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... & all those Xs. You tease.

In my neck of the woods - which are fast disappearing, by the way -
it sounds like this:

collie-flour -- dog + grist from the mill

You Americans have so many dialects. How do you manage to understand each other?
;
Oh ...

Many thanks again syzygy & sunray, a good morning workout to blow away the cobwebs. I really like 1d but sorry, dialect dependent homophones are my personal bugbear and 29a arrrggh (unlike me being this polite). Cheers, enjoyable as ever even with the above proviso.

As usual, one of the last to finish. I still have about 5 small words to worry about (but not 1 dn and 7ac!)
I like 7 dn too (doing it as well as the clue!) but can't parse it. The def just hit me and I worked from there.
Just as well 13 dn is an anagram; never seen it spelled that way.

rosalind: To get the skinny on something is to get inside information. I suppose the info could be used as gossip but I wouldn't say that the words are synonymous. Must be only American slang. Scoop is dipper.

Thank you for the skinny, Mr A! Never heard of it, but crosswords can be very educational. Should have got scoop/dipper.

I found a wonderful place on Crete for the activity, which was suitably private because there is a long walk down to it, including rock scrambling, a sheer rock-face 4 ft drop to the water's edge (OK getting in, needed a rope to get out) and the small inlet of sea soon curved away right out of sight of the "shore". The last time I went was somewhat spoiled by two others doing the same thing, except the lady kept her sun hat on! Lovely memories.

Now I shall always picture you rising from the sea in renascence.

:-))