I’ve posted nothing lately because as far as I’m concerned, nothing’s happened. Since Lockdown started last March, I’ve been forced to stay at home and so I’ve been unable to do much. Consequently, I’ve had nothing to write about.
However, a couple of days ago, I was looking through the contents of cardboard boxes we have in the loft and I found paraphernalia I haven’t looked at for nearly fifty years. They are lecture notes and other stuff I accumulated in my time as a student at Durham.
I had a wonderful time at Durham and enjoyed every day of the three years I was there. I made lifelong friends with about 15 people, many of whom, Covid permitting, will be meeting at a reunion we are hoping to have at a hotel in Cheltenham in September.
But, there was a period of about three weeks when a certain lecturer made my life relatively difficult. It ended when he finally accepted that I was not the student that had caused him some difficulty or other. I never really found out or understood what he suspected me of doing.
I must have been really pissed off with him because I found something in a box that I intended to send to him, anonymously, to cause him some discomfort.
I never sent it because he apologised to me for thinking that I had done such a thing. When I asked, “What thing?” he looked embarrassed and walked away. We never spoke again. As he taught me one of the subsidiary subjects I studied went to, I never had the need to communicate with the man again.
It is this crossword. The clues are fairly simple because I wanted him to solve it. If he were unable to solve it, he would never read the message it contained and I’d have wasted a whole Sunday when I could have been in The Buffalo Head.
This is it. You must only solve it if you don’t mind seeing the very nasty message it holds.
Across | Down |
8 Make better or satisfy (7) 9 Fibre in the body; courage (5) 10 Round a spool in a radio cassette (5,4) 11 A fish (3) 12 The tide ______ and flowed (5) 14 More smoky (7) 16 They are fired from a gun (7) 18 He picks premium bonds (5) 20 A child’s plaything (3) 21 Dug a hole (9) 23 A smell (5) 24 Appears; becomes apparent (7) | 1 The front of a building (6) 2 Second hand (4) 3 The whole kit and ______ (8) 4 Greek meat dish (5) 5 On a single occasion (4) 6 Not a whole number (8) 7 Tributary stream; provides food (6) 13 Extravagant fuss (8) 15 General appraisal (8) 16 Treacherously give information (6) 17 It must be kept from people (6) 19 First born of siblings (6) 21 Jacob & Rebecca's eldest son (4) 22 Roman garment (4)
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Looking back on it I’m quite embarrassed. Compiling a crossword as a means of assault is a pretty nerdy thing to do. Mind you, I don’t think anyone would have called me a nerd in 1968. I don’t remember hearing it until the 80s.
Nowadays, someone being victimised by a lecturer would shriek out that they were deeply offended in some way and try to get him removed.
I'm no IT expert but as you won't be able to fill it in online, I think that if you want to solve it and read the message, you must print it out and then use pen or pencil.
Remember them?
Someone has emailed me to say that one of the answers couldn’t have been written in 1969 because it didn’t exist then. He’s right
Last week, when I took the crossword out of the cardboard box where it had lain for the past 53 years, one corner was unfinished. I needed an answer that fitted A _ D _ O _ A _ E. In 1968, I couldn’t think of a word then, but I can now.
