FARTHER AFIELD
By
More of the modest tea-cosy pleasures, not too much ""farther afield"" from her native Fairacre except for the two weeks she spends with her old friend Amy in Crete where ""spinster and spouse"" reflect on the value of each condition. (It must be admitted -- it comes as somewhat of a jolt amidst the prim, drab gentility of those illustrations to find one of the ladies in a bikini.) Anyway Amy is having difficulties with her husband, who's been straying with a young girl until an accident and the added ignominy of measles returns him to her care -- and in between there are the usual china-cupboard and garden-flower virtues of Miss Read's ""simple single life"" which she midwives with such friendly thrift.