Monday, 20 July 2020

Days 2043 - 2049


Aka Monday 22nd June - Sunday 28th June 2020
 
…a pretty quiet week this week, working and as the temperature increased over the week it increasingly got shitty, it was too hot and everyone is getting was getting on my nerves (or maybe that should be vice versa?)...but  I did manage to meet up with some friends in a garden and enjoy some snacks, vodka and company in relative normality…anyway aside from that I:

…went to comic book store for the first time in ages and got my New Comic Book Day comics first hand and not via the post (although the Green Lantern: Second Season #3 did come through the post!):





…got the latest Mojo:


…mostly out of habit and without checking it out first, which I should of done as the main features were about bands/singers I’m not big fans of and the cover CD is chock full of bands I don’t like. Although it was almost worth getting it for the cover of Paul Weller looking very much like Ebony Maw from Avengers: Infinity War!


…I also got ‘The Ladies of Too Slow To Disco Vol. 2’, which is a great compilation of disco-y songs that a tad too slow to be full on 70’s disco, tales of love and loss and sorrow and fun, but fit perfectly onto modern disco floors, especially the more downtempo ones. They’re also equally suited to being listened too while lounging around the pool/yacht/yacht club/BBQ. A great collection of songs.

…I didn’t go for a long walk at the weekend, when I woke up in the morning I just felt to, to tired to do it and by the time I was feeling more with it, it was too hot out for a Long Walk…but I did make a Lego Snowplow/Snow vehicle:

     

                                   













…which will, one day be part of my homemade The Thing Lego set!

…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:


…and Monday’s crossword goes pretty well, especially compared to last Saturday’s, and gets the week off to a grand start. The little grey cells strolled through the clues, we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 23), dispensing answers like bon mots. Like, getting ‘trellis’ from ‘frame for creepers’ gave us the ‘l’ for the clue ‘improvise (2, 3)’ and that ‘l’ immediately gave the answer as ‘ad lib’. And we really should have gotten ‘prospect’ from ‘outlook’ and ‘cyst’ from ‘thin-walled cavity containing liquid’, but we got stuck on thinking about architectural walls and cavities and ignored that the clue could be referencing something biological…


…and Tuesday’s crossword was a little trickier than yesterday’s grid, it was more of a ramble than a stroll and we ended up have to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 25). For example, 2 down ‘dry white Burgundy wine (5)’ was a blank, I’m not a wine connoisseur and my wine knowledge doesn’t go much beyond there being three types of wine – red, white and Rose. But we got the intersecting letters ‘M_C_N’ which suggested that the missing letters were vowels and it made sense to try ‘a’ and ‘o’ as they seemed to fit best. And they did! Score one for us 😊 And we learnt that a ‘Llama’ is an ‘Andean animal’ (and I now see that Andean refers to the Andes) and that the ‘style of Greek column used for the British Museum and the US Capitol’ is ‘ionic’…


…and it’s a tad downhill with Wednesday’s crossword as we had to cheat on a seventh of the clues (three out of 21). Which isn’t bad, is pretty average. With the little grey cells strolling through the clues with only a few stumbles. Like I’d argue that ‘read with difficulty’ is a bit of a misleading clue for ‘decipher’, but we did learn that an ‘end of flight without the wheels down’ is called a ‘belly landing’…


…and things continue to go downhill with Thursday’s crossword, the little grey cells stumbled a few times and we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 24). We just couldn’t get our head in the game, it was a struggle to get going on this grid and we missed a few obvious ones, like ‘jaunty’ from ‘cheerful’. But we did learn that the ‘state represented by senators Barry Goldwater and John McCain’ is ‘Arizona’, that ‘Montana’ is a ‘north-western state bordering Canada’ and that a ‘Lapwing’ is a ‘large Plover’ and that Plovers are “short-billed gregarious wading bird, typically found by water but sometimes frequenting grassland, tundra, and mountains”…


…and there’s a small bump in the downward trajectory with Friday’s crossword, as we only had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (three out of 18). We took our time and the little grey cells powered through most of the clues, it was only those three that we had any problems with. We should have gotten ‘clinical’ from ‘coldly detached’, but we did learn that ‘Derby’ is a ‘cathedral city on the river Derwent’ and that a ‘Ceilidh’ is a ‘Celtic folk music event’…


…and Saturday’s crossword crashes into the floor and we had to cheat on a third of the clues (six out of 19). It was a real struggle to get going on this grid, and we never really did. It took ages just to get a few of the clues. Maybe it was the drinks from last night? But we did learn that a ‘gibbet’ is an ‘old hanging frame’, that a ‘Mahout’ is an elephant rider, that ‘cerise’ means ‘cherry-red’ and that ‘sequester’ means ‘confiscate’. So not a good week for acing grids, but plenty of learning going on!...



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