In "British Food"

pfff... food criticism, from the land of jello salad and canned-soup-in-everything. Gag me with a tongue depressor!

In "Schott's Food & Drink Miscellany."

Goofyfoot - you're actually supposed to leave it to ferment on a hot rock for a little while before you bury it, so it develops the full flavour. I did a year of archaeology in my BA, and the word is that apparently if you distinter an amphorae or bits of an amphorae used to store garum, then you can often still smell it. Lovely stuff.

In "Curious George: Iliad"

"I say chaps!" said Agememnon, "shall we raise the topless towers of Ilium? I've got a free half-period." That's closer to how it actually reads than you'd probably like to think!

If you see the E V Rieu translation (was the Penguin Classics translation in the UK), avoid it like the plague. Horrible, horrible 1950's schoolboy English. It's gut-churningly bad.

In "Curious, George: Sex and Music"

Betty Davis. (but only if you're a pervert)

In "The Monkey's Paw!"

The Mezzotint is a great story, but I'm not sure it's supposed to be a monkey. I understood it to be the zombie corpse of the poacher that the lord of the manor had executed coming back to wreak revenge by kidnapping his baby son. The description of the figure is ambiguous I'll grant you, but I think he's trying to say that it's wearing a black shroud with a cross on the back, and has a skull-like face. Anyway, MR James is smashing. "Oh whistle and I'll come to you my lad" is another good 'un.

In "Curious, George"

Completely deranged, and often well OTT, the Parking Lot is Full was ace. Kind of like a misanthropic Far Side. This one seems appropriate...

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