Have you been out today?

Ahh the good Wilkin and Sons, never a finer preserve was spread upon a perfectly toasted crumpet. I grew up not half a mile from their place in Tiptree and it's a nice little place to stop if you're ever passing through the scenic Essex countryside.

 

Ah, now, you see Tiptree, the place, to me is principally the home of Tiptree Book Services (latterly, I think, "The Book Service" or simply TBS), one of the UK's major book distributors to whom I returned hundreds of boxes of unsold books over my years working part-time in a branch of Waterstones. As something of a connoisseur of fine cardboard boxes I can safely state that TBS's were rubbish.

Coincidentally I currently live in a street called Tiptree Close (but I move again at the end of the month).