Eat and drink the world

In all yesterday's excitement about the Belgium biscuits, I omitted to report on the actual work undertaken at the Ancora Press on a cold windy night in Caulfield.

Brian and John spent a lot of time trying to coax the Albion Press into action, without noticeable success. The last work successfully printed on this press is the broadside A poem on the art of printing, published in 2010. Various technical difficulties and competing priorities from the Fine Arts students have prevented any further production. And sadly the Arab platen press is still out of bounds awaiting maintenance.

Meanwhile Pam and I continued setting the obscure cricket work. I managed to set the following text without dropping any lines of type or other major mishap (although what it has to do with cricket I am yet to discover):

The amount of food some of the passengers stowed away would have caused a look of consternation on the face of that gigantic and fleet-footed Eastern monarch who threw out an open challenge to eat and drink the world. I refer to that master of twenty-five different languages who poured molten gold down the throat of the Roman Consul, Manius Aquillius, and who, in order to prevent his harem falling into the hands of enemies, caused the lot to be put to death, specifically honour-

And at that point it was time for tea and Belgium biscuits. Hopefully the remainder of this extract and its relevance to the work in hand will be revealed in due course - but it may take some time.