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Here are the quotations for the coming week (September 30^th to October 6^th):

1. …He leaned forward, but his eye was caught by the setting sun. It had come down to the top of Cherry Clack Hill, and the light poured in between the tree trunks so that you could see red and gold and black deep into the heart of Far Wood ..in his armour (he) shone as though he had been afire. 'Wait,' he said, lifting a hand, and the sunlight jinked on his glass bracelet. 'Wait! I pray to Mithras!'. He rose and stretched his arms westward, with deep, splendid-sounding words…
   
   2. ...The old farmhouse, weather-tiled to the ground, took almost the colour of a blood-red ruby in the afternoon light. The pigeons pecked at the mortar in the chimney-stacks; the bees that had lived under the tiles since it was built filled the hot August air with their booming; and the smell of the box-tree by the dairy window mixed with the smell of earth after rain, bread after baking, and a tickle of wood-smoke. The farmer's wife came to the door, baby on arm, shaded her brows against the sun, stooped to pluck a sprig of rosemary, and turned down the orchard...
   
   3. …'They stole down our alley, they tapped secretly at our door, they took off their rags, they arrayed themselves, and they talked to my father at the wine. All over the world the heathen fought each other. They brought news of these wars … There can be no war without gold, and we jews know how the earth's gold moves with the seasons and the crops, and the winds: circling and looping and rising away like a river - a wonderful underground river…'

The sources of this week’s extracts (Sep 23^rd to 29^th) are as follows:

1. (…The three closed round the monkey, hanging on his every motion with an earnestness almost equal to ours…)  This is from "The Puzzler", in Actions and Reactions.

2. (..The train had lost patience at last, and was coming into the station directly beneath me..) This is from "The Vortex" in A Diversity of Creatures.

3. (…...I saw both Front Benches bend forward, some with their foreheads on their despatch boxes…) This is from "The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat", in A Diversity of Creatures.

In the NRG we have published abstracts of the papers presented at the recent cpnference at the University of Kent, and are adding the full texts as they become available.