In the late David Nobbs’s world, crosswords were hilariously preposterous
David Nobbs, whose death was announced yesterday, noticed things. Things such as crosswords.
Crossword clue I saw in an Australian paper. 'Opposite of salt'. I wrestled with it for three hours. The answer was 'Pepper'.
We ate and slept and slept and ate and lolled on our pits (beds). We read books. We did crosswords. We amused ourselves. We abused ourselves.
A man who compiled crosswords would certainly be capable of a murder of this kind.
The shaking caused his socks to fall down over his ankles, and it was hard to fill in the crossword legibly.
Can’t finish the crossword like you used to? Nasty taste in the mornings? Keep thinking about naked sportswomen?
In the spaces of the crossword he wrote: ‘My name is Reginald Iolanthe Perrin. My mother couldn’t appear in our local Gilbert and Sullivan Society production of Iolanthe, because I was on the way, so they named me after it instead. I’m glad it wasn’t the Pirates of Penzance.’
He didn’t do the crossword on the train, because that’s what Reggie would have done.