QC 1645 by Breadman

This was another straightforward crossword which, unusually for a quickie, employed no full anagrams as far as I can see. In fact by my counting there were only two clues that involved an anagram at all which is pretty unusual by any standards. All the rest were mostly varieties of charades and insertions with a couple of very obvious double definitions and a hidden word. But of course, here we are on a Monday, and this is just the sort of fare we need to get us warmed up for the rest of the week. Many thanks to Breadman for doing that job admirably.

Everything went in more or less as it should with 1A being the FOI, although I think the LOI was 22A as I was expecting the whole clue to be involved until the last minute when I decided that 'personal' wasn't pulling its weight. COD? Good question. Nothing stands out for difficulty so this is really a pretty arbitrary decision. I'll go with 12A with no great conviction. It is simply the clue whose surface reads most naturally to me.

Last time out we all had a most enjoyable discussion about avatars. The conversation was still going strong at the end of the day but as I said earlier there is not much point in picking up on comments then as everybody has moved on or gone to bed. So I'll just say here thank you very much to steakcity whose final comment on the day's proceedings was that my "avatar will no longer be scary, although it is beyond my imagination to see her as sexy", which I thought was brilliant. Although in her defence as an older woman (variously reckoned at somehwere between 2,200 and 2,600 years old) she shouldn't give up on her potential. Certainly there is one professional footballer (close to retirement but who did score a penalty at the weekend) who is notoriously renowned for his preference for older women and would probably find her very desirable.

Are there any more loose ends here? I would love to know the mysterious origin of oldblighter's hands for instance, and I did have a go at invariant_tft's initials and failed miserably. If it wouldn't try his patience too much I would love an extra clue for that to try and get closer.

Definitions are underlined as usual and everything else is explained just as I see it in the plainest language I can manage.