18 down of the 19, which is being treated with 13 15.
Did anyone do the Araucaria crossword last Saturday in which he made his announcement? I can't imagine anyone's saving last Saturday's Guardian crossword for enjoyment at a future date, but I shan't spoil it just in case - here's a link to an article that explains it.Trigger-warning for cancer.I received the news by solving the clues. It made for a sadly memorable crossword: sad and witty and bold and typical.
In other news, I'm going to India this weekend with slemslempike. Not for the weekend, which would be hilarious and extravagant, but until about February the 20th or some such date. Some date that marks the beginning of jobseeking - though I keep finding reasons to put that back - because freelancing doesn't work and I've spent almost all my savings on India. I drained the last of my ISA into my current account last week, which was an unsettling feeling. I'll have some left on my return, but really not very much, and that's really what's going to dictate the onset of the dreaded j_bs__k___g. But yes. India. APPARENTLY. Lots of it. I intend to access the internet intermittently en route, though probably more Facebook and Twitter than here because ... this is a sad answer ... they're less deceased. Also they let me edit my typos. But here as well. I also intend to make slemslempike eat at a restaurant in the middle of Deer Park in Hauz Khas, where the house special is a kebab on a flaming sword. A friend of mine says I was impossibly despondent last time I came back from India, so apologies in advance if that happens this time as well. I'll try not to be. Jobseeking though. Ugh.
I watched some of the Blandings adaptation last night and found it quite funny. I've not actually read much of the Blandings stories - it's only the Jeeves stories I've read in their entirety - but a Wodehouse/Spall combo does sound sufficiently tailor-made for me that it'd be rude to ignore it. I used to get hugely (well, moderately) annoyed by the generic Adapting Wodehouse objection that it's not worth it because so much of the pleasure is in the narrative voice that you necessarily lose, which doesn't hold up for Clive Exton' Jeeves and Wooster because Wooster is he narrator and we get plenty of his voice, and the sentences you miss you're allowed to look up in the books. Sometimes I think adaptation-objectors believe a tv version is going to actually overwrite the source material so no-one can ever enjoy it again. Also Exton, or the director, or someone, introduced so much effective visual comedy to th Jeeves and Wooster adaptations that the gap felt pretty much filled. I think the objection holds a little more water in this case because you do lose what the omniscient narrator says and there's not barrel-loads of sufficiently similar dialogue knocking around to make up for it. But what you get is still funny.
I want cake.
In other news, I'm going to India this weekend with slemslempike. Not for the weekend, which would be hilarious and extravagant, but until about February the 20th or some such date. Some date that marks the beginning of jobseeking - though I keep finding reasons to put that back - because freelancing doesn't work and I've spent almost all my savings on India. I drained the last of my ISA into my current account last week, which was an unsettling feeling. I'll have some left on my return, but really not very much, and that's really what's going to dictate the onset of the dreaded j_bs__k___g. But yes. India. APPARENTLY. Lots of it. I intend to access the internet intermittently en route, though probably more Facebook and Twitter than here because ... this is a sad answer ... they're less deceased. Also they let me edit my typos. But here as well. I also intend to make slemslempike eat at a restaurant in the middle of Deer Park in Hauz Khas, where the house special is a kebab on a flaming sword. A friend of mine says I was impossibly despondent last time I came back from India, so apologies in advance if that happens this time as well. I'll try not to be. Jobseeking though. Ugh.
I watched some of the Blandings adaptation last night and found it quite funny. I've not actually read much of the Blandings stories - it's only the Jeeves stories I've read in their entirety - but a Wodehouse/Spall combo does sound sufficiently tailor-made for me that it'd be rude to ignore it. I used to get hugely (well, moderately) annoyed by the generic Adapting Wodehouse objection that it's not worth it because so much of the pleasure is in the narrative voice that you necessarily lose, which doesn't hold up for Clive Exton' Jeeves and Wooster because Wooster is he narrator and we get plenty of his voice, and the sentences you miss you're allowed to look up in the books. Sometimes I think adaptation-objectors believe a tv version is going to actually overwrite the source material so no-one can ever enjoy it again. Also Exton, or the director, or someone, introduced so much effective visual comedy to th Jeeves and Wooster adaptations that the gap felt pretty much filled. I think the objection holds a little more water in this case because you do lose what the omniscient narrator says and there's not barrel-loads of sufficiently similar dialogue knocking around to make up for it. But what you get is still funny.
I want cake.