Days 2984 to 2986

Aka Monday 23rd January to Wednesday 25th January 2023

A quiet/normal few days. Worked from home, and not too much to say about that. Except that working from home is odd, due to the lack of face-to-face interactions with colleagues and friends. One can feel a little disconnected and Teamsing isn’t the same as face to face. I did go for an exercise walk on Wednesday morning:

…where I walked 4km in 50 minutes and 24 seconds in 5,395 steps, which burnt 375 calories (which is probably half a Mars bar ☹!) Combined with some weight sessions on Monday and Wednesday it looks like I’m getting back on track, back on the exercise train!

…and I got the latest ‘Mojo’:

…which has a big feature on Bob Dylan’s new release, volume 17 of his ‘Bootleg Series’, which covers the recording of 'Time Out Of Mind' and features a cover CD collecting “hidden gems from The Bootleg Series”. I’m not a big Dylan fan, I like the hits, your ‘Lay Lady Lay’, ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, etc, but when I listened to a greatest hits compilation, the deeper cuts didn’t hit me like the hits. In fact I tend to like Dylan songs more when they’re covered by other artists. So, I never ventured any further, but a friend is a big Dylan fan and keeps suggesting his stuff to me. And I’ve dipped my toe in the Dylan waters, got a few albums – a best of, 'Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid' (and a bootleg of outtakes), 'John Wesley Harding', 'Nashville Skyline', 'The Bootleg Series, Vol. 15- Travelin' Thru, 1967 - 1969' and 'The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1 -3' (which is a lot more Dylan than I thought I had). And I do like his more countryish songs, so this seemed like a good way to dip my toe further. There’s also a nice feature on John Lee Hooker and Rick Rubin to get my teeth into. And plenty of reviews, news and that kinda thing. I also started watching Season Five of ‘Elementary’:

…and I watched 'Fight The Power: How Hip-Hop Changed The World':

…and it’s an interesting watch, it hits most of the points that hip-hop docs do, but offered new insights and perspectives from the people that were there and it does an excellent job covering the social and political issues that lead to, and then shaped hip-hop. But sometimes this was to the detriment of the music. For example, there was very little focus on Puff Daddy and “pop” hip-hop, and I don’t think there was anything about the Wu-Tang Clan. And there was very little in-depth looking at how sexist, misogynist, racist, violent lyrics and the glamourisation of “thug-life” affected hip-hop and black America. But when you’ve only got four hours and you’re covering fifty plus years it’s hard to get everything in. Defo a recommend watch. My only real big gripe was the lack of a soundtrack listing, so many good songs played and I’ve got no idea what half of them were!

…Kyle Starks Sticker Club stickers arrived on Tuesday:

…and I brought ‘Lego Batman’ magazine, with a smart Batcycle toy:

...I did the Metro's crosswords:

…and then I did Monday’s G2 Crossword:

…which went pretty well. The little grey cells were on tip-top form and we only had to cheat on 9.52% of the clues (two out of 21). And those two clues, we just didn’t know what the answers were, which means that we learnt that the ‘Dauphin’ is the ‘French equivalent to Prince of Wales’ and that ‘Tanzania’ is an ‘East African country’…not a bad start to the week, will it continue… and I did Tuesday’s G2 Crossword:

…Tuesday’s crossword went a smidge better, we only had to cheat on 8.70% of the clues (two out of 23). We should have done better though, as we should have gotten ‘percentage’ from ‘share’! But we did learn that the ‘Gavotte’ is a ‘French 18th-century dance’…and I did Wednesday’s G2 Crossword:

…I was wondering of working from home was giving the little grey cells an edge in tackle the clues, but Wednesday’s crossword dispelled that notion, Severely! We had to cheat on 21.74% of the clues (five out of 23)! The worst score of the year I think! But is was softened slightly as it was an Illuminati score, we haven’t had one of them in a while., and that for four of the clues we had no chance of getting them. So, we learnt that ‘Ormolu’ is a ‘gold-coloured alloy’, that ‘Doeskin’ is a ‘soft leather made from deer or sheep’, that Tbilisi is in Georgia and that the ‘Larkspur’ is an ‘annual plant of the buttercup family’. Hopefully the rest of the week’s crossword’s go better…