Words: medley, n.

IN ANGLESEY I once asked a waitress what the "mixed vegetables" were. She said, "They're mixed vegetables", and I still puzzle; and boggle at the Brighton restaurant Peppers' "medley of vegetables". This is pithily defined by Johnson as "a mingled mass. It is commonly used with some degree of contempt." (Restraint itself compared with one's seeing that Harvester describes a pudding as "playfully stabbed with walnuts".)

How refeshing to leave cavernous Peppers and walk to the Steine, as described by the 14-year-old Macaulay: it "is a rare medley; - Generals, and Drummers, and Deserters, and bathing-women, and Peeresses, and Quakers, and masters, and misses, and Sailors, are taking the air perpetually in its walks." No diesel fumes for them.