Aka Monday 8th November - Sunday 28th November 2021
…we start this “trinight” with my back pretty much back to normal, just a small twinge now and then, but nothing to worry about…and we me having finished reading ‘The Sleepwalker’ by Joseph Knox...
…which tells the story of DC Aidan Waits, a detective in the Manchester Police and Martin Wick, a terminally ill serial killer…or is he. Mr Wick is murdered and with his dying breath claims that he is innocent. A claim that DC Waits investigates, while trying to stay ahead of past bad decisions as they start to catch up with him. It’s an engaging and enjoyable dark tale of people trying to do the right thing, of being decent and not letting in to our darker, self-interested instincts. Although using the word enjoyable feels a little weird given how dark the story gets…I also started and finished ‘Tenement Kid’ by Bobby Gillespie, lead singer of Primal Scream, which tells his life story up to the release of ‘Screamadelica’. And it tells of a hard/tough upbringing as a working-class kid in ‘60/’70/’80s Scotland and how Rock ‘n’ Roll and Acid House saved him from the drudgery of doing a dead-end job you don’t enjoy. Gillespie does a great job of describing what life is like for those who don’t have many options, how the policies started by Thatcher have removed a lot of the social safety net that once existed and have left a lot of people surviving rather than living and how art, in this case Rock ‘n’ Roll and Acid House, can be an escape route out of a grey, average life, and into the early years of two great bands The Jesus & Mary Chain and Primal Scream …
…on Thursday 11th November 2021 I had an attack at work, I’d just been in for about twenty minutes when I suddenly felt very, very unwell and couldn’t breathe, not in the sense that I was gasping for air, but more like the oxygen in the air was getting through my lungs into my blood or that I’d just forgotten how to breathe. The first aider called an ambulance and I spent what felt like ages sitting down just trying to get back to normal. The ambulance came and the crew checked my heart and lungs and couldn’t find anything to warrant going to A&E, so called my GP to arrange an appointment and suggested that I get some bedrest. Which I did. The GP arranged of me to have some blood tests, which I did the next day.
On Friday I still felt knackered and unwell and Mum drove us to hospital to have blood taken for the tests. I had to wait for forty minutes before they took my blood and I was very up and down for that time. I did manage to do a quick food shop afterwards, to stock up for my bed rest, which went a bit better, but it did only take ten minutes or so and I was driven there and back.
It took nearly a fortnight to feel better (Sunday 21st) and during that time felt knackered and unwell, but it came in peaks and troughs, so for most of the time I felt okayish, not too bad, but then suddenly, out of the blue, I’d feel dreadful, with a painful chest (about a five or six out of ten) for between a few minutes of an hour or so. And then, about halfway through I got a bad toothache, which made it difficult to sleep and it came to peak/end when my crown came out! Which, in hindsight wasn’t bad going as I’d had the crown for a little over twenty years! And luckily my dentist was able to refit it two days after it came out. Also during this time I had an echocardiogram and am now waiting to have an angiogram, to see if they is an issue with my cardiovascular system. I was then back in the office for Monday 22nd to Wednesday 24th and it was a bit of struggle, I’d get chest pains and feel breathless at random intervals, but I managed to get through it okay…as part of my bed rest/recovery I did watch a few films:
I had a bit of a noir binge and rewatched ‘The 39 Steps, ‘Murder, My Sweet’ and ‘The Big Sleep’, which you could look at as stories about men being affected by events/people outside of their control or being dragged into a situation outside of their control…mmm, it’s almost like I could relate to that as I recovery from my mysterious malady! I also watched the neo-noir ‘Red Rock West’ for the first time and really enjoyed it. It stars Nicolas Cage as a man down on his luck, looking for work and mistaken for a hitman. And it gets worse from them. A highly enjoyable film full of twists, femme fatales, double-crossing and very bad bad guys.
…I also watched ‘Angel Has Fallen’, which was a dumb, but watchable actioner, the fun ’Horror Express’, a nice horror film about a mind swapping alien starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas, as a mad Cossack!
…I also watched ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’, which I found to be just meh, just your average MCU film, nothing special. More enjoyable was ‘Bringing Out The Dead’, another Nic Cage film which follows a New York ambulance driver on the edge during a weekend night shift and it has a great cast - Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames, and Tom Sizemore – and soundtrack. Very enjoyable.
…and when I wasn’t being ill or watching films I got this “trinights” New Comic Book Day gems:
…and I got ‘Blade Runner 2049’, mostly for the bonus films, as I’ve already seen ‘Blade Runner 2049’ and it looks great, but story wise it felt a bit meh, and the bonus films were pretty good and added a little more to the backstory of the main film:
…I also got ‘Czarface Meets Metal Face’ by Czarface and MF Doom:
…which was okay, some nice beats and lyrics, but nothing outstanding or memorable. I also got the live Primal Scream album ‘Live at Levitation’:
…which collects highlights from their 2015 appearance at the Levitation festival, nine tracks of psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll ‘n’ acid house excellence…and I got the latest issues of ‘Shindig!’ and ‘Mojo’:
…primarily for the articles on Primal Scream, The Rolling Stones and Spiritualized. And the postman delivered the latest Kyle Starks Sticker Club stickers:
…and he delivered Courtney Barnett’s ‘Things Take Time, Take Time’ (which I enjoyed), a second copy of Primal Scream’s ‘Demodelica’ (a slight memory lapse meant that I’d forgotten I’d pre-ordered it!), The Soulsavers and Dave Gahan’s ‘Imposter’ (which is an awesome collection of covers that find something new to do with the songs) and ‘Spring Event’ by Tom Moulton (which I haven’t listened to yet):
…and the new GCOM album 'E2-XO':
…which very much continues the Global Communication sound and evolves it (into an Universal Language to be Heard…a little in joke there for GC/Tom and Mark fans) and the postman delivered my CD and DVD copies of ‘Oasis: Knebworth 1996’:
…which I watched while reading ‘Oasis: Supersonic’, which brought back a lot of memories of the mid and late ‘90s and just how big socially and musically Oasis were and of a time before smart phones and the internet took hold. Also during this “trinight”, I picked up some more National Lottery winnings:
…sadly not enough to retire on…and I did the first week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a flying start as we only had to cheat on one of the 22 clues. Once again, the little grey cells have rested well over the weekend and have knocked it out of the park on Monday…but will they be able to keep it up??? Although we did miss the easy ‘heated’ from ‘passionate’, which is a tad annoying…
…Tuesday’s grid went almost as well, thanks to the little grey cells we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 23). Our back pain is almost completely gone, the little grey cells are knocking it out of the park and we learnt that ‘trey’ means a playing card or die with three spots and is therefore ‘one of four playing cards in a deck’…
…Wednesday’s grid goes just as well, we only had to cheat on a thirteenth of the clues (two out of 25). With the fork the little grey cells are on, maybe these are our halcyon crosswording days? Must be all of our clean living and early nights! And we learnt that Somalia is in the Horn of Africa…
…we only had to cheat on an eleventh of the clues (two out of 21) for Thursday’s grid, which is surprising consider that this morning we had a weird attack, where we had troubling breathing for around an hour or so. At points we felt like we couldn’t breathe, had no energy, could speak or think clearly and then a few minutes later we’d feel better, then a few more minutes later we were back to be all done-in. Not a nice feeling. I was at work at the time and an ambulance was called, luckily, they couldn’t find anything wrong with me that warranted a visit to A&E. They contacted my GP and now it’s more bedrest and tests. Maybe this time I’ll get an answer to what is wrong with me, and get back to normal…
…I think yesterday’s attack, and the continuing symptoms of an achy chest, tiredness and breathlessness, meant that Friday’s grid was a wash-out. We had to cheat on a fifth of the clues, which in the circumstances is probably a good result! And we learnt that ‘rollmop’ is ‘pickled herring fillet’, that a ‘Coypu’ is a ‘furry South American rodent’, that a ‘Comma’ is a type of butterfly, that ‘tulle’ is ‘fine material used for veils’ and that ‘sisal’ is ‘coarse material used for ropes’…
…things perk up with Saturday’s grid, and despite still feeling unwell and as weak as a kitten, we only had to cheat on one of the 18 clues! Although it is slightly annoying that we forgot about ‘Iceland’, otherwise it would have been a clean sweep!...
…and I did the second week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and Monday’s crossword gets our fifth day of bedrest off to a good start as we only had to cheat on one of the nineteen clues. The little grey cells were at their finest, resolving clues like it’s nothing and we learnt that ‘Basilica’ is both an architectural style of church and a church “with certain privileges conferred on it by the Pope”…
…our crossword solving took a right tumble with Tuesday’s grid, we had to cheat on a fifth of the clues (five out of 24) and we feel lucky that it wasn’t worse. We just couldn’t get a grip on the grid and make that leap from the clue to the answer…it was just blank. Like we know that a ‘ready Reckoner’ is an ‘old handbook of tables giving precalculated values’, that ‘short and sweet’ means ‘efficiently brief’ and that an ‘adult insect’ is called an ‘imago’, but we just couldn’t reach them, just couldn’t remember them. But we did learn that ‘bumptious’ means ‘arrogant’…
…but things are back on track with Wednesday’s grid, the little grey cells trashed the clues and we only had to cheat on a twelfth of them (two out of 23)…or the clues were easier! And it’s probably the latter as we know that ‘serve’ means to ‘spend (time in prison)’ and that ‘crab apple’ is a ‘small sour fruit used for making jam and jelly’, but we couldn’t recall them…
…Thursday’s grid went even better, we only had to cheat on a thirteenth of the clues (two out of 25). But again, we forgot a couple of easy ones – ‘gambit’ from ‘tactical move’ and ‘evenly’ from ‘in a uniform way’ – we just couldn’t recall them…maybe if we’d given ourselves more time, we might have gotten them…maybe…
…Friday’s grid goes well as well, we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). We went a bit too fancy with ‘overshadowed’ and mistakenly went with ‘usurrped’ instead of ‘upstaged’, but we did learn that a ‘Gite’ is a ‘French holiday house in the country’…
…and Saturday’s grid ends the week on a high note, as we only had to cheat on an eleventh of the clues (two out of 22). Apart from Tuesday, the little grey cells have been flying all week, a refugee from my ill-health, Although, like before, we should have gotten those two that we missed – ‘cobalt’ from ‘kind of deep blue – metal’ and ‘dinky’ from ‘small and appealing (informal)…onwards to next week…
…and I did the third week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to an okay start, we had to cheat on a ninth of the clues (three out of 26). It took the little grey cells a while to get to grip with the grid, but once they did it went okay. And we learnt that an ‘adze’ is a ‘wood shaping tool’, that ‘verdigris’ is the ‘green patina that forms on copper, brass and bronze’ and that ‘gull’ can mean to take in or hoax…
…and things go worse with Tuesday’s grid, we had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 24). I think maybe the little grey cells are a little tired as we couldn’t get a handle on the grid and we missed some easy ones, but we did learn that an ‘unguent’ is a ‘soothing balm’…
…and things go even worse with Wednesday’s grid, we had to cheat on a quarter of the clues (six out of 24)! A very poor performance, but we just couldn’t make that cognitive leap from the clue to the answer. We missed out some obvious ones, like ‘malign’ from ‘speak ill of’ or ‘peeping Tom’ from ‘male spies?’ But we did learn that ‘Rye’ is ‘one of the old Cinque Ports in Sussex’…
…Thursday’s grid goes just as poorly, again we had to cheat on a quarter of the clues (five out of 21). It’s like the little grey cells have regressed to their pre-crosswording state and just can’t get to grip with the clues, like not getting ’pitcher’ from ‘large jug’ or going for ‘hard-boiled egg’ and not ‘soft-boiled egg’ for ‘content of a cup at breakfast?’ But we did learn that ‘Timon’ was ‘Shakespeare’s unwise Athenian philanthropist who goes broke’…
…and there’s no real improvement with Friday’s grid, although we did get an Illuminati score (having to cheat on five of the 23 clues), which we haven’t had for ages! Again, the little grey cells underperformed, and we should have gotten most of those five, although I’m still not sure why ‘townie’ is the answer to ‘one gets lost in the countryside’?...
…and Saturday’s crossword ends a pretty poor week on a meh note, as we had to cheat on a seventh of the clues (three out of 21). At least the little grey cells found this grid a little easier to get a handle on, but the three we missed, in hindsight, we should have gotten, like ‘violate’ from ‘breach’. Maybe the little grey cells have been performing so well lately that they’re just a bit burnt out and hopefully next week’s grids go better…
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