Working from home this week…finished off my Christmas shopping and got some treats for myself, like ‘Tenet’:
…one of the very few films released in cinemas this year post-Covid, although I haven’t watched it yet. I also got this month’s Mojo:
…mostly for the Stone Roses article (which is about the second album and the band splitting up and is pretty brief), the 2021 preview and the excellent/interesting cover CD, featuring “15 new garage rock nuggets”. And the latest Private Eye, Scream (which has some nice articles on ‘The Ghost Breakers’ and ‘John Carpenter's The Thing’) and Lego Star Wars magazines:
…I also got this week’s New Comic Book Day gems:
…and the postman delivered a whole slew of goodies:
…my copy of ‘Future’ (which I backed via Kickstarter) and Mark Thomas’s ’50 Things About Us’ (which, if it’s like his previous work, should be both thought provoking and fun), and copies of the Japanese release of the Spanish version of ‘Sticky Fingers’ by The Rolling Stones (which omits ‘Sister Morphine’ for a live version of ‘Let It Rock’ and has a different cover, but aside from that is the same as the “normal” version, which is a great album) and Cherrystones new compilation of obscure punky dancey music that fell through the cracks.
My copy of Jockey Slut’s tribute to Andrew Weatherall also arrived and it’s a great read and brought back memories of lots of great music and nights out/in with friends and underlined what a unique role in played the artistic world. The only downside is that it’s too short, it feels like the contributors had a lot more stories to tell!
…I went for a Long Walk on Saturday:
…and later on that day our Prime Minister Boris Johnson (which still feels very weird to type!) announced that London, the South and South East would be going into Tier 4 restrictions (from midnight tonight, Saturday 19th Dec), due to a new strain of Covid. Which is troubling as (a) we previously only had three Tiers, (b) there’s a new strain of Covid, and (c) that it feels like a lot of this could have been avoided if the Government had acted quickly and learnt the lessons of previous Lockdowns and restriction measures. Although it seems the only chance to my daily routine is that non-essential shops will be closed, I can still go out for exercise, still go to work and still go food shopping. Which just means that I can’t pop to the comic shop or clothes shop or HMV or go socially ☹
…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a grand start, as we only had to cheat on a twenty-fourth of the clues (one out of 24). We took our time, took things back to basics (like writing out the letters and spaces for the clues we weren’t sure about, which for some reason triggers some part of the brain that just looking at the letters and spaces doesn’t – when I was looking at ‘P_N_S_’ I couldn’t think of what it could be, but when I wrote it out ‘PUNISH’ just stood out!) and only missed out on ‘as good as’ from ‘virtually’…
…and Tuesday’s crossword goes pretty well too, we only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 23). The little grey cells just continued to knock out the answers, with clue after clue tumbling before their might! (except for a couple 😊) And we learnt that a ‘poet’ is a ‘versifier’ and that ‘impasto’ is an ‘artistic technique using thick layers of paint’…
…and Wednesday’s crossword keeps up the good work as we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 25). We got stuck on ‘private coaches’, trying to think up synonyms for ‘bus’, but then it just trigged that the answer was ‘tutors’. We also got stuck on ‘in’, trying to think of 11 letter words being entrance or foyer or access, so it’s not surprising that we didn’t think of ‘fashionable’ and we learnt that ‘doobry’ means ‘whatsit’…
…while Thursday’s crossword goes even better as we only had to cheat on one of the 24 clues – ‘long-haired Turkish cat or rabbit’, we went with ‘Angola’, which is so close to the right answer of ‘Angora’, just one letter out, but you shouldn’t complain when you just drop one clue…
…Friday’s crossword goes the same way, off the 22 clues we only had to cheat on ‘Ford UK model made from 1950 to 1972’, which learnt was the ‘Zephyr’. The little grey cells have been on top form this week, but will it continue with tomorrows climax???
…Saturday’s crossword goes pretty flyingly. Or at least most of the clues did, only an eighth of the clues (three out of 26) proved to be a problem. We didn’t get ‘sleazebag’ from ‘despicable person (informal)’, we nearly got ‘tyrannous’ from ‘unjustly severe’, we just couldn’t get the last three letters. And we learnt that taboo can be spelt ‘tabu’…all in all a pretty great crossword week…
No comments:
Post a Comment