Lockdown II continues, and nothing is really happening, except for working, food shopping and passive consumption of TV/films/podcasts and the following (although a weird thing about Lockdown II is that I haven’t been able to use the time to get up to date with this blog! I’m still about a month behind). My copy of REACTOR23's Fo23ver EP arrived via the post (a rather fetching EP of ambience and drones and a book and a CD audiobook of the book):
…the postman also delivered my copy of ‘One & Future’ #13, which I think I will save for reading till I have all six issues of this story, and the album ‘Keith Richards and the X-Pensive Winos Live at the Hollywood Palladium’:
…which is a pretty decent rock ‘n’ roll album (with dashes of reggae and soul), the fun and joy and excitement of being at a concert is captured, and it gets close to being as good as peak Stone’s live albums. And I know I shouldn’t compare both bands, but it’s kinda hard not to do when you’re talking about one of the Stones. I also read ‘The Weight of Them’ and ‘The Fire Never Goes Out’ both by Noelle Stevenson:
…which are both autobiographic and both pretty heavy, ‘The Fire…’ is basically Noelle’s diary of her late teen’s to mid-twenties told via comics she made at the time, while ‘The Weight…’ (available as a pdf comic) concentrates on her thoughts/feelings about her gender identify and body issues and how she decided to have breast reduction surgery so that the physicality of her body matched up with how she felt it should. Or at least that is how I read/understand it. Both books are very open and honest and heart-warming. And reassuring, there’s a universalness to that feeling of slightly not belong, off being slightly out of step and not knowing why and then finding out why you feel that way and being able to let go of baggage and be closer to your true self. …I also got the latest issue of Mojo and a load of Lego magazines (for the free Lego sets, which I find relaxing to put together):
…and I watched the last ever episode of ‘Supernatural’, which has a few issues, but more or less went out how I thought it should. That as God is no longer manipulating Sam and Dean, things aren’t as chaotic for them and they live a much more normal life, although they continue hunting and eventually they die and are reunited in Heaven. You can tell that the Covid restrictions limited some of what should have happened, like a lack of guest stars/familiar faces from the past, but the underlining emotional arc was there. And on Saturday I went for a Long Walk (and saw some early Xmas decorations):
…and I picked up my National Lottery winnings (£3.30, yay!):
…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and the week gets off to a pretty stellar start, the little grey cells cut through the clues like a tank squad through a trainyard and we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 23) and we really should have gotten ‘cusp’ from ‘turning point’ and ‘symbol’ from ‘character with a conventional significance’, although we got stuck thinking about character’s as people/individuals and not as letters or marks…
…Tuesday’s crossword was a bit of a head scratcher, we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (four out 25) and it took ages to get the grid finished. I’d argue if ‘on this there is no guarantee of a profit’ as a good clue for ‘spec’, and we got our dates muddled with ‘Russian chess world champion, 1975-85’, instead of going with ‘Karpov’, we went with ‘Kasparov’, who can afterwards (and who we thought had a six letter surname!)…
…and Wednesday’s grid went even worse, lots more head scratching as we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 21). We just couldn’t get a handle on it. But we did learn that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a novel called ‘Kidnapped’, that a ‘Malacca’ is a ‘cane made from a rattan palm’, hopefully its just a stumble and the rest of the week goes better…
…Thursday’s grid goes much better, we only had to cheat on an eighth of clues (three out of 24) and the little grey cells didn’t have to chew over the majority of the clues. And we learnt that a ‘guard around fireplace’ is called a ‘fender’…
…Friday’s crossword goes pretty poorly, lots of head scratching and having to cheat on a little over a quarter of the clues (four out of 18). Most of the clues were straight forward and required minimal chewing over, but those four completely stumped us, like we couldn’t even think of one possibility that might fit in the grid, but we did learn that ‘aperture’ is a synonym for ‘hole’…
…and Saturday’s crossword ends a pretty meh week for crosswording. We had to cheat on a fifth of the clues and again it took ages and a lot of head scratching to finish the grid. And in hindsight we should have gotten ‘muse’ from ‘ponder’ and ‘virtuous’ from ‘honourable’, but we did learn that ‘solecism’ is a synonym for ‘faux pas’...roll on next week…
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