It Isn't Ever Delicate to Live
Concerning ambitious spiders, puzzling ships, Russian doll settlements, and bad-tempered election candidates.
Duel
There’s a spider in my car. I know this, because every morning when I get into it, there is a new cobweb somewhere. Usually between the dashboard and the windscreen, but this morning, rather suggestively, between the seat and the steering wheel. Y’know… the spot where an observant and ambitious spider might perhaps have noticed I tend to put myself.
Well, atmospheric though of course this is in the week of Hallowe’en (a period I am not yet ready to call ‘spooky season’. I haven’t even given up on the apostrophe in Hallowe’en yet) I’d still quite like to find and evict the spider. Not for my sake, but for its sake - I don’t think there are as many flies in my car as this spider hopes. But I can’t find it. It’s never lurking at the edge or middle of the new cobweb, the way I thought spiders were supposed to do. Perhaps it has a subtler plan. Anyway, it’s been five or six days now, and I still haven’t caught the spider. But on the plus side, it still hasn’t caught me.
Speaking of which:
Here is my favourite poem about cobwebs, by Kay Ryan.
Spiderweb
From other
angles the
fibers look
fragile, but
not from the
spider’s, always
hauling coarse
ropes, hitching
lines to the
best posts
possible. It’s
heavy work
everyplace,
fighting sag,
winching up
give. It
isn’t ever
delicate
to live.
News and Ads
Not much. Sometimes, when there’s none at all, I’ll just drop this section. But:
The 2023 Souvenir Programme (you’ll remember that these days I’m doing one 45 minute edition a year) is getting a repeat on Radio 4 on Boxing Day.
I Saw Three Ships
Here’s a new puzzle. As I said last week, I’ll alternate putting these on the free and the paid side of the Grand Canyon.
Living as I do in a small cottage by the side of the Panama canal, I enjoy watching the cargo ships passing by. This morning I saw the following three:
After that, I began to find them a bit repetitive, and decided I had seen enough.
Assuming I was right; if I had stayed to watch the next three ships, where might I have conjectured they came from?
Put your solution in the comments. If no-one else has put your solution yet, then just put the solution with no explanation, please. If you find someone has already done that, then provide the explanation; and in that way we’ll get a first and second place. (Thrifty Squadron, I’m afraid Substack won’t let you leave comments, so you’ll have to make do with the quiet glow of knowing you were first really.)
Commentary Box, on
Re: the Cabin Pressure unrecorded scene, Queso says:
This is a deep-cut throwback, but on the old blog during the Farewell Bear Facts leading up to the Cabin Pressure finale, I remembered a mention of a deleted scene that Martin referenced to Nancy when explaining he was "paid to fly aeroplanes" - one that made that line not quite make sense. I think about it every time I hear that episode again, and always wanted to know what it was that was cut! Maybe this is the answer to that burning question at long last?
Well, I’ve gone back into the dusty archives to have a look, and no, that wasn’t the deleted scene in question. I’m not going to post it here out of context, as it’s just a slab of plot without many jokes, but the upshot of it was that Carolyn agreed to pay Martin his hourly rate as a man-with-a-van. So, a lot less than a pilot should earn; but a lot more than that particular pilot was earning. However, since my long-established rule is that if it wasn’t broadcast it didn’t happen, this is not canon!
Also, Snooperdoop tells me their family did a readthrough of the scene, which delights me.
Sketch Book
And here we wave our handkerchiefs and leave Thrifty Squadron on the platform, as Spendy Squadron and I visit a city named after a city named after a town named after a town named after a village named after a hill, and a page of unused jokes from Avenue 5.