1. First they were double Dutch. Then I got into the rabbit warren of his head. Then I was actually #addicted #DerekCrozier compiled #Crosaire for 67 years. I stopped doing it the day his last one printed. Tonight I found an envelope in the Attic. rte.ie/archives/2018/…
2. I might mention it took hours of hauling bags, bedlinen, dolls & a succession of Mannequins heads & wigs up a tiny flight of attic steps with murderous beams on bad knees. Working on the mantra "do it like you mean it" I tipped out a handbag I have not seen for a decade and 
3. this was in a procession of receipts, tickets, old lipsticks and coins. "What in the name of Jazus is a bit of old newspaper doin here?" says I in a flop sweat lifting a tangle of purple hair off my hot neck in the breeze from the velux. 6 days a week for 67 years is 20,971
4. crosswords by my reckoning. It is a decade since "Crosaire" died, the man, not the puzzle as they had become inextricably entwined. He liked to call it Cruss A Re but the nation called it Cross Air. Daily fans thought about the clues for hours, learning their way into his mind
5. jealously guarding their answers like a child in school trying to stop their desk mate cogging. Sometimes the answers were so out there, so convoluted, so random that I thought he was tripping balls. Or I was. Once in a bar I won £100 from a bet that I could do it quicker than
6. a lad who was feral about his paper and would drive miles or steal it from hotels to get his fix. The God's smiled on me and I won the money. Then handed it to the barman for a round for the house. I had never laid an eye on John Derek Crozier till 20 mins ago when I found it
7. the little scrap of newspaper buried in thousands and thousands of papers, sketches, drafts, scripts, cartoons, photos, et al, the flotsam and jetsam of a life. My 90 year old Da does the #Simplex every day. His shelves and armchairs are groaning with copies of @IrishTimes
8. Recently he stopped doing it. "I've too many fecking papers!" says he, eyeing the pile he will use for his dog Sids urination. The secret, says I is to tear the crossword off and put it in your pocket. I have indeed been doing that for years and years. Compressing the urgency
9. into the smallest place. So that I can add it to the pile of stuff that must be sorted stat. Or yesterday. Or in an ever growing pile of archive and nostalgia that is overwhelming and impossible to collate. The stress of new material and a looming deadline for 3 gigs. A sliver
10. of peace enters when I am at the sea, or playing endless solitaire to stop thinking, or lost in a crossword with a pot of black coffee I'll read the clues but I'll give it to my Da to fill in The new compiler lost me, I couldn't spend years getting inside another man's head.
@threadreaderapp please unroll
