The last week has been dedicated to adding books to my Amazon listings. This not unpleasant chore, together with all the other interesting things one can do on the internet, has meant I've spent far too much time sitting here. The downside of having the iMac in a cosy and accessible place is precisely that - too much sitting. On the other hand I have a large amount of stock to list and because I had already listed the more obvious stuff as it came in what remains is more complicated, often needing a listing to be created and a photo downloaded. The added factor slowing me up is the section I'm working through - folklore and fairies. This has obviously proved a fertile field for illustrators and those from the opening years of the last century have made such beautiful colour plates, such dramatically satisfying black and white designs in the art nouveau styles of the times that I have to gloat over each and every page. Then there are the prettily bound monographs like '50 Ways of Cooking a Pheasant' (which jumped into my hand from another bay as I passed) bound in silk painted randomly with red, gold, black and pale grey. The author, Elsie Turner, was exhorted by her friends to write this to save them from being offered roast pheasant by their sporting friends at every meal between October and February. She includes a quote from 'The Happy Glutton', Alin Laubreaux who in a chapter on the hungry hunter says: "The Argonauts who voyaged with Jason in quest of the Golden Fleece brought back from Colchis to Athens the first Pheasants ever seen in Europe. And yet there are still people who say that the voyage was a sublime piece of futility. Sublime yes; but futile! They can't have tasted pheasant."