Days 2628 - 2641

Aka Monday 31st January - Sunday 13th February 2022

Another quietish fortnight (I think, as I’m writing this up in April!!!), spent time catching up on my reading, specifically the 2000AD partwork ‘Strontium Dog’ series:

…which was great fun. The premise of ‘Strontium Dog’, a sci-fi western bounty hunter, is open enough to gives creators (primarily John Wagner, Alan Grant and Carlos Ezquerra) scope to tell a variety of stories, from straight forward actioners to comedies to epic tales of tragedy, prejudice and revenge and the aftermath, the toll it takes on the human soul. What’s amazing is that the quality of these stories is kept up across the many volumes and rarely dips. And Ezquerra art is perfect and it’s lovely to see how it develops over the years and stories…during this epic read the postman delivered:

…’Echolands’ #6, an enjoyable read, with fantastic art, but, a few months on, I can’t really remember what happened in the story. So, it might be the case of changing from monthly issues to the collected editions? Although, it’d be cheaper to stick to monthly, but with the ‘cost of living crisis’ can I justify it when the story is “merely” enjoyable? On the other hand, the new edition of ‘Wired Up Wrong’ is great! Rachael Smith’s comics perfectly combining humour, pathos and empathy and ‘Wired Up Wrong’ is a delight to read and at a minimum will give you a chuckle and something to consider/think about…I also went into town and got ‘Last Night In Soho’:

…which I haven’t watch yet, but has got very good write ups, ’The Greatest Albums You’ll Never Hear’, as it was at the till when I got ‘Last Night…’ and it was on special offer if £1.99 and features a fair few bands/artists I like so was a bit of a no-brainer:

…and I got this fortnight’s New Comic Book Day’s highlights:

…and I got the latest ‘Lego Star Wars’ magazine, for the Millennium Falcon toy:

…on Thursday 3rd February 2022 I had an angiogram, which should tell us if there’s anything wrong in the ole cardiovascular system. It was weird going through it though, as you have to keep your heart rate lowish, but the pressure/stress of have the angiogram tends to increase it. And once it’s at a level level the trace material is injected and you can feel it flowing through you, it’s like a warmth flowing through you and, as I was warned, once it reaches your groin it feels like you’ve wet yourself. But it only lasts for ten, maybe twenty seconds and then it’s gone and you get up and go home and wait to hear back the results…I also went for a couple of Medium Walks this fortnight, the first on Saturday 5th February 2022:

…Sunday 13th February 2022:

…and I did the first week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a terrible, terrible start. We had to cheat on nearly a third of the clues! We just couldn’t get a handle on it…the little grey cells were not firing on many cylinders! Maybe it’s just depression at how things are going for ole Blighty, every hour seems to bring some new/further/continuing stupidity from our Government and it’s hanger-ons. And it’s not even the really serious stuff like the bills outlawing protests, travellers, citizenship, etc that are getting the attention <shaky head emoji> But we seek solace where we can and from today’s grid we learnt that a ‘tapered tuck in dressmaking’ is called a ‘dart’, that a ‘Roman Catholic priest’s house’ is called a ‘presbytery’ and that ‘amity’ means ‘friendliness’…

…things pick up with Tuesday’s grid. The little grey cells are back up to speed and we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 23). We couldn’t get ‘lugubrious’ from ‘eeyorish’ or ‘meteor’ from ‘night light?’, we just didn’t consider a meteor as a light, it was just too removed for us to consider it and we feel slightly cheated about it, although when I think of all the references to meteor’s in stories they are depicted as shining lights in the night sky!…

…Wednesday’s grid goes just as well, only having to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 23). The little grey cells are in their groove, and we learnt that ‘calumny’ means ‘slander’, which is nice to know…

…things dip a tad with Thursday’s grid, we had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 25). Maybe the little grey cells are a little burnt out? The grid was pretty straightforward but two of those three just stumped us, but we have re-learnt that ‘vehement’ means ‘forceful’ and we learnt that ‘Ariadne’ was a ‘Cretan princess who helped Theseus escape the Minotaur’…

…Friday’s grid goes much better, just had to cheat on one of the 21 clues. Even though we had all the intersecting letters, for some reason, we couldn’t get ‘mishaps’ from ‘unfortunate events!...

…and Saturday’s grid ends the week on a meh note, we had to cheat on a sixth of the clues. Maybe the little grey cells were tired from our morning constitution and couldn’t concentrate? As the four we didn’t get we really should have. Like how didn’t we get ‘edible’ from ‘good enough to eat’ or ‘bereft’ from ‘lacking! Shocking! Hopefully next week will go better……and I did the second week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a poor start as we had to cheat on nearly a quarter of the clues (four out of 18). We just couldn’t get to grips with the grid, maybe the little grey cells were feeling a little sluggish from our lie-in?  ‘Cos we really should have gotten ‘connect’ from ‘associate’ and ‘meant’ from ‘implied’. Plus, I’d argue that “one who claims to heed the voice of the people” is a bit of a misleading clue for ‘democrat’, as a democrat is someone who does heed the voice of the people, not just claim to. But that quibble aside we did learn that ‘splay’ means ‘turn out’…

…Tuesday’s grid went a bit better, we only had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (three out of 19). The little grey cells were a bit more awake and up to speed! Although we did miss ‘sienna’ from ‘yellow-brown pigment’, but we did learn that ‘vainglory’ means ‘excessive pride’ and that ‘au fait’ means ‘up to speed in French’, which is wunderbar…and I guess that not up to speed is non au fait?...

…Wednesday’s grid keeps the mehness going, as, again, we had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 24). Again, the little grey cells felt a little sluggish and just couldn’t get a proper grip on the grid…or it was listening to PMQs while we did the grid and getting irked by the lying liar…but we did learn a ‘piece of chewing tobacco’ is called a ‘quid’ and that ‘Milan’ is a ‘northern Italian city, home of the San Siro football stadium’…

…more mehness with Thursday’s grid, as, again, we had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 23). I guess all this relaxing is not helping the little grey cells to stay sharp! As we did miss some obvious ones, but we did learn that ‘chez’ means ‘at the home of (someone) in France’ (our French vocab has doubled this week!)…

…Friday’s grid goes better as we only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 25). We did miss the easy ‘fetter’ from ‘shackle’, but the little grey cells were back on fighting form, and we did learn that a ‘biretta’ is a ‘square cap worn by Roman Catholic clergy’ and that an ‘Onager’ is an ‘Asian wild ass’…

…Saturday’s grid ends the week on a high note, as after an unsteady start we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). Maybe it’s ‘cos we didn’t have a lie-in today and the little grey cells were fully awake and alert when we did the grid? We were going so well that for ‘devilish’ we didn’t bother checking the intersecting letters and went straight for ‘demonic’, when the actually answer was ‘Satanic’. All in all, it’s been a bit of a meh week this week, not a terrible performance, but not good. Maybe it’s ‘cos we had the week off work and the little grey cells were in chilled out mode and enjoyed the relaxedness to much! Or it’s this “lungy” we’ve had since last summer, clogging up the old brain pan. Either way its back to work next week, back to the ole routine and back to crossword glory???