Aka Monday 17th
February - Sunday 23rd February 2020
Another quiet week,
mostly because I’m trying to buy down some of my debt and I’m avoiding having
to finish up my Bumble profile (I don’t think that there is much more I hate
than having to write or talk about myself! Even though if I want to get the
most out of Bumble, I need to write up a good profile), aside from:
…I started reading ‘Spook Street’, the next in line in the Slough House/Jackson Lamb series (written by
Mick Herron), and it’s off to good start as River grandfather, the O.B., a
retired Secret Service grand poobah who has developed Alzheimer’s, or maybe it’s
more accurate to say that his Alzheimer’s has developed to such an extent that
it’s putting the O.B.’s life, and others, in danger…
…I also picked up my
National Lottery winnings…of £3.10 and a lucky dip…hooray!!!:
...and I got some
more DC Lego Minifigures:
…and on Tuesday (18th
February 2020) I got my first like on Bumble…I got excited and scared…then I checked
the picture and profile and thought ‘nah’…then I thought that I was a right
douche bag for thinking ‘nah’ when someone has put themselves out there, just
for me to go ‘nah’…
…and I got my New
Comic Book Day comics:
…in which Lou gets much deeper into trouble with the different
magical fractions in New Orleans, and with some of the local gamblers, as the beast
inside is forced out to service another…a nice slow burn of a story, as things
get slowly and slowly more fraught for Lou and Delia…
…and on Friday we
had our payday drinks, but after just a couple of drinks and a chuck of
chit-chat, I felt weirdly happy and content and just happy to sit back and
chill and not talk…which isn’t how one is meant to behave on a drinks night out
😊 Plus it felt like people were going off to
have deep and meaningful chats, leaving me out and feeling jealous, intrigued
and piqued!!!
Which is both a stupidly childish way to feel and a bad combination when going out and I was worried that if I carried on drinking I’d
say something stupid or if I didn’t carry on drinking I would say something
mean and hurtful. Either way I would say something that I shouldn’t and would very
much regret. So, I took an early bath and left while I was feeling content and
happy and I hadn’t said anything I shouldn’t. And the day after I took another had
a Long Walk, even though it was very windy:
…and my nemeses, the
train bridge and the steps, are affecting (or should that be effecting) me less and less…
...now the anxiety I used
to feel when using them is at like 10%...
…then I did some tidying up on Sunday, mainly I think as either a
distraction from other things or because it gives my control over something in
my life when I’m lacking control in other areas of my life…which may or may not
be tied into how I felt on Friday…
...anyhow I found an old idea for a mixtape/compilation:
...and my favourite cryptic crossword clue ('Engineer about to reveal submarine (1-4)'):
…and in the terrible
news side of things I heard that Andrew Weatherall passed away (Monday 17th
February 2020)…which I’m still shocked by…I mean yeah people can die of all
kinda things at all kinda ages, but the music made by Weatherall, the original
songs, the remixes, the production work, is so ubiquitous that it doesn’t seem
right that he’s no longer here...but it was heartening to read the tributes to him, like this one and this one and this one.
…and I did this week’s
G2 Crossword:
…Monday’s crossword got the week off to an okay start, we
only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 23), but will this
continue for the rest of the week? Back to Monday’s grid and we could have done
a tad better if we’d chewed over ‘colourer (of clothes, perhaps)’ a tad longer.
We might have realised it meant the person doing the colouring, ‘dyer’, and not
gone for the substance that colours, ‘dyes’. But we did learn that an ‘Eland’
is a ‘large African deer with short spiral horns’…
…Tuesday’s crossword went better, and we only had to cheat
on thirteenth of the clues (two out of 25). The little grey cells powered
through the grid and we learnt that ‘applique’ is ‘ornamental needlework’ and
that ‘reproof’ means ‘blame’…
…but things take a nose-dive with Wednesday’s crossword, as
we had to cheat on a quarter of the clues (five out of 21). Which means that we
learnt lots of new words – ‘partially carbonised vegetable matter saturated
with water’ is ‘peat’, ‘Nuncio’ is the ‘Pope’s ambassador’, ‘fecund’ means
‘fertile’, ‘bouquet garni’ are ‘herbs in a small bag used in cooking’ and a
‘lexicography’ is a ‘dictionary compilation’…
…and Thursday’s crossword goes worse, as we had to cheat on
nearly a third of the clues (seven out of 24). Me and the little grey cells
just couldn’t chew through the clues to the answers, like where didn’t we get
‘Spanish’ from ‘from Valencia or Malaga?’ or ‘avert’ from ‘ward off’ or
‘tempest’ from ‘great storm’. But we did learn that ‘raw pickled herring
fillet’ is called ‘rollmop’…
…and Friday’s crossword goes even worse as we had to cheat
on almost half the clues (eight out of 18). Again, me and the little grey cells
couldn’t get through the clues to the answers, like we’d hit a brick wall, and
we missed some, answers that should have been gimmes, like ‘envelope’ from
‘cover completely’. But we did learn that ‘Sardinia’ is an ‘island just south
of Corsica’ and that ‘antonym’ refers to words that are the opposite of each
other…
…and Saturday’s crossword ends this terrible week on a bit
of a sour note, as me and the little grey cells had to cheat on a quarter of
the clues (five out of 19). But we did learn that a ‘pampas cowboy’ is a
‘gaucho’, a ‘gourmand’ is a ‘serious eater’, that a ‘standard post’ is also a
‘flagpole’ and the ‘group meeting (t choose a pope?) is called a ‘conclave’.
Not a good week for crossword solving, hopefully next week will be better…
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