Timewasting - part 58

Found some "fun" writing tips in an old magazine yesterday. One was to pick some books off your shelves at random and copy out a sentence from each one, until you have an "amusing" passage to play with (matron.) Like that party game where everyone adds a sentence to a story until it all goes pear-shaped and someone starts crying.

Ooh, I thought. I've got nothing to do today apart from working, shopping, cooking, cleaning, washing, dog-walking, lawn-mowing, preparing the house for a family visit this weekend (including the redecoration of an entire bedroom ), shave my legs, wax my 'tache, lose ten pounds, negotiate the lowering of fuel prices with the Prime Minister before supper and - oh yes...do some writing - so I think I'll give it a go. Never let it be said I haven't got my priorities in order. Not within earshot, at least.

Anyway, this was the result:-

"It seemed to have completely escaped Mick Farley's notice that it was Harold Farley, his father, who had died.

'Who is that gentleman on horseback?' said she as they proceeded - speaking more to assist Mr Weston in keeping his secret, than with any other view.

He thought of the big man he and Stonewall had found, hung like a donkey, skin so white, dead like his attributes.

'Nicking some kindling,' he called. 'Don't want to freeze tonight, do we?'

When I think about it now, I think that our eagerness to assimilate the horrors and our desire to make everyone else aware of them was in fact repulsive.

In the hallway, someone's being sick and Dorothy, also ravaged by drink by now but still immensely practical, gets the vacuum cleaner out and starts hoovering up the vomit.

'I'd like one of those,' I told him."

Hmmm. So was it a useful exercise? Well, seeing me frowning busily surrounded by books the Teens have mowed the lawn and done some housework for me, so in a word, yes!

I was going to turn this into a Meme, but came to my senses in the nick of time. I am offering a million pounds though, to anyone who can tell me which books those lines came from...