Bookstealers

I came across two examples of creatve writing worth sharing today. One from the Halifax, who kindly wrote to inform me that they had 'adjusted' my rate on my ISA from 5% to 4.75% 'to bring it in line with market rates'. This on the day that I opened my 2006/7 ISA with National Savings and Investments with an interest rate of 5.05%. I presume (to steal a phrase from the the presumably rather shortsighted Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt) they 'do not recognise that figure' ( or indeed the other 5% ones shown on www.moneysupermarket.com. ).

Then our beleagured postlady knocked. She smiles rather bravely whenever I see her but as she is a shade over five foot and on occasions the pile of post she has just for our house is about four foot I suspect it is a smile of relief not friendship. Anyway she brought today eight or so back copies of a magazine called Slightly Foxed which I had never heard of but which Dennis has discovered and which bears the byline' The Real Reader's Quarterly'. I have not read anything except one article at random from the index which was about the following curse found by the editors in the college library at Peterhouse, Cambridge which originates from the Monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona:

"For him that stealeth a book from this Library let it change into a serpant in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with Palsy and all his Members blasted. Let him languish in Pain crying alound for mercy and let there be no Surcease to his Agony till he sink to Dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not and when at last he goeth to his final Punishment let the flames of hell consume him forever and aye."

And I thought that librarian at Eccleston library was a bit off hand when I asked her to process twelve out of area requests for quilting books all at the same time.......