A sense of satisfaction, eventually

I missed having a proper Sunday off yesterday, particularly when there was no sun around either. After dusk, I made a fire for Bomble, who did enjoy his stretch out in front of the hearth, and we settled in to watch some casual telly, which wasn't up to scratch. The power of promotion over content again. But I did catch a 15 minute segment of a documentary, American Radical - the trials of Norman Finkelstein, airing on the Russia Today channel. Very interesting views about the Palestinians' situation, with an old favourite of mine, Noam Chomsky, chipping in too. Unfortunately, when it was time to catch the headlines at 7pm, they cut away from him in mid-sentence and never returned to that programme! The power of automated programming to ignore the viewer's sensibilities. But Youtube has got clips of it or at least him, in case you are interested. I am.

I went to bed very tired, after the council day-out, and picked up the newest edition (December) of The Oldie, a firm favourite here. I went straight to the crosswords, and yet again found that their cryptic crossword, which they call the Giant Genius, had an introductory description, which was far too cryptic for me to understand, let alone the clues themselves.

Some years ago, I made an effort to try solving Cryptic crosswords, with Pip's encouragement. I'd started years ago, when visiting my mum, and would have a go at her Daily Telegraph's (yes!) after she had finished the simple crossword. Then I tried The Observer, and then graduated to The Guardian where I discovered the marvellous and feted Araucaria, a doyen of crossword setters.

Helena then assisted me with Christmas gifts of collections of various crosswords (eg 100 Araucaria) in book form, which has really helped me to crack the codes and begin to complete some of them.

But last night I was quite happy to solve two-thirds of the Oldie's Massive Moron crossword No. 264, and with Helena's help over the morning cup-of-tea in bed, we finished it. The final problem got solved when I resorted to a Google search on my iPod and answered "Zealous", a word that might very well have cropped up in last night's documentary.

ps apologies to some blip friends whom I couldn't reply to yesterday, owing to severe brain-ache.