[Steve Bucknell]

Thanks Ann,

I have enjoyed your company on this journey. I have finally worked out what "fewmets" are! When I first read that I thought they were a clever verse-form I was ignorant of.

Thanks, Ed,

I passed on that you and others were enjoying having The Idle Demon on their shelves. Though when I look at Richard he seems more possessed of the Energetic Demon.

Thanks Cally, as Richard wrote in The Questing Beast:

“When you are possessed by a longing for someone in this way, the whole of life relates itself to that one, important thing. Then, in the course of time, the feeling dies away, and you can no longer recapture the greatness and reality of it."

Of course, I think we all try to hang onto "the greatness and reality of it" by writing.

Thanks Steph,

I will make sure you have an invitation to Richard's next birthday party. Until then you can meet him in his writings. I felt no disjunction between the man whose words I had met and the man who stood before me.

Thanks Gregory,

I must read The Quest for Corvo when I get the chance. I wonder if Richard ever met A.J.A.Symons? I will ask.

Richard is encouraging me to read Chesterton and Belloc. We are both fans of Belloc's The Path to Rome . I must read The Man Who Was Thursday and Manalive.

Thanks, Andrew,

The search is neverending. I'm getting very interested now in Howard Moss, the great New Yorker editor who Richard knew; his own fine poetry, rather like Richard's, seems to have been overlooked.

Thanks to all, and Jerome in particular, my fellow-quester, for following this trail with me. Steve.