A walrus sort of book. Remember Lewis Carrollas verse? aaThe time has come, a the Walrus said, / aTo talk of many things: / Of shoes a and ships a and sealing-wax a / Of cabbages a and kings …aa In this book of miscellaneous essays, 1970 to 2003, the author makes wry, funny, touching, familiar, and unexpected observations of all sorts of things that have occurred during his time spent living variously in city, country, and suburbia. (His time living on Mars goes discreetly unmentioned.) His odd mix of unpretentiously contentious themes ranges from a brusque bookseller who turns out to be affable, to a suicidal sheep who opts for life after all, to an eccentric schoolmaster who wags his finger while quoting T. S. Eliot, to the questionable state of Queen Elizabethas fingernails. Discombobulating but rarely disastrous encounters abound a with precocious six-year-olds, mischievous mice, platefuls of inedible seashells, and a quiet American in Edinburgh looking for a girl heas never met. A good bedtime, or anytime, read written by an adept wordsmith.