The Northern Professor and his Godpapa have tootled off down the drive for several days adventure in the north of England. Things seem strangely quiet, especially since yesterday was enlivened by a good deal of the Apparitional Gamekeeper’s company. He did a great deal of virtuous work in the way of strimming, mowing and so forth, but he also had one of his good ideas. He has been brooding about a smokehouse for a while (since the previous effort was highly successful till the barrel went up in flames). What he seized on was something we had all rather forgotten about — that one of the areas of hard standing where we put cars has an inspection pit. Lo, he said, I shall put my fire at the bottom of the inspection pit, and hang this and that in from the top! It cannot be said that the Experimental Trout was quite such a rip-roaring success as the hot smoked salmon of a month or two back. The inspection pit may be a little large for the purpose, and it was not a good idea to supplement the remaining old-whisky-barrel fuel with some Lawson cypress, which added a definite overtone of turpentine. But the Gamekeeper does not admit defeat easily. I’m not at all sure we have heard the last of this one.