Aka Monday 25th May to Sunday 31st
May 2020
…and it’s back to working from home this
week…which involves a lot of working round others as no-one seems to
understand, or can be bothered with, giving up some peace and quiet so that I
can work…but like working from the office, working from home has fallen into a
steady routine. Alongside my work laptop I have my personal laptop, so that I
can listen to music, podcasts, Netflixs, etc., and while waiting for my work
apps to connect with the work server, buying stuff, checking emails and
updating/working on this blog. Aside from working and going food shopping I
also:
…got some good stuff through the post; ‘Batman:
Curse of the White Knight’ #8, ‘Aorta’ #2, 'Plunge’ #3 and 'The Three Amigos’
’25 Miles’ CD:
…’25 Miles’ is a big beat cover/remix of
Edwin Starr’s ’25 Miles’ and yes it is a bit obvious, straight up party music,
but I like it, a lot, and it doesn’t (in my opinion) cheapen the Mr Starr’s
original version. Some remixes/re-edits can trample all over the original, but
this updates the original for modern ears, making it more of a foot stomper
(and yes that pun was intended!). And the b-sides are a remix by Loop Da Loop,
which takes things in a ‘ardcore direction, before dropping the tempo a touch
to something a bit more disco, and ‘What You Gonna Do’, a nice mid-tempo party
track, perfect for a little boogie to or just some gentle head nodding.
…read Simon Roy’s ‘Jan’s Atomic Heart and Other Stories’ and ‘Green Lantern’ # 7 - 12 and Annual #1 (2019):
…‘Jan’s Atomic Heart and Other Stories’ is a
collection of short stories by Simon Roy, all with a space or future theme/setting,
ranging from personal stories of claustrophobia (and how it affects
relationships with co-workers) to political thrillers. A great collection of
well-written and illustrated stories that anyone with an interest in stories
about people and/or sci-fi should have on their shelves. 8/10. The Green
Lantern issues are written by Grant Morrison, illustrated by Liam Sharp,
lettered by Tom Orzechowski and colours by Steve Oliff, with the Annual written
by Grant Morrison, illustrated by Giuseppe Camuncoli & Trevor Scott, coloured
by Steve Oliff and lettered by Tom Orzechowski. Both the series and Annual are
just pure sci-fi comic stories, with the creative teams just going full out and
throwing all kinds of weird and far-out ideas (both new and old DC characters/concepts
given an update), from beings who are living radio signals to “higher beings”
using human souls as drugs to the recreation of the universe! 8/10.
…went for a Long Walk on Saturday:
…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and
after last week’s meh performance Monday’s crossword gets the new week off to a
good start as we only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24).
Although it is slightly embarrassing, as a crossworder, not to get that the
answer to ‘over – not down!’ was ‘across’…the answer was literally right in
front of my face! We don’t do well with the more cryptic clues, but we did
learn that a ‘system for teaching singing’ is called ‘Sol-Fa’ and that a
‘sylph’ is a ‘slender graceful female’. Not a bad start to the week…
…Tuesday’s crossword keeps things level, as
again, we had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24). As 1 across
states most of the clues were a ‘piece of cake’, although, if we’d spent a bit
more time on them, we might have gotten ‘ado’ from ‘bother’ and ‘brutal’ from
senselessly cruel’. But we did learn that a ‘Nutria’ is also known as a
‘Coypu’, which is a small rodent native to South America…
…and Wednesday’s
crossword takes us almost to the moon as we just had to cheat on one
twenty-oneth of the clues (one out of 21). The little grey cells are back on
tip-top form and just ploughed their way through the clues. Except for
‘open-topped glass container’, which we didn’t know is a ‘carafe’, but we do
now. Hopefully we’re back on the right track…
…and maybe we’re
not, Thursday’s crossword takes a slight dip as we had to cheat on an eighth of
the clues (three out of 23). Would have gone better if we hadn’t have plumped
for ‘appropriate’ for ‘pertinent (8)’ we might have noticed that it had more than
8 letters in it and we might have gotten the right answer of ‘apposite’ and the
same with ‘lively Spanish dance (8)’, we immediately thought of ‘flamenco’, but
we didn’t bother to check that the intersecting letters fitted with the other
clues. If we had we might have changed our answer to ‘fandango’, but we did
learn that ‘Copernicus’ was a ‘Polish astronomer d.1543’…
…we take a little
stumble with Friday’s crossword as we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues
(four out of 21). Three of those four we should have gotten, we went with
‘tardy’ instead of ‘tarry’ for ‘linger’ and we totally forgot about ‘gruyere’
for ‘hard yellow Swiss cheese’, I only know three Swiss cheeses: edam, emmental
and gruyere, and I totally forgot one of them! Even worse we forgot that ‘tub’
is another word for ‘bath’! We got the rest of the answers by taking our time
and using the intersecting letters, e.g. we couldn’t think of the answer for
‘swindle (4), but when we got the intersecting ‘c’ from ‘recital’ it became
obvious that the answer was ‘scam’. And we learnt that ‘Bhutan’ is a ‘Himalayan
kingdom’…
…and Saturday’s
crossword ends the week on a bum note, as we had to cheat on a third of the
clues (seven out of 23). We probably should have done the crossword before we
started to enjoy the sunshine (with a few drinks…or more!), which left the
little grey cells a tad…fatigued 😊
Which meant we missed a few obvious answers, but we did learn that a ‘Sundew’
is an ‘insectivorous plant’, that ‘aviaries’ are ‘enclosures for birds’ and
that a ‘Chamois’ is a ‘mountain-dwelling antelope’. Onwards for next week…
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