Aka Monday 4th
May - Sunday 10th May 2020
…and on the way home I did do a food shop and
brought ‘Ready Or Not’:
…which I’ve heard is very good and will
hopefully take my mind off the Lockdown…also taking my mind of Lockdown was reading a few comics this week:
‘Maids’ #1 - #4: by
Katie Skelly and based on the true story of the Papin sisters (which I haven’t
looked up as I don’t want to spoil the story, but I’m pretty sure that it
involves murder!!!) and in these issues we see their past and present, and in
both they are powerless and at the mercy of the whims of the rich and powerful.
Sometimes enjoying themselves, even though there are reminders that what little
they have could be taken away with a moment’s notice. Which is a pretty typical
set-up for a story, but Ms Skelly’s writing and art elevate the story, effortlessly
putting you in the sister’s shoes, making you feel their triumphs and
tragedies. 9/10.
‘Buffy’ #9 - #13, 'Hellmouth' #1 - #5 and 'Angel'
#5 - #9: which is a whole lot of Buffy and Angel. Hellmouth covers Drusilla
opening the Hellmouth and Buffy and Angel trying to close it, while these
issues of Buffy and Angel cover what happens elsewhere in Sunnydale And LA and
to Buffy and Angel’s friends. There is plenty of action, humour and
reflection/pathos in each issue of Hellmouth (written by Jordie Bellaire &
Jeremy Lambert, illustrated by Eleonora Carlini, coloured by Cris Peter and
lettered by Ed Dukeshire), Buffy (written by Jordie Bellaire, illustrated by
David Lopez & Rosemary Calero-O’Connell, coloured by Raul Angulo &
Eleonora Bruni and lettered by Ed Dukeshire), and Angel (written by Bryan
Edward-Hill, illustrated by Gleb Melnikov, coloured by Roman Titov and lettered
by Ed Dukeshire) and as I’ve said before these stories really do capture the
essence of the TV shows, while updating them to take account of changes in
technology and societal morality and, occasionally taking left turns that in no
way match what happened on the TV show. 8/10
‘Action 2020 Special’: my only memories of the original ‘Action’ is that it got banned for
being very violent and that one of its stories starred a killer shark! There
are some great stories in this anthology. With Garth Ennis (writer), Mike Dorey
(artist) and Rob Steen (letterer)’s ‘Hellman’ and Zina Hutton (writer), Staz
Johnson (artist), John Charles (colours) and Agent PC (lettering)’s ‘Dredger’
being the stand outs for me. ‘Hellman’ is a great WWII story of a disenchanted Tiger
tank crew, which feels like Ennis taking the premise of Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Cross of Iron’ and running with it and doing what he does best, war stories. While ‘Dredger’
is 'James Bond' via ‘The Sweeny’. Both strips are nice contained stories, but
leave you wanting more, wanting to see what happens to these characters and what
they do in return. There’s also a strip about a shark and polar bear teaming up
to take down a fishing boat and then each other. What more could you want! 8/10.
…and going for a
Long Walk, these are from Bank Holiday Friday’s Long Walk:
…and Saturday’s Long
Walk:
…I also liked this Malcolm McLaren quote in Saturday’s papers, which seems like a good, but tricky!, way
to live one’s life:
…and then there was
a smallish family tiff on Sunday, mostly spurred on, I think, by being cooped
up for so long with very little chance to get away from each other and have
proper peace, quiet and privacy...and then Johnson made his announcement that
if you can’t work from home, you can go to work, just as long as you try not to
use public transport and keep up social distancing…making things as clear as
mud…how can everyone go back to work, if you have to maintain 2m distance???
…and I did this
week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to an iffy start,
as we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 24). Most of the grid
was straight-forward and easy, but those five were…we just couldn’t crack them
(although we should have gotten ‘as if’ from ‘expression of incredulity’ and
‘ensured’ from ‘made certain’). But we did learn that ‘scratch’ can mean to
‘pull out (of a race)’, ‘Rainier’ was the ‘Prince of Monaco, married to Grace
Kelly, d.2005’ and that ‘organza’ is a ‘silk fabric’…
…Tuesday’s crossword took us back in the right direction
with only having to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). Maybe
Monday’s grid performance was just a warm-up for the real show today? The
little grey cells hoped and skipped through the clues, but it would have gone a
tad better if we hadn’t gone for ‘tee up’ for ‘coordinate’, the answer was ‘tie
in’, but we did learn that a ‘Ketch’ is a ‘two-masted sailing vessel’…
…and the little grey cells were on barn storming form with
Wednesday’s crossword as we didn’t need to cheat on any of the 21 clues! A
complete clean sheet. There were a few tricky clues, but with a little
perseverance and patience, waiting for the intersecting letters and so on, and
from watching Death On The Nile (from which we learnt that ‘mal de mar’ is
French for seasickness), we managed to solve them all...will this mini hot
streak continue? Let’s find out…
…Thursday’s crossword goes pretty
well, just had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 23). With the
little grey cells making short work of the clues, except for those three! A bit
annoyed that we only got ‘all the XXXX’ for ‘very popular (informal)’ and
couldn’t make it to the full ‘all the rage’, but we did learn that a ‘samovar’
is a ‘tea urn’ and we will reprimand the little grey cells that they didn’t get
‘carpeted’ from ‘reprimanded’ 😊…
…Friday’s crossword went a similar
way, the little grey cells powered through most of the clues, with only three
of the 21 proving to be impossible to get. But that’s mostly because we went with bad hunches – we
went with ‘balled’ for ‘tangled into a mass’, when the answer was ‘matted’ and
we went with ‘tides’ for ‘affected by changes in sea level’, when the answer
was ‘tidal’, and we couldn’t get ‘biotech’ from ‘molecular science applied to
industrial processes’, mostly because we were trying to think of a specific
scientific process and not a general term…
…and Saturday’s crossword ends the
week on an okay note as we had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of
23). A bit of a pattern is forming, needing to cheat on three clues! We spent too long trying to think if a word
for a ‘clot’, such as scab, rather than a word for the action of forming a
clot, if we had we might have gotten ‘congeal’. But we did learn that
‘munificent’ means ‘generous’ and that ‘Donne’ was an ‘English preacher and
metaphysical poet, d.1631’…
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