We went shopping today. It took us about three hours
to buy everything at two stores, bring it home, disinfect it and disinfect
ourselves.
Later, I went for a run in the sun, and sweat actual
sweat. Later still, Karen and I went for a longish walk in the sun. In both
cases, we found most people were going out of their way to keep their distance,
as we did, more than a couple of times veering over on to the grass to avoid
others.
We did get a little concerned in some parts of downtown
where there is a heavy concentration of street people, some of whom didn’t seem
too worried about social distancing.
Later still, Karen sat out on the balcony in the sun.
We actually opened windows to get some air in the place too.
All good, but we’re hoping to not have to go to
grocery stores again for awhile. Social distancing there is next to impossible,
even when you go as early as we did (a little after 8 in the morning.).
One store had taped arrows on the floor so customers
would move up and down the aisles in one direction only. Good thought, except
if somebody else is in the aisle ahead of you, looking at products, what do you
do – stand back and wait or, as most people did, grow impatient after a couple
of minutes and scoot past as far from the other person as possible, about
three feet.
That store also had Plexiglas shields between you and
the cashier, the other did not.
When we went out, we discovered that building management
had posted signs in the lobby and in the elevators urging us to ride the
elevator only with other people living in our unit. If the first elevator that
comes when you call it has others on it, we’re told, wait for the next empty
elevator. Excellent. When I went out for my run, one fellow who had called the
elevator after me, backed off when he saw me.
I think we’re finished here. It's not that we aren't still pretty much cooped, but at least we can get outside now.
I did more than the seven
days of desert-island discs that Bobby Baines suggested, so that’s done.
Cryptic
corner? School’s out, kiddies.
I’ll
have to think of something else to fill my time now.
2 April 2020 (Day 14) - Almost there. Our release from
strict quarantine/self-isolation comes tomorrow. We’re both feeling fine – just
old and anxious.
Karen and I have a lengthy shopping list that we hope
to shop for tomorrow during the seniors hour. Whether we’ll be able to get
everything we need and want remains to be seen. We saw how panic buying and
disruptions to supply chains emptied shelves at the Tesco where we shopped in
Maldon before we left the UK.
I’m feeling nervous about just going out of
the apartment. The assumption at this point is that we’re C19-free. (Our
understanding is that 99.99% of people infected show symptoms within 14 days,
most within five to seven, and we don’t have any symptoms.) Now, every time we
go out of our home, though, we’re very much at risk of being exposed.
We will be taking precautions, both at the stores and
when we return. I wrote in an earlier post about the protocols we followed for
bringing our delivered groceries into the apartment last week and disinfecting them. We’ll do the
same again.
There has been considerable debate among medical
experts and others about whether we should be wearing masks when we go out. We don't have masks in any case, but I heard it suggested on the radio today that even a bandanna wrapped around your face could offer some protection. And in the Czech Republic, where they reportedly have the epidemic in better control than we do, it is required that you wear a mask when you go out. The
only reasons I can see for not wearing a
mask are that real medical-grade masks are needed much more urgently by healthcare professionals and are in short supply. And there is a risk, if you don't remove your personal protection with caution, that it could
actually increase chances of infection. Canada’s Chief Medical
Officer is advising against non-infected or -exposed people wearing masks. But she added, in an interview I heard on the radio yesterday, that the keys to preventing infection when removing protection are not touching your face and washing your hands carefully afterwards.
We
will have hand-sanitizer with us when we go out, and wear re-usable latex gloves. I plan to extend washing after the fact to clothes
and the rest of my body. Clothes worn when I go out will go in the laundry
hamper, not to be touched again for at least 48 hours. And I’ll shower.
I know, it sounds absurd. But if you’re a senior and
you’re not freaked by this pandemic, you’re a feckin’ idiot. Anybody really,
not just seniors.
*
I am smarting this morning after another humiliating
defeat on the Scrabble field at the hands of my darling wife.
It wasn’t a bad defeat, only by 15 or 20 points but it
still stings. The wins have been few and far between this year. And Karen
insists my summary of recent Scrabble activity in yesterday’s post actually
understated how badly she’s been whomping me recently. Possible.
As for last night, in my defense, I had terrible
letters. My first pull included the Q, the Z, three E’s, an O and one other
letter I can’t remember – but not U. I couldn’t use either of the big scorers
until at least six turns in, by which time Karen had zoomed way ahead. After
the first couple of pulls, I never had more than two vowels in my hand at any
one time. At the end of the game, I still had about 16 points in my hand, all
consonants.
*
This morning I started my new job, creating a closed
Facebook group for our building. It’s a learning experience, but nothing wrong
with that. Even old dogs, I keep telling myself, can learn new tricks. So far
so good.
*
Desert
Island: Definitely desert island material. The fourth movementof the Rachmaninoff sonata is sublime.
Some music snobs turn their noses up at Sergei Rachmaninoff, the 20th century Russian composer (1873-1943).
One American composer and critic, now largely forgotten, said of Rachmaninoff's music that
it was “mainly an evocation of adolescence” and “no part of our intellectual
life.” Sergei was definitely swimming against the minimalist, atonal current of
modern orchestral music. His work is tuneful, accessible, very romantic, a
throw-back to the music of the late 19th century when he came of age.
Dirty
Hippy: I’d never heard of J. J. Cale until about 20 years
ago, but he’s definitely of our era (1938-2013), and he’s now a regular part of
my mix whenever I’m looking for social music that’s not too crash-and-bangy.
A friend’s 20-something son introduced Cale to his Dad
years ago. Dad introduced J. J. to his group of friends and I think we
all listen to him now, or did at one time. The music is laid-back, groovy, with
a distinctly southern feel – although he was actually from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Wikipedia lists “blues, rockabilly, country and jazz” as the mix of elements in
his style.That sounds about right. He
was apparently very influential. People like Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton, with whom he made a record late in his career, list him as influences. Yet he was never actually famous. A great find.
The
Cryptic Corner
From today’s Globe
& Mail puzzle, a few illustrative examples:
“Shipping trade (5).” As the form suggests it’s a
double-meaning clue, but it’s a tricky one.
The non-cryptic part of a cryptic clue isn’t
necessarily an exact synonym for or definition of the answer. As in this case,
it can be a word that might, only in some contexts, be a synonym for the answer.
Or might be only a near-synonym that could be substituted for the answer in a
sentence sometimes.
The answer: CRAFT.
You might refer to water “craft,” boats, in some contexts as
“shipping.” You’re meant to be confused by trade – is it the verb, the noun
from the verb, or a noun meaning...well, a “craft.” It’s true that you wouldn’t
call the trade of electrician a craft, but you might call carpentry a
craft, or a trade.
Some clues offer concocted, sometimes humorous
definitions for a phrase formed when you break up the answer word into constituent
parts. Here’s an example from today’s puzzle: “A policeman not on duty perhaps
is unusual (7).”
Answer: OFFBEAT. Get it? The non-cryptic clue is “unusual.”
The policeman, you see, is “off” his “beat.”
One more. Here’s another example of the non-cryptic
clue not being an exact definition or
synonym. “Work in a band to commit fraud (6).”
Answer: FIDDLE.
Well, in some “bands” one or more members fiddle. A
fiddle is also a colloquial term for a “fraud.”
Finally, here’s the puzzle as far as I’ve got it. Any
ideas about the last two? (Gail Wreford, c’mon, you’re a crossword fiend – time you
stepped up to cryptics.)
1 April 2020 (Day 13) – I have a new job. I’m creating
or helping to create a closed Facebook group for our building.
I had floated the idea to the board chairman, Jim, when
we first got back from Europe, thinking it might be a way to ease the sense of
isolation for residents who are practicing social distancing – which now, of
course, everyone should be. It’s a fairly social building, but all or most of
the incidental contact we have with neighbours, in the lobby, halls or
elevators, is gone. And certainly any planned social events have been or will be
cancelled.
One of the other board members, our neighbour across
the hall, Christian, was apparently already thinking along the same lines, so Jim
put us together. The upshot, after a brief telephone meeting with Christian yesterday,
is that I’m going to take the first steps to setting up the group.
It will be a moderated group. It’s meant to be a place
for people to keep in touch, exchange ideas on how to cope, offer or request
help, and for the board and management company to pass on information. What the
board doesn’t want is for it to become a forum for carping. There are unfortunately
some chronic complainers in the building.
We’ll also want to ensure there is nothing offensive
posted. So I’ve volunteered to be part of a moderating committee that would
have the power to take down posts and even expel repeat offenders.
Could be interesting.
*
Karen said to me last night, “How come you don’t
mention in your blog that I’m whomping you at Scrabble all the time?”
Okay, I'm setting the record straight. After a few years
of my dominating in our winter-away series, Karen came roaring back this year,
winning the series something like 4-2 or 5-3, including by some big scores.
Since we’ve been home, we’ve played three games. She’s won two, once by a few
points, once by 15 or 20. I destroyed her in the other game, winning by over 50.
The series will possibly resume this evening. We’ll
see.
*
Karen reported a dream to me this morning with an
interesting twist. In it, she was working in an office providing some kind of
public service. (Hers was the corner office, she said, with big windows on two
sides – yeah, right, in her dreams!)
At some point, for some reason, it became necessary
for her to get some forms that were stored in a tower. She had to scale the
outside of the tower to get to them. (I can just see her in one of the business
suits she used to wear to work in the 80s, shinning up a church-steeple-like
tower!)
When she got to the top, there was some kind of
pointed concrete cap that, when she grabbed it to pull herself up, wobbled
under her weight. She initially thought (in the dream), ‘This is dangerous, I
need to get down from here!’ But then she thought, ‘No, no, I just need to wake
up!’ And so she did.
See! Lucid dreaming! Maybe not quite as effective as
the Senoi, but still, a measure of control.
*
Before introducing my latest desert-island and dirty-hippy
picks, I wanted to say a couple of things more about one of yesterday’s selections,
Frazey Ford’s 2014 disc, Indian Ocean.
I listened to it again last night, for the first time in a few months, and was
impressed all over.
First, full disclosure. As Bobby Baines takes great
pains to point out on FB, it was he who first introduced me to this album, or a
snippet of it, when we were holidaying a few years ago in the Canary Islands. I
rediscovered it on my own months later, by which time – he’s probably right, because
I’m old – I had forgotten all about his introduction. So.
I was struck on my most recent listening by the
album’s almost hypnotic groove. It’s partly Ford’s sometimes monotonic singing
style, partly the similarities in the arrangements of the songs. The High
Rhythm Section always sounds very distinctly itself – the mellowed-out funk guitar,
the muted braying of the horns.
Bobby mentioned the song “Done,” which I think is one
of the great take-down songs of all time, right up there with Dylan’s “Like a
rolling stone” and Carol King’s “You’re so vain.” The song is a declaration of
war and a kill shot in one go. A little snippet from the lyric:
Who told you that you could rewrite the rules?
And do you really take me for a goddamn fool?
'Cause I'm not - oh, I'm done.
And you can drag me out before some authority
If that's what you have to do to feel like you can
punish me
But I can't (ooh), I can't, I can't, I can't keep the
peace anymore
With your dogs (ooh), with your dogs, at my door
...
And I'm sorry that you don't like your life
But I fought for my own victories and for the beauty
in my life
My joy (ooh), my joy, my joy takes nothing from you
No, my joy (ooh), my joy takes nothing from you
I also wanted to point out, for anyone who actually
takes the trouble to check out this album, that it includes an interesting hidden
track – sort of like “Her Majesty” on the Beatles’ Abbey Road. The penultimate track – the title track–continues with silence for
over a minute after the song ends, so it seems like the album is over. It’s not.
When that track finally ends, another, which appears
in my rip of the CD as “[Untitled],” plays. It’s in fact a second, acoustic version
of the album’s first track, “September Fields,” with just Ford, her guitar and
minimal back-up singing. It’s interesting because it gives an idea of what The High
Rhythm Section adds to the song, but also because it shows how well the song stands on its own.
*
Desert
Island: If you’re into classical, you listen to Wolfy. So
here he is.
I’ve been listening to performances of the piano
sonatas played by Mitsuko Uchida for for over 35 years. I have a very clear
memory of sitting in our living room on Manning St. in Toronto, listening to the
LP of this that I'd only recentlly purchased, taking a brief respite from the insanity
of having a newborn in the house. Baby Caitlin was sleeping upstairs with her
poor tired mother. Bliss. Uchida released a succession of Mozart sonata albums
in the mid-1980s. The album cover here is of the one I first bought. The sample
track is from one of the other albums.
Dirty
Hippy: Joni is one of my abiding loves from the dirty hippy
period. I think this was the first or second album I bought. It stands up well.
I rediscovered Mitchell a few years ago. I had fond
memories of the albums I'd owned back in the day, but hadn’t listened for
decades. The great Court and Spark,
which came after the period when I was intensely interested in her, and Blue, one of the jazz albums, both still
get played here. Along with this one. It includes some of the early hits,
including “The Circle Game,” “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock” – the last two
of which I don’t actually remember being on my LP. If they were added as bonus
tracks for the CD, I’m grateful.
The
Cryptic Corner
Again, it’s astonishing that no one among my legion of
followers could help me with the puzzle I was stuck on yesterday. Never mind.
From here on out, I’m just going to post illustrative
examples from the puzzles I’m working on – the ones I can actually solve, I
mean. Here goes.
From today’s puzzle in The Globe & Mail: “Close – doubly close in fact (6). The answer
is: NEARBY. Once you see it, it’s easy. “Nearby” means the same as “close”
(with a hard ‘s’), but so, in some contexts, do “near” and “by.” So “doubly” “close.”
It’s a typical setter’s trick: use a word that describes how to build the
answer, but looks as if it might be part of a
non-cryptic clue.
Here’s another: “One of the top stylists (11).” It’s a
kind of riddle. It plays on the fact that in spoken English, the way words in a
sentence are stressed changes the meaning. You’re meant to think the stress
falls here on the word “top” – he’s one of the best stylists. But the clue actually means “one who styles tops” –
heads in other words. The answer: HAIRDRESSER.
One
more. “Leave behind waste (6).” A classic clue playing on multiple meanings of words
in English, in particular the different meanings when the word is a verb or a
noun. Here, to make the clue intelligible, you need to put a semi-colon between
“behind” and “waste.” The answer, DESERT, means “leave behind” when it’s a
verb, a “waste” when it’s a noun. Photos of the Day The sun came out, but it was chilly on the balcony - though Karen sat out for awhile. Photo ops were few and far between.
A long way away: Blackfriars Village just the other side of the river from us
We had a small amount of excitement yesterday when friends
Pat and Ralph dropped by to deliver some toilet paper they’d kindly gone out
and sourced for us. (Guess where they got it? Real Canadian Superstores – the retailer
that didn’t have any to include in our grocery delivery of the other day.)
We, of course, couldn’t go down to meet them at the
front door because of our building’s request that returning travellers in
self-isolation not go into public areas. And they weren’t supposed to come in. So
our poor put-upon neighbour, Christian, kindly agreed to go down and collect
the TP for us.
We went out on the balcony, shivered in the wintery air
and waved and shouted. “Hi, Ralph! Hi, Pat!” They were little ants down on the
driveway, but the sight of their smiling faces looking up was very welcome.
They had brought their dog, Pensy, who Pat says got quite excited when they
went towards the door. She thought she was going to get to come up in the
elevator again.
Thanks again Pat and Ralph. And Christian.
Other than that, one day blends into the next.
We keep busy. Karen has been watching video craft
lessons on her computer and doing the exercises. For a class she’s either taken
or was going to be taking here in town (probably not, now), she’s making an art
book, a small hand-made book with collaged pages.
Each page is an interpretation of the lyrics of a
different song about stars or the sky. So she’s been wandering around the
apartment singing “Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a
jar...or would you rather be a...mule?”
Work in progress - would you like to swing on a star
Why stars? They were one of Louis’s other early
obsessions, along with owls. At one point we or his parents had to sing “Twinkle,
twinkle little star” to him about 50 times a day. He still sings it to himself
sometimes
She’s also still doing her Fitbit-inspired walking religiously:
at least 250 steps every hour – 10,000 to 15,000 a day. Pretty good for a caged
lioness. The Fitbit website, though, is apparently down, which means she can’t
pore over her sleep results and other statistics the Fitbit app aggregates.
She reads as much as or more than ever. Reading the
paper – and Karen reads three every day – is a deeply-ingrained habit, for both
of us, We never got into the habit of watching TV news and almost never do. If
we had to rely on getting hard-copy newspapers, we’d be feeling very out of touch at this point. But we’ve
been using an online service called Pressreader for years.
Pressreader
costs about $40 a month and gives you access to thousands of newspapers around
the world, including The Globe & Mail,
The Toronto Star, The London Free Press, The National Post, The Guardian, etc., etc. What you get is a digital facsimile of the
print edition displayed in an app on a tablet, phone or computer. We use our
8-inch Android tablets. Works great.
For books, and Karen reads three or four a week, she had
to make slight adjustments. When we’re at home, she goes to the library at
least once a week to borrow hard-copy books. When we go away, we both rely on
library copies of e-books, which we download and read on our Kobo readers. She’s
simply continued with that since we got home. I switched almost exclusively to reading on my Kobo
a couple of years ago, so there’s been no adjustment for me.
We can borrow e-books from our library anywhere we go,
of course, as long as we have Internet.
Demand for e-books from our library here in London –
as elsewhere – has sky-rocketed in the last five years or so. Publishers apparently
charge libraries orders-of-magnitude more for each title than the same thing
sells for at retail. They also put onerous restrictions on how libraries can
use them. This limits how many titles libraries can afford to acquire, especially
given that they’re often among the hardest hit by public spending cuts. Many of
Britain’s library systems, for example, are in crisis.
All of this means that access to reading material for
us could be limited. I often have trouble finding anything I want to read at
our library. Luckily, we have access to a couple of other libraries to which we
wangled memberships years ago, one in the U.S., one in the U.K. For whatever
reason, they’ve never cancelled our memberships. Thank goodness (or
carelessness.)
It can be argued that we, as avid, reasonably well-off
readers, should be supporting a struggling publishing industry – and its authors
– by buying our books. Fair comment. But given the number of books we read
between us in a year, it would become a major
line item in our expenses. And we’re not expecting to be as well-off post-COVID
given the thrashing our investments are taking.
As for me, I spend an absurd amount of time on this
blog, and trying to solve cryptic crossword puzzles – with only mixed results –
and reading (but only one newspaper a day for me, and far fewer books than
Karen). I’m still jogging around the apartment at least once a day for 20 or 25
minutes, listening to podcasts of the CBC’s The
Current with Matt Galloway. (Highly recommended by the way.)
We now eat our big meal of the day at 3 pm to
accommodate Karen’s anti-diabetes diet regime. It breaks up the day
differently.
By 8:30, we’re ready for some TV. We don’t watch any
more than we used to. It’s almost all from streaming services. We’re currently
enjoying Valhalla Murders, a
nordic-noir set in Iceland, and Unorthodox,
based on the memoir of a woman who escaped her strict orthodox Jewish community
and tried to become a musician. Both on Netflix.
We were
watching PVR-recorded episodes of the latest season of Outlander, but we’re thinking the series might have reached its
best-before date. It’s leadenly slow-moving and they’ve made the mistake of
bringing attention to all the implausibilities of time travel.
The weird thing
is in all this, the days just whiz by.
*
Desert
Island: Dave Brubeck was another of my early jazz heroes. I
still listen to him regularly.
Time
Out, the most famous of his albums, was the first I bought, very early on,
probably in the 1970s. I remember years later going in to Tower Records when I
was in Manhattan on a business trip and buying the CD version. This album, Brubeck Time, made in 1954, actually
predates Time Out by five years, but isn’t
nearly as well known. I didn’t hear it for the first time until about ten years
ago, when I got this re-engineered CD edition. The music isn’t as out-there as Time Out in terms of its use of unusual
time signatures, but the band is just as good, the sound is a little plusher
than Time Out and Paul Desmond’s lyrical
sax is wonderful. I don’t know why it isn’t more popular.
Dirty
Hippy: This is another cheat, stretching the “dirty hippy
period.” (Although, I notice our moderator – son-in-law Bobby Baines – approved
my selection of a 1980 release yesterday.)
I allow this as a “dirty hippy” selection – even though
it came out in 2014 – because the artist, Frazey Ford, former lead
singer with the folk group The Be Good Tanyas, was apparently raised by hippies in BC. The music is pretty retro too – 1960s-style rhythm and blues. She made the
album with backing from legendary soul star Al Green’s band, The High Rhythm
Section. The songs and the inimitable drugged-out singing style are all Frazey,
though. Very easy to listen to – although not always that easy to make
out the lyrics.
The
Cryptic Corner
Yesterday’s clue was “Support eastern Vikings with
five hundred (7).”
Solution: ENDORSE.
Non-cryptic clue is “support.” You build the answer by
arranging the abbreviation for eastern (E), the Roman numeral for 500 (D) and a
synonym for “vikings” (NORSE).
I’m going to change it up a bit. As mentioned, I’m no whiz
solver myself. I’m often frustrated by not being able to quite complete
puzzles. Here’s a recent Globe & Mail
puzzle, mostly filled in, but with three words unsolved. Can you get them for
me? Pat?
The
screen grabs are taken from The Globe’s
cryptic crossword web applet – which you can fine here. If you want to see all the clues for this puzzle, scroll down and find the puzzle archive, select Sat Mar 28 from the drop-down menu and hit Go.
30 March 2020 (Day 11) – I was thinking about the
dream I wrote about the other day, and about dreams in general. Dreams and their meanings is a subject that deeply interested me about half a century ago. (I’m entering my second
early-adulthood apparently; second childhood not far behind.) I still have
Carl Jung’s Memories, Dreams and
Reflections, and a few other obscure texts about dreams, on my book shelf.
One fairly recent theory about dreams, if I understand
correctly, is that they’re not weird, revelatory “movies” created in the “unconscious,”
as Jung thought. They’re just random, sense impressions and memory fragments flashing
around our brains while we sleep, part of sleep’s neuro-housecleaning work. Our
re-awakening conscious minds cobble the remembered fragments together into a
kind of narrative to try and make sense of them – just as our fully-awake minds
do with real sense impressions.
I think this theory has been used to refute the idea
that dreams have meaning. It doesn’t, it really just changes where the making
of meaning happens – from a speculative “unconscious” to our half-awake brains. I think the narratives in our dreams do have meaning. Sometimes
it may not be immediately clear – may be coded in a sense, relying on
symbolism, allegory, etc. But that’s also true of narratives created by novelists,
poets and playwrights. They often have “hidden” meanings too, sometimes hidden
even from the authors.
Heavy, eh?
So what did my dream mean? No feckin’ clue.
Seriously: it can’t be coincidence at a time like this
that the narrative juxtaposes wide open spaces with very cramped,
claustrophobic spaces. Or that the risks of riding on elevators figures
prominently. Also, there is anxiety about being in the wrong place and not being
able to get to the right place, which is probably an expression of the anxiety I
feel – that I’m sure many of us feel – about being separated from family,
My ruminations about dreams and dreaming also dredged
up the memory of a book I read – half a century ago – about an anthropologist exploring
remote parts of Malaysia in the 1930s. He comes into contact with a then little
known indigenous group called the Senoi. An interesting aspect of their culture
is that they claim to be able to control the outcomes of their dreams, control
their “avatars” in the dream, to learn how to overcome obstacles, meet
challenges and promote personal growth in waking life.
Sort of like playing a role-playing video game while
sleeping.
It’s an idea that still has currency in the west. It’s referred to
as “lucid dreaming” and has been studied fairly extensively. I had no
difficulty finding information online about both the Senoi and lucid dreaming – and the
book I had read. The book, published in 1954, was Pygmies and Dream Giants by Kilton Stewart. You can still buy it
online.
Maybe if I master Senoi-like lucid dreaming, I can
figure out how to operate that elevator.
Finally, I had forgotten that one of the reasons the
Senoi use dream control is to enhance sexual pleasure. Cue music..."dream a little dream of me."
*
Desert
Island: Every time I listen to Handel's Water Music, I wonder, why don’t I
listen to it more often? It’s so great.
Handel, a Hanoverian living and working in England in
the first half of the 18th century, was hugely prolific and hugely popular. He
wrote orchestral pieces, operas, oratorios – and everything he did went gold. Water Music was written for King George
I who wanted new music to be played while he was floating down the Thames on his
opulent royal barge. I think I had this same performance of it by The Academy
of St.-Martin-in-the-Fields on LP back in the 1970s.
Dirty
Hippy: I’m stretching the definition of “dirty hippy period”
a bit with this one – but I was still a dirty hippy at heart when it came out
in 1980.
I’m a huge
Emmylou fan. I must have bought this when it was first released because I
remember inflicting it on anybody who came into our house in Stratford, from
which we moved in 1980. It’s from a period when Harris was doing traditional
country and bluegrass, on this one with guitarist Ricky Skaggs. It includes
cameos by Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson.
The
Cryptic Corner
Nobody as far as I know got my last cryptic clue: “Fish
with forthcoming marriage announcement get away in all the confusion (7)” No?
Non-cryptic clue is “get away” – I know, it’s not at
the end or beginning of the clue text. “All the confusion” is a cue that it’s an
anagram as well as a word-builder. The answer: “fish” (COD) “with” “forthcoming
marriage announcement” (BANS), those letters “in confusion,” yielding: ABSCOND.
Getting a little more gnarly now, but still within rules.
In word-builder clues, setters often include words
that need to be translated into their common abbreviation or short-form. For
example, if “mother” or “father” appears in the clue, it usually means the
letters M-A or P-A, or M-U-M or D-A-D appear somewhere in the answer. If “doctor”
is in the clue, it could be D-R or M-O (apparently readily recognized as “medical
officer” in the UK.)
When you’re stumped by a clue, one strategy is to
assume it’s a word-builder and examine each clue word. Think if there’s an
instantly recognizable short form for it. “Small,” “medium” or “large” in the
clue could mean S, M or L in the answer; “hot” or “cold” could mean H or C. And
so on. “That is” – I-E. “About or “regarding” – R-E. Etc.
And then there are a couple of special cases.
Sometimes the word “point” in a clue translates as “point of the compass” and
you’re meant to use one of N, S, E or W to build the answer. “Number” could
mean you have to use I, V, X, L, C, D or M (Roman numerals). Or the word
representing the number or direction appears and you have to abbreviate – “north” or “ten.” “Note” could mean you’re
supposed to include A, B, C, D, E, F or G (the primary notes of the western musical
scale.)
Here’s
another sample clue to chew on: “Support eastern Vikings with five hundred (7).”
Hint: there are two abbreviation/substitution tricks in this one. Photo of the day
One of Karen's projects, completed under quarantine - an embroidered owl in honour of our owl-obsessed grandson. Owl, which he initially pronounced "ah-yul," was one of Louis's first word. He knows I have owl pictures on my tablet and frequently demands to see them.
29 March 2020 (Day 10) - Our groceries from Real
Canadian Superstores finally came at 7 o’clock last night. Minus the loo roll.
Our poor neighbour, Christian, was on call most of the day, waiting for us to
tell him the shipment had arrived. Luckily, he and his partner are practicing
self-isolation too – just to be safe – and weren’t wanting to go anywhere
anyway.
Karen and I had seen a video, featuring a
Michigan-based doc explaining and demonstrating how to adapt hospital
sanitation practices to bringing purchased goods into the house in the middle
of a pandemic. They seemed sensible precautions and eminently do-able. It was
brought home to me just how sensible when I read a human-interest story in this
morning’s Toronto Star about the
death from C19 of a Real Canadian Superstores employee in Toronto.
The process was slightly hilarious, while being deadly
serious. In preparation, Karen disinfected two of our kitchen counters with
bleach. One would be the “dirty” space, one the “clean.” She filled one sink
next to the “dirty” counter with a mix of 1/3 cup bleach to five gallons of
water. Then she partially stripped down to save her top being damaged by the
bleach, and put on an apron.
When Christian knocked on our door to let us know he’d
put the groceries outside, I waited until he was safely back in his flat and
went out and got them. They came in five plastic grocery bags tied together at
the tops. (We had to pay for the bags, contrary to one thing we’d read.) I put
all the bags on the “dirty” counter where Karen was waiting, then I went and
washed my hands for two Happy Birthdays.
Karen took each item out and disinfected it. If it was
in a hard plastic, glass or cardboard container, she wiped it with the bleach
solution. If it was fresh produce, which a lot of it was, she took it out of
any packaging and submerged each piece in the bleach solution, then rinsed it again
thoroughly under the cold water tap. I was waiting with a clean tea towel and
dried the fruit or vegetable and put it away in the fridge. Or if I was occupied, she put the item on the clean counter.
One of the RCS bags was used to contain the others and
any discarded packaging. When we were finished, I took it out and put it down
the garbage chute across the hall. Then we both washed our hands for two Happy
Birthdays.
Job done! Ten minutes, fifteen tops. Do this. The video is here.
*
Except it didn’t solve the toilet paper problem. After
the grocery washing, Karen got on to the world wide internet and emailed our
two closest London friends. Could either spare us a few rolls until our
quarantine was over and we could get out to find more? One has kindly offered
to try and pick us up some when she next goes out on a shopping run. Thank
you, thank you, Patsy!
Given that toilet paper manufacturers assured the
public early on that they had adequate stocks on hand, it’s enraging that panic
buying and TP hoarding continue. I hope some of these assholes were hoping they’d
be able to sell on their surplus at exorbitant prices, because new anti-gouging
measures in Ontario come with hefty fines and jail time for offenders.
May the bastards rot in jail! Preferably TP-less.
*
Meanwhile, as the old joke goes, I have a drinking
problem...I can’t get enough. My usual evening tipple is a spritzed cider. I
had two left when we got back. They’re long gone. The LCBO no longer delivers
to homes, only to post offices. And their stocks of my favourite cider are so
low, I can’t even order online for delivery at a nearby store or post office.
So I’ll have to wait until Friday when I get out of the coop.
The purchase of two litres of Duty Free single malt on
the way back from England now seems a very prescient decision. Trouble is,
even at the very good price I paid for my Glenmorangie, it’s expensive stuff,
and I’m going through it at an alarming rate.
*
Desert
Island: Not for the faint of heart. Some find Beethoven’s
so-called Late String Quartets, written in 1825 when he was in failing health –
he died in 1827 at 56 – to be heavy going. I don’t. I find them thrilling.
This version, by Quartetto Italiano, a 1995 CD release
from Philips of recordings made before 1980, is the only one I know. There may
be better performances on disc out there, but this one does me fine. When I
first started listening 20 or more years ago, I often listened while I was
doing my morning exercises. It’s not...social
music.
Dirty
Hippy: A staple back in the day for dirty hippies and button-down
college kids alike. The hits were huge, but Peter, Paul & Mary were more
than the hits.
One of my most-played albums in the late 1960s and
1970s was a two-record best-of-PP&M set. It had all the early and
middle-period hits, plus additional material, including some cool concert
tracks. When I went looking for it last year to get music for a video I was
making for my brother Steve’s memorial, it was nowhere to be found. But I did
find this, which originally came out in 1970. The 1990 CD release must have
been completely re-engineered; I was blown away
by the sound quality, and how well the best songs stand up. The selection here also
includes “Stewball,” a great song that wasn’t
on my album.
*
The Cryptic Corner: Sister Pat gets the praise, again. The clue was, ““Cheese
made in this backward place (4)” Pat solved it correctly as Edam, the clue word
“made” spelled backwards.
The most common type of clue is the word-builder. The cryptic part of a clue becomes a recipe for
building an answer from ingredients. The trick is to correctly interpret which
are ingredients, which instructions, and which the non-cryptic clue.
Here’s a simple example: “A tailless dog causes a
commotion (3).” The conventional clue is ‘a commotion,’ which is ‘caused’ by
the cryptic part, ‘a tailless dog.’
Construct the answer by taking the ‘A’ from the first
word in the clue – this is a common trick in word-builders, to use an easily overlooked
element as a necessary ingredient – followed by ‘tailless D-O-G,’ i.e. the word ‘dog’ without its tail or last
letter.
Answer: ADO. Much ado: a big commotion.
Here’s another, “Fish with forthcoming marriage
announcement get away in all the confusion (7)”
Remember
what I said about setters combining tricks in the same clue.
*
Photos
of the Week: Official Cooped Portraits
And one for my boy Louis, who likes to see his Papa being silly...
