WHERE WAS I?
It’s not our first visit to this city, but there is still plenty of interest here. “I have a sixth sense for it,” my friend says.
I don’t know what he means until we get to a large school, alma mater of a screenwriter and producer (mother: Barbara) who revived a muchloved TV series. He has now guided six of its seasons.
Our next stop is a café, for doughnuts, before we head to a university, a mile southeast of the school. Its former lecturers include a novelist (son: Martin) who also published six volumes of poetry. “And a Collected Poems,” Friend adds.
“Lucky him — to be so talented,” I mutter, before our fourth stop (for lunch) and a fifth, at a cake shop.
“And here’s our sixth stop,”Friend says with a mouthful of millefeuille, 700 yards eastnortheast of the university. He tells me that it was witness to six consecutive sixes in the Sixties. “The man responsible was one of six children,” he adds. “And guess how many fingers he was born with on either hand.”
“So is this sixth sense an obsession with a number,”
I ask him. “Or just a pretext for endless eating?”
Friend shrugs. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
Sean Newsom
THE QUESTIONS
1 What is the surname of the screenwriter and producer?
2 What was the surname of the novelist?