Thinking about it, isn’t Aunt Lin simply Jennifer, as seen from Adam’s pov? Fuss fuss fuss about food and propriety… But she turns out ok in the crisis, and she refuses to gossip about the Sharpes once she knows they are Robert’s clients. She isn’t all bad.
[quote=“Gus, post:20, topic:42, full:true”]As to your point, they are publishers. It’s what they do.[/quote] They do love packing things up into A Series. Similarly with Diana Wynne Jones and “the Chrestomanci books”, which at the time were four independent books which just happened to share a setting and some characters.
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“The Chrestomanci Books” didn’t share a setting: The Magicians of Caprona and Witch Week are in different worlds with different everything, and Chrestomanci being a peripheral deus ex machina in both is the only point of similarity. And how is Conrad’s Fate in the same setting as either of them? As far as I remember it isn’t even in the same universe – or is that The Pinhoe Egg? Maybe it is both of them.
“Setting” as in “bunch of separate worlds which some people can travel between, though such people may not be of particular imprtance in this specific book”. But yeah, if you’re looking for The Next Adventures of, you’re going to be disappointed.
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Ah. They were in one of her two or three multiverses. Got you.
That’s half a dollar I won’t be seeing again, then.
Thank you for running it to earth.
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They’re pretty good at complaining! This is Katie letting Soo (the Accidental Roo) know of her feelings about the arrival of a newcomer.
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No fair! Please Miss, I had the answer all along but I was asleep! Josephine Tey, Franchise Affair. Bugger, too late …
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Katie might have issues, but she has very definite Views. And a fan club, now.
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Um, Gus, you were right in your bet. It was said that it had been talked about at the Franchise, so it will have been one of the two women who was talking about it.
I loved Mrs Sharpe. I also have a tremendous fondness for ‘Miss Pym Disposes’ and ‘The Singing Sands’. It strikes me that her books are all very different from each other.
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Joe, that’s as light Sussex, isn’t she? That’s my favourite breed.
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I think the safest description is “mostly”! As you say, basically light Sussex bantam, but here and there the odd red feather; at one point he achieved nearly perfect light Sussex plumage - apart from a single red tail feather. He arrived unannounced from a breeder across the road. They claim he escaped, but I suspect they tried to get rid of him because he wasn’t pure. Tellingly, when he first arrived he was short-tailed; on closer inspection it turned out the feathers looked as if they’d been cut, so I suspect they’d tried to pass him off as a hen. We took pity on (as we thought) her - then one day “she” started crowing, so Susie the Sussex became Soo the Accidental Roo.
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A boy name Soo, then?
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Exactly! Also a rooster who came into our yard; the poor sod seems fated to live his life through novelty songs.
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Without looking it up, I’m thinking Smothers Brothers? ‘They’re laying eggs now, just like they used-tah, ever since that rooster …’
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That’s the one. Smothers Brothers could well have done it - it’s been pretty widely covered and there are several variants.
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You see, it’s threads like this which make life worth living. Utterly barking and drifting from subject to subject by the most tenuous links, almost all of which I don’t understand … & all the better for it.
I’m a big believer in the concept of ‘missing out’. That as you drive past towns, shop in places, take a stroll the people you pass, often completely remotely, all have amazing & varied existences which will rarely, if ever touch you. Each, also, missing out on what you could add to their lives.
I’m an avoider of such things like baking, as it’s too precise. That a medium .v. a large egg could affect an outcome is a concept beyond my ken. “Ken” or כן is Hebrew for “yes” btw, a subject worth it’s own thread, but important to know when you’re HR manager to 300 Israeli’s and wondering who the bloody hell is this ‘Ken’ they keep talking about.
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How can egg sizes mattering be ‘beyond your ken’? If you take a medium in sweaters, you wouldn’t expect a small to do the job, after all. As an HR manager, you will be acutely aware of the difference between ‘Don’t get it’ and ‘Can’t be arsed’!
That’s what you get for calling people ‘Mum’, by the way 
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Ken (knowledge, understanding, cognisance; Heinlein didn’t know it, or he wouldn’t have needed to invent “grok”) in English is closer to “can” than to “yes”, but it’s interesting if there is a connection between Hebrew and Norse, I feel. The Middle English kennen is to make known, see, know, from the Old English cennan to make known, declare; and it is cognate with Old Norse kenna, German kennen. We get “can” from the present indicative singular 1st, 3rd person of cunnan to know, know how, and the two are related.
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