Days 2712 - 2718

Aka Monday 25th April to Sunday 1st May 2022

As I’m well behind on this diary this well be a quick one. This months glorious Kyle Stark’s Sticker Club stickers arrived:

…as did these glorious CDs:

…Prins Thomas’s ‘8&9’ is a beautiful collection of space disco, ‘We Are The Children Of The Sun’ is an intriguing compilation of Balearicness, and the ‘Soul Drops’ is a nice compilation of old soul/R&B tunes…I also watched ‘The Batman’:

…which was pretty meh. It looks great (which further cements the theory that the film ‘Seven’ is set in a pre-Batman Gotham, as it does feel like both films exist in the same universe and share the same vibe of a corrupt city on the edge!) and the action scenes are good, but some of the acting is v poor (e.g. Gordan seems to be in a different film to everyone else, a panto version of Batman, as he’s all big gestures and no subtlety). A lot of reviews have mentioned how good the chemistry between Batman and Catwoman (aka Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz) was, but I couldn’t see any chemistry at all. In fact, I never got a feeling of any of the characters having relationships with each other. For example, Bruce and Alfred are meant to have a very close, father/son bond, but even through you got great actor like Andy Serkis playing Alfred, I would never have guessed at that from this film. ‘The Batman’ looks great, but it feels like a DVD/blu-ray bonus feature, rather than a feature film… 

…on Wednesday, to no great surprise the Government was found to have broken the law concerning the discharge elderly patients to care homes at the start of the Covid pandemic. Also, to no surprise no minister or senior civil servant resigned or was fired or suspended or saw any sort of censure, let again they got away with killing people…changing topic dramatically I picked up this week’s New Comic Book Day gems:

…as well as the latest Lego Avengers magazine, as it had a free Loki figure:

…all of which kinda cheered me up as on Friday I started to feel unwell, which turned into a weird headache, with a fever, which alternated with me feeling cold and then back to hot, and a big feeling of nausea, all of which took away my appetite and my ability to sleep, at best I got a few catnap’s in, but not a proper sleep. I’m not sure what caused this, and it stayed very non-specific, and it continued over the whole weekend ☹ …and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to pretty good start, as we only had to cheat on a tenth of the clues (two out of 21). For the last week or so, we’ve been feeling wore out and knackered, possibly a result of having had Covid, or the hay fever medication I’ve been taking (it feels like I’ve had to take more than previous years as I’ve been getting more severe symptoms and therefore taking more of the tablets) or I’m nudging into diabetes. Or a combination of them? Either way, me and the little grey cells have been feeling tired and worn out, but have still managed to pretty much ace the grids, only stumbling today on not knowing that ‘Barchester’ is ‘Trollope’s fictional cathedral city’ and forgetting that ‘vary’ can mean ‘alter’…

…and Tuesday’s grid keeps up the good work, as we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 23). The little grey cells are up and running, like a train on its track, just chugging away. Plus, we learnt that ‘Saint-Saens’ was the ‘French composer of The Carnival of the Animals, first published in 1922’. We should have gotten ‘boughs’ from ‘branches’ though…

…Wednesday’s word widdle goes just as well on only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 23). The train is well and truly on track and speeding down the line, sixteen coaches long, sixteen coaches long…train I ride, sixteen coaches long. And we learnt that ‘refractory’ means ‘stubborn’ and that ‘Eroica’ is the ‘name given to Beethoven’s Symphony No 3’…

…and things get better with Thursday’s grid, we only had to cheat on one of the 25 clues. Only stumbling when we assumed that ‘heavenly light’ referred to a biblical Heavenly light and not just the night sky, if we hadn’t, we probably would have gotten ‘star’ and a clean sweep! K Sera Sera…

…Friday’s grid goes pretty damn well, we only had to cheat on a tenth of the clues (two out of 21). We were only let down by our rudimentary botany and geographical skills, otherwise we might have gotten ‘geranium’ from ‘popular pot plant’ and ‘Montparnasse’ from ‘district of Paris on the left bank’…

…and Saturday’s gird ends the week on a sour note. We had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 24), all while we had a splitting headache, a fever, cold flushes and nausea. Which did put us off the crossword solving! It felt worse than when we had Covid, just completing debilitating. Which is probably way we missed ‘shallow’ from ‘lacking profundity’, but we did learn that ‘Padua’ is a ‘city of northern Italy, with a university established in 1222’ and that ‘Magyar’ is the ‘official language (and a native) of Hungary’…

Days 2705 - 2711

Aka Monday 18th - Sunday 24th April 2022

We still feel tired and knackered and wore out after having the Covid…just feel not-right, even when feeling okayish there’s a inkling, a feeling that any minute now it all come crashing down and you’ll be back to feeling wore out, unsteady and disconnected from the world. On Tuesday I had an appointment with the Chest Nurse at my GP surgery. I had to wait 25 minutes past the appointment time to see her and when I did she didn‘t seem to know what my appointment was for. So, the first few minutes were sent with her going through my notes and then I explained my symptoms and how they occurred and she gave me a prescription for a spirometer, to test my breathing and for a Ventolin inhaler (two squirts in the morning and two in the afternoon) and a form to book a chest x-ray at the local hospital. Let’s hope they work/provide some useful information…aside form that it’s been a quiet week, I got this month’s ‘Mojo’ and ‘Uncut’ This month’s ‘Mojo’ is okay:

...an average interview with Liam G and not much else. The main reason I got it was for the Grateful Dead cover CD, as I’ve always heard of the ‘Dead but have never, knowingly, heard any of their music, so this was a good opportunity to dive in. And it’s pretty unmemorable, just competent rock ‘n’ roll jams that are just there and when the songs end they don’t stick around in the memory. ‘Uncut’ was a bit better:

...although their cover CD was much better, just the generic “best of this months releases” boredom, but there was a nice article on the 50th Anniversary of The Stones ‘Exile on Main Street’ and interview with Glen Mattlock, but pretty flat aside from that. I also got this week’s New Comic Book Day gems:

…and I got ‘Everything Is Beautiful’ by Spiritualized:

…their latest album and a companion to the previous album ‘And Nothing Hurt’. And it’s just great, it doesn’t devastate greatly from the Spiritualized template, but it does everything you want from Spiritualized, a great blend of rock ‘n’ roll, gospel, soul, folk, Avant Gardeness, and it does it near-perfectly…I also picked up DVDs of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ and ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’:

...to complete my collection of physical copies of the MCU (once a collector, always a collector!)…I also rewatched ‘The World’s End’:

…which, as I get older, gets more resonant. And I watched ‘Fresh’:

…which is pretty messed up and is kinda like if Leatherface got a make-over and went corporate and it does a great job of creating a vibe, a feeling of helplessness and desperation…on Sunday the Mail on Sunday published an article quoting unnamed Tories accursing Angela Rayner, Deputy Leader of the Opposition (and Labour) of distracting Johnson at PMQs (and possibly other Parliamentary events/debates) by flashing her legs ala Sharon Stone in ‘Basic Instant’:

...and it’s just another example of how low so much of the UK press, and the Mail in particular are. No actually evidence, just unnamed sources, but why should that stop them from engaging in some misogyny and the chance to throw mud at the opposition and to try to protect Johnson. Just disgraceful…changed gear totally, I also picked up this week’s Lotto winnings: 

…and I finally got round to make that Lego AT-AT…

…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a stonking start as we only had to cheat on one of the 22 clues. The Bank Holiday’s haven’t dulled the little grey cells! They chomped through the clues, only stumbling on not knowing that a ‘ha-ha’ is a ‘concealed ditch in landscape gardening’…

…it’s Tuesday, it’s after a Bank Holiday, so it’s back to work…and it took its toll on the little grey cells and we had to cheat on a thirteenth of the clues (two out of 26). Okay, not much of a toll, but after the Covid, a full day in the office is knackering! But we did learn that a ‘Greengate’ is a ‘variety of plum’ and that Adam Bede is a George Eliot novel…

…Wednesday’s grid is also affected by the knackering, and we had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). But we did learn that ‘Yalta’ is a ‘Crimean resort, where Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met in February 1945’ and that ‘truculent’ means ‘aggressive and discourteous’. And it’s a weird tiredness, it creeps up on you, like a fog, and then you’re gone, like you’ve done a couple of marathons followed by a few cross-countries. Not nice. And sleep doesn’t cure it…it just festers…

…the tiredness continues with Thursday’s grid as we had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24). We fell on not knowing that ‘calico’ is a ‘coarse printed cotton cloth’, that ‘Ephesus’ was an ‘ancient Greek city in modern Turkey, site of the Temple of Artemis’ and the tiredness means that we forgot that ‘Hammerstein’ was the ‘South Pacific’s librettist’…

…and Friday’s grid gets us back on track, we only had to cheat on one of the 21 clues. I think the nap we had after work helped to refresh the little grey cells a little, enough to help us grind through the clues and only failing when we didn’t get ‘skittish’ from ‘excitable and unpredictable’…

…and Saturday’s grid ends the week on a stonking note as we only had to cheat on one of the 23 clues. We still feel tired and knackered and wore out, but we did manage to know, work out and guess all but one of the clues. Our lack of monastical knowledge mean that we didn’t know that a ‘Cistercian’ is a ‘member of a monastic order, noted for austerity and a vow of silence’…anyhow, like I said, we are feeling tired, so time for a nap…