while i was at school at marlborough my father had a curate who was anglo-catholic (an unheard-of-thing in our parish), and, also unheard of, zoo-crazy. he lived in a shack which was really a soldier's home and built there a huge rabbit house, pasted round inside with photographs of lions. he always winced when he saw closely mown grass because he considered it an outrage against nature. he read detective stories all night, smoked cigarettes incessantly, bought a motor-bicycle he couldn't ride, and told the old ladies of hte parish that there was nothing to touch a black panther.

from the selected prose of louis macneice.