An exchange in the Dull Men’s Club (UK).
Alan Davis: Today, I fitted a patio door friction retaining arm. I fitted the other one a few days ago.
Chris Couchman: You’re a wild one!
Here is Alan (with the wife).
Apparently, it’s a thing in Britain for the Brussel sprouts to be overcooked. This is a post of Alan’s from last November:
I’m wondering what the optimum date is for putting the Christmas sprouts on to boil? I’m thinking around the first week in December to ensure they are properly cooked.
Paul Clark: You’re too late……! You’ll need to add a drop of olive oil now to make them easier to slide into the bin.
Chris Brown: No need to be so profligate……cheap spread or engine oil is just as good.
There were 73 comments, almost all of them noting that Alan was already way late.
Rob Ashlee asked: For which year?
Oooh, these look good. Roasted!
This story by June Alpert was in today’s Met Diary and is called “Apricot Blossoms.”
Dear Diary:
When we moved to Brooklyn, we planted a rosebush against our front yard fence. It had delicate apricot blossoms with a beautiful scent.
As it grew, it would spill over the top of the fence onto the sidewalk. In late autumn’s cool days, there would always be one or two roses that seemed to last for weeks.
Naturally, people passing by would stop to smell the roses. Occasionally, I would come outside and see the ragged stems where someone had torn off a few. The selfishness upset me quite a bit.
One October morning, I came outside to see a woman with her face and hands in the rosebush. I was on the verge of scolding her for taking a rose when she spoke to me.
“My friend liked to stop here every day to smell the roses,” she said. “He died last week, but that rose is still here.”
I had to go inside and lean against the wall with my eyes closed.
Two pros constructed the puzzle today — Rachel Goldstein and Adam Wagner — and you could tell. The theme revealer ran down the entire center of the large (Sunday) grid, with the clue: “How a shirt might be put on in a rush” and the answer was: INSIDE OUT AND BACKWARDS. Then, get this — there were twelve theme answers that each had two clues and one circled letter. The first clue’s answer was traditional/across. But for the second clue’s answer you had to read the first answer backwards and take out the letter that is inside the circle. Here’s the best example:
At 110A, the two clues were “Like some bikes,” and “Sunken, as the eyes.” So the first answer was TEN SPEED with the N in a circle. So take out the N and read it backwards for the second answer: DEEP SET. I know, amazing, right? And this happened twelve times. (TS ELIOT, with the S in a circle, became TOILET backwards.)
And the final kicker: The twelve circled letters spelled INSIDE twice, in order, once backwards.
Wordplay at its most genius-est, if you ask me.
Do you know what a thawb is? (That’s not a typo.) Of course you don’t. I’d bet you also don’t know anyone who knows what a thawb is. So encountering it in the clue at 52A was not heartening (“Thawb-wearing leaders”). Turns out it’s those gown things arab men wear. The answer was EMIRS. Here’s some more stuff of no interest to you — a thawb may also be known as a dishdashah or a kandura.
“C’mon, Khalil, we’re leaving for the mosque. We’re late already.”
“Okay, Amirah, just let me throw my thawb on. Be right there.”
Do you know what an islet is? If you’re like me (God forbid), you think you do but you don’t. You think it’s just a small island, right? Well, there’s more to it than that. It’s a rock or small island that has little vegetation and cannot sustain human habitation. So a small island that people can live on is a small island but not an islet. Thus the clue for ISLET today: “No man’s land?”
At 72A, “Actress Sink of Stranger Things” was SADIE. Less than 2% of us are redheads, and Ms. Sink makes the cut. Add in a pair of blue eyes and you get the rarest hair/eye combo there is. Statistically. So we can factually present Ms. Sink to you as a rare beauty.
Sink is 23 and from Texas. She’s an ardent vegan. She keeps her personal life personal. So there.
For those of you who do not have much experience with New Yorkers, please meet this woman in Fletcher Laico’s Met Diary story today.
Dear Diary:
I go to the same Lower East Side deli every morning. Many days, a woman who is probably in her 70s or 80s and always dressed in several layers of coats and stockings comes in.
“I’m extra hungry for my bagel today,” she often says.
The sleepy crowd doesn’t usually respond.
One day, though, she opened with something different.
“Quick with my bagel,” she said. “I’ve got someone at home that I don’t trust!”
Intrigued, I asked who she was referring to.
“Somebody who doesn’t like my pet,” she said.
Turning to the man preparing her bagel, she added: “Not too much butter. You always put too much butter!”
I asked what kind of pet she had.
“A parakeet,” she said. “And I’m afraid of what she might do.”
What was that?
“Don’t make me say it,” she said.
She rushed through an explanation of how, against her better judgment, she had rented her spare room to the granddaughter of a friend and the granddaughter’s boyfriend. Now she was trying to get rid of them.
“This woman isn’t usually awake when I come to the deli in the morning, and today I think she’s up,” she said. “I’ve got to get back there. I don’t trust her!”
With that, she grabbed her buttered bagel off the counter and hurried off to save her parakeet.
I’m certain you all join me in hoping she got there in time. The last thing we need is a distraught parakeet marring our Father’s Day, amirite? See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 