Days 3432 - 3445

Aka Monday 15th April to Sunday 28th April 2024

Not much to report this fortnight (especially as I’m writing this on 27th Jan 2025, so lot’s of catching up to do!), had a GP phone appointment to follow up on the gout (all is well). I got these four-colour gems:

…and the latest ‘Mojo’ and ‘Uncut’: 

…both had interesting cover CDs, pleasant enough, but, for the Can CD, not enough to make me want to explore there back catalogue…and I pick up some small Lotto winnings:

…this month’s beautiful Kyle Starks Sticker Club stickers arrived:

...got ‘The 500 Greatest Albums of the 1990s’: 

…I’m not sure why I did get it, but it is fun reading other people’s opinions about music you like, but I do know why I got the 25th Anniversary version of ‘Portishead Live In NYC’:

…because it’s a great album and talking of great albums, so are these:

…really looking to digging into all the extras in ‘The Green Album’ boxset and digging into this monster of a book:

…a great telling of the start of the major label era for Pop Will Eat Itself. It likes one of those ancient bibles that were handcrafted by monks! So much care and attention and detail, all band books should be this good!

And I did the first week’s G2 Crossword:

…and we get this week’s crossword week off to a tres tres poor start, as we could only solve 80.00% of the 25 clues!!! A very chewy grid and we missed five of the clues!!! And even though we got ‘tonight’ from ‘’West Side Story song – very soon?’, we’re a little peed off with that clue, especially the very soon bit!!! But not as much as missing ‘abracadabra’ from ‘spell word and ‘Gorse’ from ‘spiky plant’!!! However, we did learn that ‘schwa’ is the/a ‘central vowel sound’ and that ‘stucco’ is a ‘moulding plaster’ (although this might be a re-learn)…

…and it’s another downcast crossword day as we only solved 83.33% of Tuesday’s 24 clues. I don’t know if the grids are becoming chewy or if the setter as changed and I haven’t gotten into the swing of how they set crosswords. Anyway, we learnt that a ‘concerto’ is an ‘orchestral piece’, that ‘nattier’ is ‘more snazzy’ (which we should have gotten), that a ‘bouquet garni’ is a ‘herby tied bundle’ and that ‘Diabolo’ is a ‘top game?’ (which we now know is a reference to a spinning top)!!! Hopefully things will pick up for the rest of the week… 

…and Wednesday’s crossword finds us back in the land of 90%, but only just!!! We solved 90.91% of the 22 clues, not getting ‘Verdi’ from ‘Italian maestro’ (although we’ve marked 1a as the one we didn’t get, instead of marking up 1d!!!) and ‘seafarer’ from ‘Hearty’, which did annoy us till we remembered the old pirate phrase ‘yo ho ho me hearties’, still at least we’re back in the 90%’s…

…and we’re back in the land of 80% with Thursday’s crossword! We only solved 88.46% of the 26 clues. Yeah, two of them we didn’t know the answer to, ‘Quadrille’ from ‘square dance – card game’ and ‘menu’ from ‘list of trattoria possibilities’ (we were out foxed by the word trattoria, if we’d ignored it, we would have guessed ‘menu’, but at least we now know that trattoria means a restaurant, specifically an Italian restaurant). But we should have gotten ‘vexatious’ from ‘troublesome’. This is turning out to be a v chewy crossword week…

…and Friday’s crossword finds us back where we should be, as we managed to solve 95.83% of the 24 clues. The little grey cells find this a straight forward grid to deal with, with the only stumbling block being unable to get ‘Pueblo’ from ‘town (of sun-dried bricks)’, although after goggling the definition of Pueblo, I don’t see how the clue relates to the answer! But hey-ho…

…and we end this crossword week on a pretty damn fine note, as (for the second time) the little grey cells solved 95.83% of the 24 clues. We only missed with not getting ‘trenchant’ from ‘vigorously effective’. Kinda glad to see the end of this crossword week, too many chewy grids…and I did the second week’s G2 Crossword:

…and the new crossword week get’s off to a bumpy start, as we could only solve 80.95% of the 21 clues. Not good, not at all! We got tricked by ‘Portuguese coin’, thinking that it was referring to an old, out of use coin and not the current currency, the ‘Euro’! And we didn’t get ‘ramekin’ is a ‘dish baked in small mould’, which we should have guessed, but we did learn that ‘Dorothy Parker was the ‘wit who asked “Where’s the man could ease a broken heart like a satin gown?”’ and that ‘tremolo’ means ‘repetition of one or two notes, rapidly’. Anyway, onwards and upwards…

…and Tuesday’s crossword finds us back on track, as the little grey cells solved 95.65% of the 23 clues, missing just one. On clue that outfoxed us, ‘paper man or woman’. We took it too literally and missed the answer of ‘journo’!!! But it’s still nice to be back on track…

…and there’s not much to say about Wednesday’s crossword as the little grey cells aced it! A clean sweep! All 21 clues solved, easy-peasy like…

…and we tumble a little with Thursday’s crossword, as we only solved 91.30% of the 23 clues. We missed ‘artifice’ from ‘trick’, which we might have gotten if we had given ourselves ore time, but we did learn that ‘wysiwyg’ is an ‘abbrev. meaning “That’s exactly how it appears before printing”’…although I have a feeling that it was an answer to a recent previous crossword…but I should remember it now…

…and we pick ourselves back up with Friday’s crossword, solving all but one of the 23 clues. That’s 95.65% of the clues, not bad going of what started as a chewy grid.  We only dropped the ball by not getting ‘zealous’ from ‘passionate’, but a damn solid performance all in all…

…talking of damn solid performances, Saturday’s crossword ends the crossword week on a damn fine solid performance, as the little grey cells solved 96.00% of the clues. Just missing ‘fajita’ from ‘filled tortilla’, which we kinda knew but couldn’t fully remember, just that it had a couple of a’s and i’s in it…and I did the Metro Cryptics: