Days 2642 - 2648

Aka Monday 14th February - Sunday 20th February 2022

Back to work this week after a week off, I’ll miss the lie-ins, but it’ll be nice to see everyone. Plus it gave me the chance to pop into HMV and pick up The Band’s ‘Greatest Hits’:

…I’d watched ‘1408’ (a very effective and moving horror film) and it had The Band’s ‘The Weight’ on the soundtrack, and I really liked it and I’ve heard good things about The Band, so I thought I’d chance getting a Greatest Hits collection…and I wasn’t impressed. The first was ‘The Weight’ and it sounds so good, but the other tracks were just alright, a bit meh, nothing special, nothing that made me want to explore their back catalogue any further…

…the postman delivered this month’s awesome Kyle Starks sticker club stickers:

…and ‘Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour’ #6, which was a fun and emotional end to the series:

…and Pepe Deluxe’s ‘Phantom Cabinet Vol.1’ album. A super collection of music that seems to cover every type of music/genre, such as surf-rock, psyche rock, soul, hip-hop, choral, etc, but without sounding like a mish-mash or hodge-podge, it all fits together and just sounds natural. A proper musical trip:

…and ‘Discovered ‘97’:

…which I got for Lo-Fidelity Allstars track, a demo of ‘One Man's Fear, Another Man's High’. The Lo-Fi’s are one of my favourite bands and it’s always a joy to hear something new/unheard from them. This demo is pretty close to the released version, some bits are “missing” or are in a less polished state (like from listening to the demo I realised that there’s a sample from ‘Coronation Street’!), but it’s still grabs you as new and different. Even through it’s nearly 25 years since this song was recorded it still sounds new, a unique blend of hip-hop, indie, dance and electronica…I continued my 2000AD Partworks reading with ‘Robo Hunter’ Vol. 1:

…a fun nostalgic read with some great art from Ian Gibson. I also got this months ‘Uncut’:

…which has a great cover CD, subtitled ‘Sounds of the New Weird Albion’, of what I would describe as folk meets shoegazing, really good songs on here…and I collected my latest lot of (little) Lottery winnings:

…and I ended the week with a Medium Walk, of 5.15km, over 57minutes and 58seconds, which burnt 499 calories:

…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:

…Monday’s crossword got the week off to a wobbly start, we were back in the office for a full day and it left us feeling very tired and knackered and we had to cheat on a seventh of the clues (three out of 22). It was a very draining day, lots if bitty bits and stress inducing customers – like the guy who didn’t want to pay for a replacement set of keys even though he lost the originals! Don’t moan at us for your screw up man! Given all that we probably did better than we should have done, although we did miss a couple of obvious ones, like ‘official’ from ‘public functionary’, we dismissed official as too obvious and were looking for a title like Mayor or Alderman! Or ‘Tyrone’ from ‘Irish county’. But we did learn that ‘Ashe’ was a ‘US tennis player with three grand slam singles titles, d.1993 aged 49’…

…things go much better with Tuesday’s grid, we’d had a good night’s rest, the little grey cells were well rested and didn’t have to cheat on any of the 26 clues! A piece of cake…

…and there’s a complete reversal with Wednesday’s grid, which went terribly, and we had to cheat on a third of the clues! We just couldn’t get to grips with it, maybe if we given it more time, we could have ground out a few more answers, like gotten ‘realise’ from ‘take in – convert into money’, but it was a nightmare! But we did re-learn that a ‘gourmet’ is also called an ‘epicure’ and that ‘acme’ means ‘pinnacle of achievement’ and learnt that a ‘swamp’ is ‘low land that floods’ (whereas I though a swamp was already land that was flooded, not that it could go back and forth) and that a ‘Torero’ is a ‘Spanish bullfighter’. And I’m still annoyed at ‘Beatle’ being the answer to ‘one of the Fab Four?’, how can the answer to that clue not be a person’s name!...

…thing pick up with Thursday’s grid. The little grey cells were back on form, and we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). Learning that ‘Tallinn’ is a ‘Baltic capital’…

…Friday’s grid goes okay, it was a little bit tough, a little bit meh, we missed so obvious answers, but in the end we only had to cheat on a seventh of the clues (three out of 21) and we learnt that ‘propitious’ means ‘favourable’…

…and Saturday’s grid ends an up-and-down week on a meh note as we had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 23). A little annoyed that we forgot about ‘mustered’ (from ‘assembled’), I guess the little grey cells just need a bit of a rest, a chance to recharge their batteries. But we did learn that ‘Martinique’ is a Caribbean Island and the French overseas department…