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Well done Gooner, you're level on points now with my happy hammers, although hopefully we'll get something at Villa tomorrow:-)

2 Down is "Leave boy enclosing the third of four initial letters"
Answer would seem to be ABSCOND, which would qualify the
"leave" bit of the clue, but I couldn't see the rest.

Rocketman, Son, boy, and ABCD are four initial letters. The C is third, so Son encloses it.

My golly, the compiler is pushing it with that clue, but fair enough! Many thanks, Malone!

12a Whine once undressed, overwhelmed by middle's size, 28a Dip in evacuation site, not to be annoying, and 29a Top Shop's offering clobber (smaller), with every exchange of small and large. I think the answers are corpulence, dunk and bestseller, but would appreciate help in parsing?

12ac Whine once undressed, overwhelmed by middle's size (10)

CORPULENCE

pule=whine, once undressed=NC, middle=core.

28ac Dip in evacuation site, not to be annoying (4)

DUNK

dip=dunk, Dunkirk=evacuation site, less irk=to be annoying

Haven't parsed BESTSELLER yet. I trust someone will beat me to it.

BESTSELLER is BELT LESSER with the Ls becoming S and vice-versa.

BELT with LESSER exchanging all the Ls and Ss to get BEST SELLER

16a "Reportedly modern, from the time of plague" (8)

It seems that there's always one clue each week that I cannot parse - or at least not fully! So this is NUISANCE (plague) and I see the homophone of "new" for modern. I'm struggling to find the link between "sance" and "from the time of". Any suggestions please?

Zinc, I think it's meant to be a homophone of 'since'. Works if you're a New Zealander.