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There are few things more dispiriting than sweating and grunting through a crossword until finally, in triumph, turning to the forum to compare notes, only to find that everyone else thought it was easy doh!!

And I'm still not convinced by my answer for 6d!

Hi Candanski
Read "beach" as a verb

Hardly inspirational but served its purpose in giving old brain a workout. One good thing very little schoolboy humour .

Sorry, I'm with chrise, rogissimo et al. I found the jokey theme tiresome and irritating, as well as grammatically invalid. I sometimes feel the editor lets Paul get away with things that others wouldn't simply because he's Paul.

Finished, with a couple of nudges from the forum. But I can't parse 19d: last word of clue is a defn, but apart from that?

Foi: 17a
Loi: 1d
Cod: perhaps7a, one of my last few solved

2 (reversal of a famous Gore) inside 4 (island with last letter removed)

Thanks, @geeker. I didn't think of that kind of G/gore: was thinking injury by bull or section of a skirt.

All now done and dusted.

Thanks, jvector. It’s interesting that, despite the admiration from many for the ‘theme,’ no one so far has attempted to justify what we have seen as the fundamental invalidity of the thematics.

Invalidity is in the eye of the solver I'd say. It is the nature of the beast to push the boundaries of language. I would say that most of the thematics lie squarely in the realm of puns.

Jono
The usual way of circumventing this issue is to make the word the first in the clue so that is automatically upper case.