"And easy dragons shall besiege your gates"

stanking, deepfryerfire, your book arrived- one I'd contemplated buying for myself, so how lucky I didn't. Thank you for that and for the good wishes in the card, especially the easy dragons. The knees and the rest can do as they please if only I have those.

paleaswater, *your* book came today as well, and equal thanks. The historical background notes are immensely useful (finally, she says, *finally*, someone to tell me who all these guys are, including the fact that Yoshitoshi's Cao Cao is heading towards his defeat at the Red Cliff. See, progress is always possible. Now I know, which I didn't at 36, both who Cao Cao is and what the Red Cliff was. Err- more or less.) Renumbering the plates for thematic purposes strikes me as a bit odd, and I must wonder at the happy anecdotal postscript of 'how we carefully amassed a complete set of The Hundred Phases of the Moon from all over the world' when the colours of the set they did amass are... not of the best, let us say. They look distinctly faded to me, and I can't believe it's all photographic quality. But I envy them the time they had doing it, riffling through print dealers' bins. (!) Those were the days, my friend. By the time *I* started buying, prints weren't found in bins nohow.