pumpkinstrokemarrow

Also this morning, passed two feet of US classics onto Oxfam via the skip at Kiln Lane Sainsbury's. Mark Twain, Henry James and Richard Dana. Plus the odd extra like 'Tom Jones'. So I can now rest easy in the knowledge that should I ever be moved to read any of this stuff again, it is there at the click of a button. And maybe I will; availability at odd times and places might prompt consumption. Almost anything is better than television in hotel rooms or drinking alone in hotel bars.

On the way acquired a few extras which I didn't happen to have. So a book by Dana of which I had never heard and 'Moll Flanders' mentioned in this week's TLS.

A mention which stuck in the little grey cells because of the last sentence of the snippet illustrated, the product of a member of the SCR at the University of Kent. Little grey cells must be thinning out because I could not make head nor tail of it. I don't mind not making head nor tail of great chunks of Lawrence; its OK in that context. But in a serious weekly magazine its not OK.

The past few days have also seen the completion of the hazel nut harvest with a further 20lbs or so of rather small nuts from the thickets outside the entrance to Hook Road Arena. On the basis of a small sample, I think there will be nuts inside around half of the nuts; so just about worth picking and shelling. Presently drying out in the garage. And I am washing some sticky black stuff off of my hands. The nuts look clean enough but they must have traces of syrup of some sort on them: by products of the nut growing & feeding systems? Systems quite unlike those of, for example, apples, with the attachment between the nut and the nut case being a specialised transfer surface occupying a good part of the lower part of the nut.