Aka Monday 27th July 2020 - Sunday 2nd August 2020
(which is being written up in late August, hence the brevity of the below!)
…a pretty quiet week this week, I was on annual leave, so no work this work. The main highlight of the week being binging Season 2 of ‘The Umbrella Academy’ (based on the comicbook series 'The Umbrella Academy'). It’s weird to think that a few months ago binging a boxset instead of going out was seen as something a bit geeky and guilty, but now it’s the new normal. Anyway, Season 2 opens straight from the end of Season 1, scattering the Academy across Dallas in the various years in the early Sixties. We then follow Vanya, Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus (with Justin) and Number Five, as they adapt to the Sixties, including trying to prevent JFK’s assassination and another apocalypse! The time travel McGuffin allows the show to explore issues like racism, homophobia, women’s rights and family dynamics, and allows the family to work out some of their issues and get to happier places. And there’s also plenty of comicbook ultraviolence. Season Two is as much fun as Season One, while delving deeper into the relationships between various family members, allowing them to resolve things and become more united. Which should stand them in good stead as the cliff hanger ending defo changes things up…
…the other highlight was making a Cherry Almond Tart with my nephew (which tasted okay, but not as nice as a Mr Kipling cake 😊, the first picture is now the professional version looked):
…the postman delivered my Claremont 56 keyring:
…Claremont 56 is a record label, which leans towards the Balearic/chilled out end of the musical spectrum…I also got this week’s New Comic Book Day gems:
…and I have to say that ‘Pulp’ was a joy to read, an engaging read that is beautiful to look at, telling the tale of Max Winter, an old man, with a secretish past, trying to get by in ‘30’s New York, as the World seems to be falling into a horrific present. I won’t say anything more about the plot/story, if you’ve read any of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips previous work you won’t need any convincing to pick up ‘Pulp’, if you haven’t, then I don’t want to spoil it for you by saying to much. Except that anything by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips is at least entertaining and head and shoulders above most of everything else being published and if their work isn’t an automatic purchase for you, you’re missing out.
…as well as watching ‘The Umbrella Academy’ I also watched ‘BlackkKlansman’, which was okay, but felt pretty light and fluffy. ‘The Dead Zone’, which is a fun supernatural thriller with a great Christopher Walken performance, ‘The Grudge’, the US remake of the Japanese original, which manages to stay pretty much as scary as the original, ‘The Princess Bride’, which stills remains funny and enchanting on the hundredth watch and ‘Weekend At Bernie’s’ and ‘Weekend At Bernie’s II’, which I had seen in like 15 years, but are still funny (ranging from slapstick to Marx Brothersque one liners) with a nice sentimental touches (although some of the Caribbean scenes do feel a tad dated)…and I went for a Long Walk on Saturday:
…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a mediocre start as we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 24). Most of the clues were straight forward to get, and a tip of the hat to multiple viewings of Where Eagles Dare which meant that we knew that a ‘German castle’ is a ‘schloss’. But I guess that the little grey cells weren’t fully warmed up after the weekend, as we should have gotten four of those five. Although for ‘play ball (2-7) we were stuck on thinking about sports/ball-games and not its more general usage, so didn’t get ‘co-operate’, but we did learn that ‘Togo’ is a ‘French-speaking West African country, capital Lome’…
…but Tuesday’s crossword goes much better, we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). The little grey cells were defo firing on all cylinders and just steamed through the clues flattening them into answers in no time at all. There was no way that we would have gotten ‘Cabot’ for 11 across ‘Italian leader of the 1497 English expedition to the east coast of today’s Canada’, but I think we would have gotten ‘libido’ from ‘Freud’s sex drive’, if we haven’t got stuck on Freud related sex thing which we won’t mention in case it provokes amateur psychoanalysis!…
…and we take a stumble with Wednesday’s crossword as we had to cheat on a quarter of the clues (five out of 21). It wasn’t that those five clues were all ultra-hard, I just don’t think we spent enough time thinking them through. We should have gotten ‘acetic’ from ‘tasting like vinegar’, but we went with ‘acidic’, or ‘once’ from ‘formerly’, but we went with ‘late’. And I’m not sure how we missed ‘trustee’ from ‘person with legal ownership of property to be used solely for specified purpose’, but we did learn that ‘roux’ is a ‘fat and flour mixture, cooked and used to make sauces’ and that a ‘minim’ is a ‘musical note’…
…and Thursday’s crossword went meh, we had to cheat on over a fifth of the clues (five out of 23), but it did give us an Illuminati score which is nice. Again, most of the clues were pretty straight forward, but those five just stumped us, although we should have gotten ‘treaties’ from ‘accords’ and ‘Basque’ from ‘close-fitting bodice – European language’. So, we learnt that ‘Petanque’ is the ’French form of bowls’ (for a moment we were trying to thinking of French words for bowls that you eat out of, before we got that they meant the game bowls! Which we thought was spelt Boules?), that a ‘gaff’ is a ‘hook used to land fish’ and that ‘Gershwin’ composed Rhapsody in Blue…
…and things went better with Friday’s crossword as we only had to cheat on a tenth of the clues (two out of 21). The little grey cells swashbuckled their way through the clues like Errol Flynn! And we learnt that the ‘Norwegian parliament’ is called the ‘Storting’ and that a ‘legal pardon’ is also called an ‘amnesty’ (which we should have got)…
…and Saturday’s crossword ends the week on an okay note, as we had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 23). Although, due to our lack of geography knowledge, we would never have gotten ‘Amritsar’ from ’Indian city, centre of the Sikh faith’, ‘Marmara’ from ‘inland Turkish sea between the Dardanelles and the Bosporus’ or ‘Nineveh’ from ‘ancient city on the Tigris’. And we learnt that ‘husbanding’ means ‘using frugally’…
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