Sorry, this comes to you somewhat late. It is from the incomparable master of prose, Tom Nisbet. His letter runs: "Thanks again for the refreshing chat. Today's (November 3rd) `Greatest Colour Show' is also running in this venue. Al Beit with a limited cast. So Autumn comes around again and Nature dyes her hair, tarting up for one last fling, heading for a fall." And about blackbirds "I have watched them at the bird bath, sip the water, get into it for a dip, shake dry on the rim, turn tail, shit in the water and wing off regardless. So like people with rivers, lakes and seas. I once remonstrated with a woman as she tipped a box of kitchen waste, grapefruit skins, etc, into the canal at Leeson Street. Was she not afraid of bringing rats about the place? Ah, no, she said, the tide would take it away. Thor Heyerdahl is on record as saying that parts of the Atlantic Ocean are so polluted you wouldn't dip a toothbrush in it. A fishes' circle. Thine, Tom Nisbet."
Autumn has probably advanced into winter by now. But still the leaves are sticking fairly well, even after the winds of Thursday night. Why, even some of the green fruits of the arbutus tree were plucked from their branch, something never seen before. That's the last harvest of all around here. Last bunch of grapes a week or so ago from the industrious and kindly neighbour. And no nuts to come. The grey squirrels seem to take the hazelnuts when they are green. Haven't seen a ripe hazelnut from the several groups of trees for years. The arbutus will need another week or so for its fruits all to reach that deep red which denotes flavour. Before, they taste of cotton wool. Frosts don't seem to harm them. Virgil, of old, suggested that they were to be fed to the goats. But in south-eastern Europe and parts of Asia, it is, apparently, abundant and welcomed. One book of some 150 years ago by Mrs S. C. Hall tells us that it grows (not wild) in nearly all parts of Ireland! And in the same book we read that while the wood is not of any great value, in Killarney it was, in her time, made there into little boxes and toys which were sold to visitors.
The tree, she says, can live in mountainous places where "they really vegetate in situations almost destitute of soil." Jane Grigson seems to be the only cookery writer who gives recipes for using this fruit. It is in her Fruit Book in Penguin Cookery Books.