“Don't take this the wrong way, Archie,” Arla begins, “but what the ef are you talking about?”

For two centuries or more Littlecote, which is near Hungerford, was owned by the Darrell family, and it was they who finally beghosted not only the house but also the neighbourhood — even as far as the Hungerford to Salisbury road.

The balance of strings in these two orchestras emphasized the lowest tessitura; Charles Burney criticized the Italians for having more double basses than celli and for playing the instrument ... so coarsely that it produced a sound no more musical than the stroke of a hammer.

Lower than whaleshit at the bottom of the ocean, he said. […] If I'm whaleshit, hippie, he said, what does that make you?