an acre.....! I never realised we were talking to landed gentry. you and Musket must get together and talk about problems with staff, and how they expect wages these days...

I appreciate your needs as a critic and collector. The trouble is - its the tail wagging the dog. all these eejits are trying to write 'in the tradition' to satisfy the agenda of various diktats (now reinforced with the tags of academia!) - and really its as though dramatists were writing scripts with Gadzooks sire! every second line.

with a sinking heart I recently watched a band, fresh from their Uni course in folk music and going great guns on the festival circuit, singing one of their songs with a chorus that something something something hey me lads!

the trouble is, literature had TS Eliot and Leavis - we had Ewan MacColl. He was clever, but not clever enough. His legacy has been that we have a generation whose work tries draw attention to language rather than communicate with an audience.