I’ve been savouring more of Evelyn Waugh’s beautifully constructed lists in Officers and Gentlemen, the second volume of his Sword of Honour trilogy. It has taken me ages to get around to these three books despite my fondness for Waugh’s writing, due in part to the knowledge that I have so few of his novels left unread. Another excuse is that I’d been looking for hardcover copies of the books in good condition, and had chosen to browse in person through secondhand book stores rather than resorting to the more certain (but less satisfying) avenue of internet purchases via ABE. Our local library has the BBC miniseries version of the trilogy with Daniel Craig in the role of Guy Crouchback; novelist William Boyd did the adaptation and the production has received good reviews, but I wanted to read the books before seeing the TV version.

Here’s one classic example of a Waugh list from Officers and Gentlemen, which opens in England in 1940, at the town of Matchet, where Guy Crouchback’s aged father has come out of retirement to teach Livy at Our Lady of Victory’s Preparatory School. He occupies a pair of rooms at the Marine Hotel with his dog Felix for company, and has just had a parcel delivered to him, “bulky and ragged from the investigations of numberless clumsy departmental hands. It was covered with American stamps, customs declarations and certifications of censorship.”

‘American parcel’ was just beginning to find a place in the English vocabulary. This was plainly one of these novelties. His three Box-Bender grand-daughters had been sent to a place of refuge in New England. Doubtless it came from them. ‘How kind. How very extravagant,’ he had thought and had borne it to his room for later study.

Now he cut the string with his nail scissors and spread the contents in order on his table.

First came six tins of ‘Pullitzer’s Soup’. They were variously, lusciously named but soup was one of the few articles of diet in which the Marine Hotel abounded. Moreover, he had an ancient conviction that all tinned foods were made of something nasty. ‘Silly girls. Well, I daresay we shall be glad of it one day’. Next there was a transparent packet of prunes. Next a very heavy little tin labelled ‘Brisko. A Must in every home.’ There was no indication of its function. Soap? Concentrated fuel? Rat poison? Boot polish? He would have to consult Mrs. Tickeridge. Next a very light larger tin named ‘Yumcrunch’. This must be edible for it bore the portrait of an obese and badly brought-up little girl waving a spoon and fairly bawling for the stuff. Last and oddest of all a bottle filled with what seemed to be damp artificial pearls, labelled ‘Cocktail Onions’. Could it be that this remote and resourceful people who had so generously (and, he thought, so unnecessarily) sheltered his grand-children; this people whose chief concern seemed to be the frustration of the processes of nature — could they have contrived an alcoholic onion?

Mr. Crouchback’s elation palled; he studied his gift rather fretfully. Where in all this exotic banquet was there anything for Felix? The choice seemed to lie between Brisko and Yumcrunch.

He shook Yumcrunch. It rattled. Broken biscuits? Felix stood and pointed his soft muzzle.

‘Yumcrunch?’ said Mr. Crouchback seductively. Felix’s tail thumped on the carpet.

And then suspicion darkened Mr. Crouchback’s contentment: suppose this were one of those new patent foods he had heard described, something ‘dehydrated’ which, eaten without due preparation, swelled enormously and fatally in the stomach.

‘No, Felix,’ he said. ‘No Yumcrunch. Not until I have asked Mrs. Tickeridge.’

My own version of the ‘American parcel’ takes the form of intermittent deliveries of books brought across the border from Seattle by my dear friend T, who some years ago chose to abandon her Canadian roots and her Canadian friends. T has adapted to the American way of life with an ease and thoroughness which is almost chilling; with no trace of shame she is an admitted devotee of Elvis Presley, and her spirits rise and fall in concert with the fortunes of the Mariners; I would not be at all surprised to learn that her handbag now contains a nickel-plated handgun filled with hollow points.

The most recent American parcels brought to me by T contained four ABE book orders ordered over as many months — whenever the impulse was uncontrollable. Paid with Paypal or credit card, the books had been delivered to the long-suffering T, who is now (I hope) accustomed to random arrivals of mysterious packages addressed to me in her care, and bearing a wide range of return addresses and postmarks: a padded envelope from Old Books on Front Street in Wilmington, NC; another parcel wrapped in layers of brown paper, sealed against all forms of moisture by yards of packing tape, and protected from US Postal Service injustices by a section of the San Diego Union Tribune dated March 18, 2007.

Inside these parcels: The Second Tree from the Corner and the collected Essays to join my other volumes of E. B White; M. F. K. Fisher’s Map of Another Town; and The Raw and the Cooked, a collection of food essays and columns from Jim Harrison; a nice assortment of literary and culinary treats.

No Yumcrunch, though, and no damp artificial pearls.