Well, obviously, Ted, I am going to find your contributions pretty tedious too, so we are even there - the way you keep accusing me of browbeating and offensiveness & so forth but when urged for examples you only repeat the accusations with no attempt at specification: look at your last para for example of what I mean.

But I honestly do hate quarreling - whatever you may think, I am not a contentious person; rather something of an obsessive taxonomist: I am aware of this as a fault in myself, & do try to control it, & my dearest wife used to be very good at judging when to tell me when to shut-the-hell-up but alas she is dead and things will I suspect have got worse since she left.

So, please: Pax - enuff quarreling which I genuinely don't enjoy. OK?

As to my brief conversation with MR: I didn't mean to be evasive or make a secret of it. It was, as you say, long ago; but as best I recall: I made my point, in what I hope were mild and civil tones, about, didn't she think her view on ordinary lifestyles maybe a bit unwarrantedly severe and contemptuous?; she replied in reasonable tones that I wasn't the first to have said so. It was at a friend's party where we were both guests and had neither of us any wish to sour the occasion; so we just smiled slightly, left it at that and drifted off to talk to other people. & that was the sum of our acquaintance.