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’…