Days 2099 - 2105

Aka Monday 17^th August - Sunday 23^rd August 2020

A quiet week this week, plus I’m writing this in late earlyish October, yes behind again, so this will be a quick one…this week I brought Mojo, mainly for the ‘Goats Head Soup’ article (and the Morricone article), like with Uncut, it gives  a bit more background to the making of the ‘Goats Head Soup’ album, ahead of its reissue…

…the post man delivered my Rachael Smith pin arrived:

 

…which is taken from one of her Quarantine Comix (which are one of the few good things to come out of Lockdown):

…and he also delivered my copy of ‘Sleuth’:

 

…a great mystery/thriller starring two great actors and a great twisty story…I also picked up this week’s New Comic Book Day gems:

…brought Lego Star Wars magazine (I got two copies because you can’t just have one Stormtrooper) and built a Star Destroyer:

...and I went for a Long Walk:

…watched a load of murder mysteries:

 

…which I’ve seen before, but I guess that’s why I spent the weekend watching them. Inn these uncertain times it’s comforting to fall into something familiar and reassuring and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a pretty great start, especially after last week’s poor show, as we only had to cheat on one of the 24 clues: the clue was ‘shelf’ and for some reason we couldn’t get from that to ‘ledge’, but apart from that the rest of the clues fell easily, like leaves from a tree in Autumn time…

…and Tuesday’s crossword goes a little askew as we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (5 out of 24). But, to be fair four of them we could never have gotten, which means that we learnt that ‘alack’ means ‘unfortunately’, that the ‘Volga’ is the ‘longest European river, flowing into the Caspian Sea’, that an ‘awn’ is a ‘stiff bristle growing from an ear of barley, for example’ (why does it have its own name, what’s wrong with bristle’…?) and that ‘Ernst’ was a ‘German painter Max, a pioneer of Dada, d.1976’, some nice learning there…

…and things go further askew with Wednesday’s crossword, as we had to cheat on nearly a third of the clues (six out of 21). The little grey cells and me were really stumped by this grid ☹. I would have thought that now the heat has died down and we could get a proper night’s sleep we’d be back to our crossword best, but no, it seems not. Like now could we not get ‘mature’ from ‘ripen’ or ‘zing’ from ‘zest – energy’. I guess the rot set in when we didn’t bother to check if ‘uprest’ fitted as the answer to ‘turmoil’, but we did learn that ‘Xhosa’ is a ‘Bantu language related to Zulu’. Fingers crossed that the rest of the week goes better…

…and Thursday’s crossword does go better, we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 23). And those two we had no way of knowing the answers, so basically we got all the answers we possibly could and learnt that a ‘theatre stage’ is know as a ‘proscenium’ and that ‘Rialto’ is the ‘area that’s the commercial heart of Venice’. Maybe the little grey cells are rested enough to make a crossword comeback…

…and things continue to flow famously with Friday’s crossword as we only had to cheat on a tenth of the clues (two out of 21). But it should have been a clean sweep – we know about ‘malt’ and should have gotten it from ‘cereal grain that’s been germinated and kiln-dried and used in distilling’ and the intersecting letters. And after years of reading Asterix we defo should have gotten ‘Gaul’ from ‘ancient region of north-western Europe’, but still a good performance…

…and Saturday’s crossword concludes the week on a meh note as we had to cheat on nearly a fifth of the clues (five out of 23). But it does give as a rare Illuminati score! And we learnt that ‘limpid’ means ‘clear’, that ‘Monterey’ is a ‘California City, setting for Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and that a ‘Lied’ is an ‘art song for voice and piano’…