Days 1187 - 1193

Aka Monday 27^th April 2020 - Sunday 3^rd May 2020

…another week of home working this week, already lost track of which week of the Lockdown this is, and like last week it is settling into a routine of working for 7 and a half hours,, re-watching shows and films I’ve already seen, like the original ‘Point Blank’, which is still a magnificent nihilistic film:

 ...and not reading anything, except for newspapers, or watching new stuff (or if I did it hasn’t stayed in my mind!) or doing much of anything…it’s just becoming more frustrating and tempers are fraying at home, we just need to get out and have time apart from family and a chance to see “new” people…

…one highlight of the week was buying a mp3 copy of, and listening to, ‘Stockwell Steppas’ by Two Lone Swordsmen, which is a nigh-perfect blend of weird, oddball electronics and funky dancefloor electronics, especially if you’re in a relaxed frame of mind 😉

…there was also a fox in the garden:

…and I went for a Long Walk on Saturday:

…which was followed with a quick chat with KOR, a small almost slice of normality on a Saturday…

…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:

…Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a so-so start as we had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 24). It was a pretty straight forward grid for the little grey cells, with most of the answer tumbling into place. And we learnt that a ‘juvenile newt’ is called an ‘Eft’ and an ‘Oxlip’ is a ‘kind of yellow primrose’. We were a little stumped by ‘Mohawk or Seneca, for example?’, we were pretty sure that they were Native Americans, but we couldn’t get from there to the answer of ‘Iroquois’ and we thought to literally with ‘water ice’, thinking of slush, sleet, icebergs, glaciers, when if we’d just thought ‘dessert’ we would have gotten ‘sorbet’. Tsk, tsk, but onwards and upwards for tomorrows grid…

…and Tuesday’s grid maintains the so-so-ness, as we had to cheat on a over a fifth of the clues (five out of 23). The main reason for today’s so-so-ness I think is that the stuff that people in the house have done, mostly messing with my food (by removing the package and putting it a zip-lock bag, how can I cook it properly when you’ve throw away the instructions?) and continually ignoring my requests to be quiet so that I can work from home, is really getting to me under the Lockdown and putting me in a bad mood/funk, where I can’t think clearly and we’ve missed answers we should have got. But that aside, we did learn that a ‘French king’s eldest son’ is called a ‘Dauphin’, and were reminded that an ‘item resting on stumps’ is a ‘bail’ and that ‘ergo’ can mean ‘consequently’…and it’s an Illuminati score, which is nice…

…while Wednesday’s crossword reverses things and is an almost perfect grid, we us only having to cheat on one of the 25 clues, we didn’t know that ‘Samoa’ was a ‘South Pacific island country, gaining its independence from New Zealand in 1962’. Aside from that the grid was pretty straight forward for the little grey cells, especially once we got intersecting letters for the slightly trickier ones, like ‘astringency’. And we learnt that peanuts ripen in vine pods underground, for some reason I thought they grow on trees/bushes…

…things take a teeny tiny tumble with Thursday’s crossword as we had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24). Which isn’t too bad in the grand scheme of crosswords. And it would have been a tad better if we hadn’t gone for ‘dilapidataed’ (and misspelt it!) for ‘ruin’, instead of ‘dilapidation’, which we could have done if we checked the intersecting letters with 23 across, which were given as an anagram. And the same thing happened with ‘studying just before an exam’, we went for ‘revising’ and not the correct answer of ‘revision’, which we could have done if we checked to see if ‘n’ fitted with 15 across…

…and the tumbling continues with Friday’s crossword as we had to cheat on a seventh of the clues (three out of 22). The little grey cells found the grid pretty straight forward (more or less), with the clues tumbling like ten-pins, to leave us with almost a strike. And we learnt that ‘leeward’ means ‘on the downwind side’ and that ‘Riga’ is a ‘Baltic capital city’…

…and Saturday’s crossword needs the week on a high note as we only had to cheat on one twenty-sixth of the clues (one out of 26 clues). For ‘catch’ we went for ‘hual’, without realising that we’d misspelt it! And the answer was ‘hear’. But the rest of the grid was pretty straight forward and when it wasn’t, the intersecting letters helped out. Like for ‘make an inventory (4, 5)’ we got an intersecting ‘e’ which led to ‘take’ which led to ‘take stock’. Easy peasy...