Brian tells us he is `about to graduate as a fiction writer'. This process, apparently, involves exposing his work to the scrutiny of his peers - who often give him a pretty bad time. But everyone then repairs to the local hostelry where `these conversations...end in drinks and laughs....[& later] even handshakes and jokes in the hall-ways....' The road to literary success can be a rough one, passing as it does sometimes through the Field Intelligence Unit or the Ospedale Maggiore. But the sound of the joviality in those hallways certainly chills my blood. Scottie Bowman