CleverNick's Second Assignment

[Clevernick]

Thank you for this story, Nick, I enjoyed reading it, I liked all the little descriptive details like the tarnished teaspoon in the window. My ma was an antique dealer, so I was brought up down Portobello road and going on buying trips... this was very evocative!

Thank you, moptop! I'm new to England-- I've lived in lots of places but I'm originally from Canada.

It's a great pleasure to hear that someone with your love of language likes my style of prose. Sometimes I enjoy bringing a poetry rhythm to it, and I like it when Tom Robbins does his descriptive bits too. I suspect his stuff wouldn't be popular here sometimes -- I have been criticized for doing Robbins-style self-conscious descriptions twice now, and both times I listened to the criticism and considered it, but decided to leave them in. Though I tried to improve them a bit each time.

I am a TERRIBLE student and I feel sorry for Dragon's Muse for having to do what she's doing here.

I took writing classes in my last year of high school and gained a grudging respect from the teacher there by deliberately saying the OPPOSITE of whatever theory he'd had in class, in my essays. I thought it would gall him that by his own, posted, objective marking scheme, that he had to give me top marks for contradicting him.

Actually he was a better sport about it than I expected, and I became one of his favorite students.

So no offense, rose, if I seem mouthy. I'm just trying to be endearing. Yeah, that's it. Endearing.