Aka Monday 12th February to Sunday 18th February 2024
The big news this week was that E’s placement in Scotland was finally set up and we travelled up, by train, on the Thursday to drop them off. It was planned like D-Day, to minimise any triggers, we did not want a melt down on the near two hour car ride to the station or the five hour train journey to Scotland!
But we needn’t off worried as they were pretty much fine on the journey. They had their methods for coping and when things looked like they might get “bad”, we were able to distract and deescalate (long train rides are bad enough, you don’t need to add the triggers that come with autism). There was a tiny teeny problem when we were picked up by the care staff, as they weren’t aware of how tight E’s rules/needs can be and one (of the two) got a reprimand for talking over a song.
And it was tres depressing leaving them the next day, even though their new home (a nice two bedroom bungalow) and the staff were nice and understanding and ready to look after them, it evens like I’ve failed them. That if I had been better, more understanding, they could have stayed back home. But I know that’s not the case, that they have complex needs and we weren’t able to provide that help 24/7, as, being unable to “rotate” which of us cared of them and not being able to take respire, the stress and emotions get to you. And I know that in their new home they will get the full 24/7 help they need…no Morning Walk this Sunday as (a) we’re still feeling a little knackered after Scotland and (b) it was wet and miserable outside, so staying in, and under the duvet, was a much more attractive option!
The rest of the week was pretty quiet, I picked up these four-colour gems (including a non-self-published ‘Barking’, a great story about mental health):
…and my Discogs buys of the Ceasefire canon arrived:
… and they are top-notch early Big Beat tunes, a proper mix of hip-hop, house, breakbeat, pop and rock n roll, before the term got too rigid. And aside from a few remixes I think this is all of songs released under the Ceasefire moniker (and I do like have an artists whole work all in place)…and I picked up my meagre Lotto winnings:
…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and the crossword week got off to a damn fine and solid start. The little grey cells solved 95.24% of Monday’s clues (20 out of 21), only missing with ‘foolish enterprise’, from which we were unable to get ‘mugs game’, but it’s still a good start…let’s see if we can keep it up…
…the solidness continues with Tuesday’s crossword, but it’s not quite as fine as we only solved 91.37% of the clues (22 out of 24). Yeah, it’s not bad, but it’s not great. We’re also still wondering if ‘starry’ is an appropriate clue for ‘astral’ (but that might be sour grapes) and we learnt that an ‘euphony’ is a ‘pleasing sound’, which is nice to know…
…which went a tad better than yesterday, the little grey cells solved 94.44% of the clues (a la 17 out of 18), which means that we’re back in the land of damn fineness and solidness! The only annoyance is that it should have been a clean sweep! I still don’t know how we didn’t get ‘astutely’ from ‘cleverly or craftily’…but still a good performance…
…and it’s another damn fine and solid performance for Thursday’s crossword. We solved 94.74% of the clues (aka 18 out of 19) and we learnt that ‘Dubbin’ is a ‘greasy substance used to waterproof leather’. Looks like we’re back on a roll, let see if we can get a clean sweep before the week ends…
…and yeah, we’re back baby! The little grey cells got a clean sweep of Friday’s clues! All 24 clues solved and squared away!!! Let’s see if we can make it a double for the end of the crossword week…
…no second clean sweep I’m afraid, but we did solve 95.65% of Saturday’s 23 clues” We only missed ‘playful piece of classical music’, which is ‘Scherzo’, which we had no way of knowing, as we don’t listen to classical music and we nearly had it with our guess, ‘Scharzo’, so close, but no cigar!!!
And we did the Metro Cryptic Crossword:
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