Days 2064 - 2070

Aka Monday 13^th July - Sunday 19th July 2020

A busier week this week. I had the Monday and Tuesday off, but the rest of the week was spent working in the office. And the “new normal” is very settled in now, repeatedly washing hands, using (or maybe it’s more accurate to say not forgetting about) the one way system in the office and the high street, the restrictions on how many people can be in rooms and all that stuff is just want we do now. But we added a new wrinkle, on Wednesday we almost went to a pub, our work local, but to get in you needed to download an app and book, plus it didn’t look inviting. The whole point of going to the pub is to engage socially, either with people you know or to get to know new people, and it’s kinda hard to do that when socially distancing. But the weather was good, so we got some cans and sat on the cliffs overlooking the beach. A tramp’s picnic as someone called it. But it was nice to be out and relaxing with friends. And for an hour or two we mostly forgot about Cov-19 and “the new normal”. It was so nice we repeated it on the Friday as well 😊

I also got my haircut. Hairdressers and barbers were re-opened up last week, but I thought I should give a week or so, just so the new procedures could be bedded in and nay problems found and solved. And it was a pretty normal haircut, except that an appoint was needed (although I was lucky as when I got there he was just finishing up with a  customer and the next slot was free for me), they had expanded their opening hours as a way to minimise the number of people in the shop at any one time, the barber wore a mask and the apron to give the hair off my clothes was a plastic disposable one and not a reusable cloth one. But it was heartening that they were open and that they had been pretty busy the previous week and would be able to stay open for the foreseeable future.

And I had a bit of a family row, the spark was my nephew, who is Autistic and is finding the Lockdown hard, which can make him aggressive and he lashed out, which made me lash out, but like I send that was just the spark and I really think it was just the Lockdown anxieties bubbling over and exploding out, but it just left a bad feeling hanging over the weekend…but it eventually worked itself out and we’re all cool now.

On a happier tip (or a more commercial tip) I also picked up a couple of albums, ‘Under The Influence Vol. 8 Compiled by Woody Bianchi’, a compilation of rare boogie and disco tunes and The Streets new album/mixtape ‘None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive’:

…‘None Of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive’ is a good album, with some classic Streets beats and lyrics, but it doesn’t hit the heights of the first few albums. Maybe it’s just because I’ve only listened it to once or it’s just that the novelty/newish of The Streets has worn off and we know what to expect?

 …and I got the paperback of Akala’s ‘Natives’, which I’ve been meaning to get for ages and saw for a bargain price in Sainsbury’s (of all places!, but I guess it gets the book out to a wider audience):

 …and I got a copy of ‘The Dead Center’, which I’ve heard is tres bon:

…and I got the new Lego Star Wars magazine with a free mini AT-AT:

…I also picked up the latest issue of ‘Record Collector’, which has a nice feature, by Kris Needs, about Andrew Weatherall and some of his lesser known records:

 …and I got this week’s New Comic Book Day gems (although with the way Covid-19 has messed with printing and shipping, some of these are from last week or next week! And yes, that it is two versions of ‘Wicked Things’ #2, ‘cos I love the variant covers and its extra support for the book and the creators):

 

…it is weird to think that with all this extra time I’m still finding it hard to catch up with the new music I’ve brought or the new books and comics and magazines or films. Instead I’ve mostly been going back to old favourites. Maybe it is just a comfort thing and a way of imposing order/stability or a chaotic situation? But I did watch/read/listen to three new things this week:

I listened to three Lone compilations, Greenhills Road Archive Traks Volume One to Three, which collect his earlier work and are chock full of top notch IDM/techno, ranging from tunes that get the feet moving, the heart pumping to tunes get the head nodding and that you can chill out to.

…then I watched ‘Absentia’ Season 3. I’d really enjoyed the first two seasons of ‘Absentia’ as they had a nice balance between the fantastical elements of serial killers and conspiracies and the realities and traumas of being kidnapped and tortured for years (and at ten episodes a season there is little fat to the episodes). And I was wondering what they would do with Emily (played by the excellent Stana Katic) in the third season. Would there be even more layers of the kidnap/torture onion? But no, they made the sensible decision to focus on a new mystery, involving organ harvesting and Big Pharma, leaving Emily’s past in the past and exploring how she deals with her trauma. It was cool seeing Emily portrayed as getting dirty and damaged, and it have a lasting impact on her, as not being perfect, having her scars, physical and psychological, on display. At one point in the first episode I thought that they were going to go all out on being out-of-the-box and kill off Emily. But I felt a little let down by the last 15 minutes or so of the last episode as the ex-husband and son were packed off (to leave Emily free of attachments for the next season?) and the Big Bad identified and dealt with (unless that in itself is a set-up for Season Four?). Aside from that little quibble I really enjoyed this season.

…and I read ‘That Texas Blood’ #1:

…which I thought was going to go all Jim Thompson on me and have the Sheriff be an evil bastard, but no, it’s a slice of small-town life, focusing on an aging, world weary Sheriff. A nice read and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in the next issue.

…I also went for a Long Walk on Saturday morning:

 …and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords and it was a pretty poor crossword week this week, not entirely sure why, there’s been no mental strains or stresses, just a few sleepless nights due to the heat, hopefully next week will pick up. On Monday we had to cheat a fifth of the clues (five out of 23), for Tuesday’s crossword we had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 24), on Wednesday we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (four out of 21), we got a little bit stuck with 4 down, ‘feature in decorative windows’. For some reason we got stuck on thinking of shop windows and sales displays, and couldn’t think beyond them, but then, like a ray of light bursting through a cloudy day the little grey cells sparked and we had ‘stained glass’. Thursday’s grid was the one bright spot of the crossword week, we only had to cheat on one of the 24 clues, we couldn’t get ‘respite’ from ‘short break’, but on Friday we had to cheat on nearly a third of the clues (five out of 18), pretty dire. We ended the week with having to cheat on a fifth of Saturday’s clues (four out of 19), but we liked 15 down ‘canal or hat?’, it stumped us for a while, and we were thinking about waterways, stover’s and longboats, but then it just clicked ‘Panama’, nice and simple and not as cryptic as we first thought! And we learnt that ‘heigh-ho’ is an ‘expression of weariness’, that ‘Asti’ is the ‘capital of a north-west Italian province, known for its sparkling wine’, that a ‘mantilla’ is a ‘traditional Spanish lace scarf’ and that the ‘Commonwealth’ was the ‘period following the English Civil Wars’…

Days 2057 - 2063

Aka Monday 6^th July - Sunday 12^th July 2020

…another quiet week this week, back in the office, which is nice, a change of pace and scenery…and when I wasn’t at work, I was watching lots of Spookyastronauts, who is a Youtuber who makes videos about Horror films (and related issues). Spooky does a great job in conveying her love for Horror, providing helpful recommendations and discussing the issues that Horror films raise. And she does a great job in making her videos feel like a chat between friends, with them feeling nature, but with obvious care and attention gone into them. Well worth watching.

Also well worth watching is ‘Doom Patrol’ Season 1, which I picked up this week:

…the team behind this series have done a marvelous job of catching the spirit, the humanity, strangeness and weirdness of all the different comic book versions of the Doom Patrol and combining them into a unified whole. And as a Grant Morrison fanboy it’s great seeing his (and Richard Case, who illustrated most of Morrison's Doom Patrol run) contributions to the Doom Patrol come alive. Just an amazing series, with nearly note perfect scripts, cast, direction, sets, costumes, etc, and possible the best comic book TV show ever (although the Harley Quinn cartoon series comes a very close second).

The postman delivered Mick Herron’s ‘The Catch’ and Noelle Stevenson’s ‘The Fire Never Goes Out’ arrived, both of which I’m very much looking forward to reading (below is 'The Fire... in it's dust jacket and without, and I'm not sure which is the best cover!):

…and I got this week’s New Comic Book Day comics and the latest Electronic Sound issue:

…which includes some nice features on Soulwax, who recorded their new album with an ancient synth, the EMS Synthi 100, The Grid’s ‘Flotation’ and The Beloved and their Second Summer of Love-era album ‘The Happiness’. 

…no Long Walk this week, too tired/woke up too late, but I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:

And Monday’s crossword gets the week of to an okay start, we only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24). We did stumble on a couple of the clues, for ‘eat away’ we misspelt corrode and went with ‘crode’ and not ‘erode’ and for ‘Indian flatbread’ we didn’t bother to check the intersecting letters and went with ‘naan’ instead of ‘roti’. But the rest of the clues were pretty straight forward and fell like skittles to the little grey cells. And we learnt that a ‘mock orange shrub’ is called a ’syringa’…

 

…and Tuesday’s crossword is a repeat of Monday’s, a nice stroll for the little grey cells and we only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24). We did slightly cock up 6 down ‘Armstrong or Sharman, say (9)’ by assuming it referred to famous Alexanders, when it was actually about ‘astronauts’! Again, we forgot to check the intersecting letters when we plumped for ‘emblem’ for ‘logo (6)’, when the answer was ‘symbol’, which we would have known if we checked the intersecting letters. And we really should have gotten ‘greatly’ from ‘much’, but aside from that a pretty good grid today…

…and Wednesday’s crossword goes practically perfectly with us only having to cheating on one of the 21 clues. The answers for the bottom half of the grid were straight forward, but we just had a total mind block on 1 across ‘selfish (13)’, which also blocked us getting many of the other clues in the top half of the grid. But once we were given the answer, ‘inconsiderate’ the rest of the top half just came lickety split…

…and things go downhill with Thursday’s crossword, as we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 23). Whoop an Illuminati score, the only upside from today’s grid! We found this grid a bit too chewy and just couldn’t get into it and getting the answers that we did felt like a major achievement! But it does mean that we learnt lots! That ‘Iona’ is a ‘Hebridean island, where in 563 St Columba founded a monastery’, that ‘Copers’ is the old name for horse dealers, that ‘avowal’ is a synonym for ‘statement’ and that ‘Dido’ was the founding Queen of Carthage, hopefully tomorrows grid will go better…

…nope, Friday’s crossword went even worse as we had to cheat on a quarter of the clues (five out of 21). This a bit of an odd grid, the 16 clues we got came easily enough, but we just couldn’t get our head around those last five. We should have gotten ‘chip’ from ‘fragment broken off’, ‘ashamed’ from ‘sorry’ and ‘alarmist’ from ‘one who worries others needlessly’, but we just couldn’t, like we had some kinda word blindness to those answers! And a tad annoyed that we didn’t get ‘sceptre’ from ‘ceremonial staff’, through that is because we thought staff meant workers and didn’t think it meant staff as in an object! But we did learn that ‘Echo’ was the ‘Nymph who loved Narcissus’, which is cool…  

…things take a bit of an upswing with Saturday’s crossword, as we only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 23). This was a bit of a chewy grid, but with a bit of time, for pondering, the little grey cells managed to get most of the grid. For some reason we just couldn’t get ‘ghastly’ from ‘gruesome’, even with the intersecting letters, but we did learn that ‘alacrity’ is a synonym for ‘eagerness’ and that the ‘lyre’ was the ‘instrument played by Orpheus’…