Hymn to Pym

Mr Gnome, just back from Edinburgh, has been invited to take part in a curious game.

It goes like this: pick up the nearest book of more than 123 pages. Look at page 123. Copy out the fifth, sixth and seventh sentences on that page. Send said chunk of text to five other people, inviting them to do same. In the manner of one of those dreadful chain letters. But as this is a bit literary, it must be charming, rather than tedious....

Mr G scurried to the bathroom and picked up Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym.

Here we go:

'I shouldn't do any good there,' said Jane guiltily, remembering her intrusion into the choir vestry a few weeks ago of which she had told him nothing.

'I should have thought the time could have been more profitably spent in encouraging  young authors rather than in celebrating dead ones,' Nicholas declared.

'But it does encourage them,' Jane said.

There you are. 

Barbara Pym is a bit of an acquired taste. A 1950s literary lovechild of Joanna Trollope and Alan Bennett, with Jane Austen handing out stiff G&Ts at the christening party.

Mr G is now supposed to 'tag' five people. But he is not sure how to do this. He will simply tag the kind clergyman who invited him to join the game.