Others will have there own experiences of the ‘problem’. Here’s mine;

Work as a musician took me to Bucharest in 2001. Post-Ceaucescu dirty needles were a major public health problem and whole classes of children were inadvertently infected with the AIDS virus. Whilst in Bucharest we played at a children’s hospital for kids infected by AIDS. There was a very modern bright area on the first floor with space for parents to stay. Staff explained that it was for the kids who would die that week. There were several occupied rooms with no visitors as parts of Romanian society preferred to disown their infected children.

The kids we played for had up to a year to live. They were full of life and unaware of what was coming.

Araucaria, I can assure you that AIDS was much more than a ‘problem’ for those children.

Gaufrid, please do not moderate this. I appreciate the rule about relevance, but hope you will let this be aired.

But, sorry, “a lost field” is IMO still rather awful.
You didn’t convince me at all with your example.
So we can turn the whole thing around? “field lost a”=”a lost field”?
But as nobody seems to be bothered about it, I am probably the odd one out.

As to the ‘return to base’ construction I still dislike it, certainly after reading the clue as a whole. But probably this is a matter of taste. I suspect, though, that Araucaria knows that the editor allows him to do these kind of things in order to improve the surface, because he is Araucaria and he can do what he thinks is right.
If so, that’s, in a way, something that I savour.
Even if I didn’t like it here.

1 ‘a lost field’. I didn’t feel this was as bad as yesterdays example (re boy) though it needs a similar construction. Like ‘boy swallowed’, ‘A lost’ is readable as an adjectival phrase and is not all that far from standard English (cf blue eyed boy).

2. I didn’t find the ‘to’ in ‘return to base’ so troublesome eg. it is readable as (giving or making) return to base.

I suppose it’s ultimately a matter of how uncomfortable one feels about these ‘iffy’ cases.

3. I’m afraid ‘arable’ is sometimes used as a noun. Cf OED
b. absol. quasi-n. Arable land.
1576 LAMBARDE Peramb. Kent (1826) 3 Consisting indifferently of arable, pasture, meadow, and woodland. 1697 DRYDEN Virg. Georg. II. 321 Tis good for Arable, a Glebe that asks Tough Teams of Oxen. 1883 HARDY in Longm. Mag. July 258 A group of these honest fellows in the arable. So this one is definitely OK.

Paradoxically, I fell down on more straightforward cases (parsing 17 and 24).

There were some iffy things in this puzzle.
In 9ac “return to base” for the reversal of “low”? “to”?
In 12 ac “a lost field” for a “meadow” losing the “a” – this is even worse than yesterday’s “Student swallowing poison”.
And then 24ac (ARABLE). AR[e] ABLE is the obvious parsing, and I know what ARABLE is, but is there a proper definition? ARABLE is an adjective, and the only thing that is in the clue is “Ploughed” [which cóuld mean ARABLE, although Chambers also says "fit for ploughing"] but what about “fields” then?
And, finally, why does Araucaria put both his “(say)”s in brackets (in 16d)?

Did I say we enjoyed it, at the start of this post?
Well, we did eventually, but Araucaria was not in the form of his life [which may, btw, hopefully last forever!]

And PeterO – fine blog!

Thanks for the info re The Navy Lark ~ going to enjoy that in 10 mins or so!

PS There is no apostrophe ‘s’ in Howards End.

I rather enjoyed filling in what I assumed were the answers but wondered what all those clues had to do with them.

There was so much in this I had never heard of I rather lost heart, persevering out of inquisitiveness more than anything.

Still, The Reverend is always entertaining and thought-provoking and that is, after all, what this rum business is all about.

Thank you.