should have got ‘pongy’ from ‘stinky’, but two out of 18 isn’t bad…

…Friday’s crossword went just as well, the little grey cells are up and running and I only had to cheat on two of the 19 clues. Although I should have gotten ‘helm’ from ‘tiller’ and ‘maladroit’ from ‘awkward’, maybe if I’d given those two clues a bit more time, a bit more pondering, I would have gotten them…

…and Saturday’s crossword continued the “going pretty well” streak, as I only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24). And it would have gone better, if I hadn’t of over-thought ‘removed contents’, thinking it was something like ‘edited’ or ‘redacted’, I would have gone for the obvious answer of ‘emptied’ and I got the answer for ‘granules used to make a yellow sauce’ mixed up with the answer for ‘granules used to make a yellow paste’, ‘custard powder’ and ‘mustard powder’ respectively. But I did learn that ‘Durham’ is a ‘cathedral city of north-east England’…

Week 2

…and Monday’s crossword gets the festive week off to an okay start, I only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 23). And it wasn’t too chewy, most of the answers came easily enough with only a couple needing chewing over. And I learnt that ‘farrow’ is the name for when sows ‘give birth to piglets’ and that ‘walnut’ is a hard dark-brown wood used in furniture’…

…and Christmas Eve’s crossword went a tad worse, had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 25), maybe due to too many mince pies and Christmas fizz?!? Like, how could I miss ‘sunrise’ from ‘time of full daylight’?!? Or ‘douse’ from ‘plunge into water’!?! But I did learn that ‘hulking’ means ‘hefty’ and that ‘Dryden’ was an ‘English poet, d.1700’…

…and the little grey cells got a day off for Christmas Day…

…and Boxing Day’s crossword went a tad better, maybe turkey and stuffing are a brain booster, and I only had to cheat on an eight of the clues (three out of 24). I think the Christmas festivities have rejuvenated the little grey cells a little bit. And I learnt that a ‘carillon’ is a ‘set of bells for playing tunes’…

…and it’s goodbye to the Christmas festivities and back to work, and Friday’s crossword reflected this as I had to cheat on a little under a fifth of the clues (four out of 22). It took a couple of minutes to get 1 across (‘asset stripper’ from ‘corporate raider who sells off parts of a company for personal gain’), but from that all the rest of the clues flowed like honey on a summer’s day. Except for the four, which the little grey cells couldn’t chew through (but should have)…

…and Saturday’s crossword ends the week on a meh note, as I had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 26). I think my little grey cells have a lost a couple of steps, with the intersecting letters, we should have gotten ‘jeer’ from ‘scoff’ and ‘frugality’ from ‘thrift’. But we did learn that the ‘Aegean Sea’ is ‘part of the Mediterranean between Greece and Turkey’…