Some mornings are just hell.
As that Pepys wrote: "Up betimes. Have head like ye papist's dog".
And talking of dogs, this morning's crossword was a boxer-setter cross and looked like a Kombi-Van-lavatory-brush hybrid.
If you want to look it up, it was Oz 8065 and Times 23878.
You can find the complications here.
That site, where cruciverbalists gather for a mutual two-handed job, is just that.
A load of onanism.
Worst of all is the one I call UrineSpoof (peter, be it noted, is the French verb "to fart" -- hence, petard: a small explosive device on which one can be -- and this one ought to be -- hoist) who seems to gloat over other solvers' miseries ... putting us right and revelling in his short solving times.
I just hope something else of his is so short.
OK, so he wins the championship now and then but should appreciate that there are solvers out there (well, here, in Minjup WA to tell the truth) who actually enjoy a good long solve.
Why invest $1.30 in R. Murdoch & Co. every day if not to dwell on the x-word?
There's bugger-all else in there otherwise.

On which topic, I spoke to Gary and Margaret last night on the proposed Crapstone twinning.
They're all for it but, now that there's a place in Wales actually called Llareggub, I tried to persuade them to go with that instead.
The Pratt's Bottomites are, I'm reliably informed, waiting with baited breath.
(They like fish down there.)
Can't find the international dialling code for Krakatoa but will happily be informed of any surviving residents there.
The reason why Minjup was originally twinned with the island is that it was the furthest place at which the 1883 eruption was felt.
What's 3,150 kms between friends?
Gary and Margaret think we should abandon them (Pratt's and the Krak) but I fear the possibilities of a delayed aftershock.

I'm all in favour of sticking with traditional values.
Like children up the chimneys, women bare-foot and pregnant in the kitchen, and class warfare.

Sledge