The theme today was prompted by the return this week of an old, failed hard drive from which the data had been rescued. Lots of stuff I thought I’d lost was restored. Plenty of music files, but not least was a set of photographs of the Azed Cup on its visit to Wellington a few years ago. Here’s a few – Wellington in the background in the first; the Beehive (a main Government building) in the last, and in between a shot in front of one of our flax plants that is itself no more.
The cup itself is now lost, alas – having made it around the world and back, it went astray somewhere within England. I have heard that a replacement is on its way, aligning with the recent celebratory lunch to mark Azed’s 50 year run in The Observer.
It certainly would not do at present to risk sending the new cup out here should I be fortunate enough to win again. Post is haphazard at best, and it remains difficult even to buy stamps to send things outwards. This is mostly pandemic related, and has some odd effects. I have gone on too often here about the curious behaviour of BBC publications: 2021 saw sporadic and intermittent receipt of the Sky at Night magazine, while BBC Music sailed through unaffected. In 2022, I have had just the one BBC Music magazine back in January, while Sky at Night has flourished. Admittedly the order of receipt has been January…long pause…March, April, and February, but it’s more encouraging than zero. Given that the two magazines originate from the same distributors and are close to identically packaged, the difference in delivery patterns is bizarre.
Mind you, you would not have wished anything to arrive in the mailbox this week, where it would have needed rescuing promptly before being saturated. The first significant winter storm has seen floods and downpours and three consecutive nights of thunderstorms to keep us (and the cats) awake. We had new trees planted just last weekend, but they seem to have survived, while our late-producing feijoa has thrown off a few monster fruits.
The puzzle this week is an Independent daily from early 2019, which means there is a fifteensquared blog about it. For some reason, the line spacing has gone skew-whiff – not sure why, but I hope to rectify before the next update. The onlie begetter of fifteensquared is stepping back – a little – due to eye problems, which is very sad, but I urge you to visit (after solving, of course), and marvel at what he has produced for the cruciverbalist.
After a first weekend flurry, the rest of June is quiet, though I’ve just got word of a Telegraph Toughie on 23 June to interrupt the regular Friday sequence in The Independent. There’ll also be blogs on that first weekend’s puzzles appearing here in the course of this week.
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