19 October 2002

Dear Mary… Q. At a party recently we reconnected with a couple we had not seen for a few years. We agreed to have dinner soon, and duly invited them. They then had us back, and we were happy to have re-established the relationship. When we next invited them for dinner, they accepted enthusiastically, saying

I’ve just got round to reading Liza Picard’s Dr Johnson’s London, which I enjoyed very much. She says, ‘As I read my way through contemporary writers, a few words caught my eye.’ Among them is kick the bucket. I wish Mrs Picard had mentioned where she saw it, for the earliest citation in the dictionary