Western Daily Press (Saturday)
CRYPTIC CROSSWORD
ACROSS
9 Near in the clear - until tomorrow, that is! (9)
10 The train isn’t moving, or travelling (2,7) 12 My pet duck (4)
13 Pearls from somewhere in London (6)
14 Make it longer? That is a disappointment (7)
15 Had altered the piece about the wren and tit flying in (9)
17 On the subject of electricity - it’s happening again (9)
18 Getting late home through it, there’s no future in such a job (4-3)
19 Does his cruelty make him unhappy at first? (6)
20 A lady-love in Oxford, perhaps (4)
23 Listens in for the true dummy run (9)
25 With the litigant who turns up, unfriendly all round (9)
26 Figure the time has come to name her (4) 27 Made one get into the car (6)
29 Meandered about, but didn’t go right inside (7)
32 Searched for when one fled, having stolen from (9)
34 Gave one’s views on the unrestricted sale of dogs (9)
35 What do I think of the vegetable? The stuffing’s good (7)
36 From choice, work? Not, I, silly! (6)
37 Having arrived an hour before (4)
38 When you eat sprouts, what tells you they’re palatable (5,4)
39 Prudence that makes one buy food that won’t perish? (9)
DOWN
1 Caught a real streamer - a cold that’s going round (8)
2 A song and dance about the oppressiveness? (5,7)
3 Worried, tried to rouse people into action (8)
4 Endeavour to get a wrench (6)
5 Impeded by the deer - wild deer (8)
6 In every price range, come what may (2,3,5) 7 Beating that has an electrifying effect (7)
8 Pay for your little luxury from the kiosk? (5,5)
11 Stay by the sea (5)
16 Headgear for the snowman, with a white peak? (6)
19 A note, only, and that’s unfinished (3)
21 What made the bed collapse? (5,7)
22 Set free, though really bad (6)
23 Where those rocks that look like jagged teeth are? (5,5)
24 Getting supplies in, ready for Santa (8,2) 25 Cheated in the return, too (3)
28 The Hatter residence? (8)
29 Prevail over and turn us out to accommodate the doctor (8)
30 Mete out something you could do without? (8)
31 Taxi I get hold of, in case (7)
33 They’re hard catches (5)
34 Join and chat desultorily with at first (6)
THE artist who sculpted ‘Charging Bull,’ the bronze statue in New York that became a symbol of Wall Street, has died in his home town in Sicily, aged 80.
Arturo Di Modica died at home in Vittoria.
He was said to have been ill for some time.
The sculptor lived in New York City for more than 40 years.
He arrived in 1973 and opened an art studio in the city’s SoHo area. With the help of a truck and crane, Di Modica installed the bronze bull sculpture in New York’s financial district without permission on the night of December 16, 1989.
The artist reportedly spent 350,000 dollars of his own money to create the 3.5-tonne bronze beast that came to symbolise the resilience of the US economy after a 1987 stock market crash.
He said he conceived of the bull sculpture as “a joke, a provocation.
Instead, it became a cursedly serious thing”, destined to be one of New York’s most visited monuments.
Di Modica told how he, some 40 friends, a crane and a truck carried out a lightning-swift operation to plant the statue near Bowling Green park without official authorisation.
“Five minutes. The operations shouldn’t have lasted more. Otherwise, we’d risk big,” he recalled.
“After a couple of scouting trips, I had discovered that at night the police made its rounds on Wall Street every seven to eight minutes.”
When the sculptor and his friends arrived at the spot he had picked, they were surprised to see a Christmas tree had been erected there.
They deposited the bronze bull anyway, and, as the artist told it, uncorked a bottle of champagne.
At the time of his death, he was working on prototypes for a twin horse sculpture he planned to make for Vittoria.