low-background steel

And there is one specifically about the chaos that ensues from a trip to get some milk

Joan Aiken's Annabel and Mortimer stories still stand up as zany adventures

I once had to ask an American student who was taking my Jane Austen summer school class in Cambridge not to return romantically by foot to the nearby stately home we had visited in a minibus as the land in between was a military firing range

'Some wet mud and a lizard who was chasing his tail' well describes my day

The long, never-ending corner

The Quiet Corner pieces do seem to have been wallet sized. There's a similar story told in verse here barbellionsaid.wordpress.com/2017/07/15/u...

Ah, that's interesting -- Strong went on a trip to South Africa too. I first came across the idea through a passing reference in Kilvert's Diary, when someone shows him a pamphlet about it (and he thinks it would be amazing if true).

It's in the Listener, as part of his series 'The Poet and the Public'. Not a transcript exactly, more a summary with quotes.

I don't! But I will look it up. Some of the Instagram poets offer a contemporary equivalent, I think, but I don't think I'll be writing about them until they publish an autobiography...