Thursday, February 08, 2007

"He loved dried plums, figs, apples and oranges. He doted on gingerbread and cakes. If you turned out the pockets of his black denim jacket (a jacket his wife Mary, a proper sort, was forever trying to get him to change) you would find, alongside Aeschylus and Sophocles and miscellaneous pencils and a penknife and a damp handkerchief, a good store of pudding-raisins. He could make a supper of these raisins, just by themselves, eating them one by one from a particular flowered china plate. Honey, of course, he loved especially, slathered on bread and butter or crunched in the comb until the sticky goo ran down his chin. So sweet was his tooth that he would tiptoe up to pine trees and lick their resin, hoping it would taste as treacly as it looked."