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“... whoa’ and join a cast of the luckless in Winton’s work, but there are particular echoes of Sam Pickles and his family in the magnificent Cloudstreet (1991). Sam’s father had termed luck’s malign workings ‘the shifty shadow of God’, and Sam knows to stay in bed on a day when he feels it hovering. Whether you can beat your luck or just have to live ...”

“... ways, working methodically through Colley’s list. The judge (called ‘Jamieson’, but ‘Pickles’ is mentioned in a parallel context) is tied up and buggered with an elephant-sized vibrator; the pornographer stars in his own snuff movie as his veins are pumped with a pint of HIV-infected semen; the arms dealer who supplied both sides in the ...”

“... adopt the same positions as those who have currently elected in favour of candles and home-made pickles. She may talk disparagingly of the ‘lowlier sort of charabancers’ who slide through the beechwoods in their patent leather shoes and bring a gramophone to play ‘For ever blowing bubbles’, but she regards them as a nuisance rather than a moral ...”

“... parties to find positions both could live with. May didn’t do negotiation; in the words of Eric Pickles, one of her cabinet colleagues, she is not a ‘transactional’ politician. She takes a position and then she sticks to it, seeing it as a matter of principle that she delivers on what she has committed to. This doesn’t mean that she is a conviction ...”

“... dough, the warm thirsty smell of roasted watermelon seeds, soft lupin seeds in brine, dripping pickles, custards scented with orange-blossom water’, where shrak bread is baked on a round iron griddle and doors are surrounded by honeysuckle blossom. But not all that was lost by the Palestinians was lost to Israeli soldiers, demolition men and ...”

“... coffee. Lunch Navy bean soup; beef stew and vegetables; steamed potatoes; creamed peas; sour pickles; bread; coffee. Dinner Steamed frankfurters; Lyonnaise potatoes; succotash; lettuce salad; rice custard pudding; coffee. It’s not Chez Panisse, but it’s better than porridge. The fact that Cole and Roe’s bodies were never found is ...”

“... seduction by the president of the ‘fuck of the month club’. Not much fun, as the late Wilfred Pickles would have said. It has been observed that Waterhouse’s formula in fiction has been to imprison a child’s bright imagination in an adult’s dreary grownupness. As with Jubb, Billy or the younger hero of There is a happy land, Maggie has a rich ...”

“... door and insert a letter between his buttocks. His most embarrassing moment, as the late Wilfred Pickles might have said. And the letter? ‘A bill from Heffers for the latest book they had sent him – F.R. Leavis’s Nor shall my sword.’ The story, as it continues, traces Sefton’s rise to the top of the greasy pole of academic life, represented by the ...”

“... many more’. Scholarly order is imposed on a similarly bewildering variety of mud bricks, pots, pickles, preserves and cakes: ‘the standard flat cake (plakous), cakes with honey and nuts chopped up (koptai), crumbly cakes with honey and sesame (itria)’. Parsons slowly, meticulously explains the process of Egyptian baking in klibanoi, terracotta shells ...”

“... there’s a makeshift little museum with some yellowing clippings, and a place that sells Alien Pickles. On this rainy Sunday a few families are touring the museum, but after 9/11, the notion of alien abduction seems as quaint and legendary as being abducted by Billy the Kid. Blurry photos of supposed ‘alien implants’, vague scratches on pale ...”

“... of the commission. He ‘sleeps on a sofa in his clothes, and breakfasts on strong coffee and pickles!!!’ Olmsted reported on the ‘avalanche of suffering’ he witnessed on the hospital ships he commanded along the Virginia shore: ‘The little room was as full as it could be packed of sick soldiers sitting – not lying – on the floor; there was ...”

“... essay (a reception in Akademgorodok’s brand-new eight-storey hotel features ‘sliced beef, pickles, black bread, a hardboiled egg, a pyramidal salad of tinned peas and diced apple held together with mayonnaise’), Spufford waxes scientific. One chapter includes a detailed description of the thermionic valves used in the BESM-2 processor invented by ...”

“... preserve food to tide them through times of famine (which would include the average winter). Hence pickles, sausages, salt fish, hams, cheese, sauces – hence, in fact, much of what is wonderful in food. There are ironies in this, as Kurlansky points out. These foods, once essential to prevent the everyday menace of starvation, are now, in the era of ...”

“... he wished, talking to people, telling them stories about far-off lands, where people ate honey and pickles, where no one put ice in the water, where pigeons nested in pantries.It’s as if jet flight is existentially shallow; a slower journey would enact the gravity and enormity of the transformation. Pronek returns to America, but must take his home with ...”

“... tiny stainless steel pot arranged on a larger steel plate. There were many varieties of dals and pickles and vegetables sabzi sautéed with spices and different flatbreads and rice cooked with var-ious seasonings and fried dumplings. Only a small percentage of these dishes bore any resemblance to British curry with its copious dayglo sauce and, even ...”