Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read (Groucho Marx)

Book 20 is at the ‘Argh! Why aren’t you finished?’ stage of writing where I’m hunting, seeking, and searching for synonyms, checking the plausibility of action sequences, and editing out a few cameo-characters - do I really want to pay their appearance fee if they only have one line of dialogue in the whole book? Sadly, it won’t be completed before Christmas, but it’ll be finished soon after (assuming the mince pie supply lasts), and published while the New Year is still fresh-faced and optimistically cheerful.

The book does have a title, and one which works as both a theme and subtitle for the coming three or four books: Surviving the Evacuation 20: Small Cogs in the Survival Machine.

Q. A hungry tiger came across two people in the jungle. One was reading, the other was tapping away at a type-writer. Which did the tiger eat first?

A. The reader, because even tiger’s know that readers digest while writers cramp.

I hope you have a happy holiday, a Merry Christmas, and a peaceful New Year, Frank :)