[meme] fifth sentence on page 123

Illustrations above and below by J.H. Wingfield

Beaman has tagged me and though I loathe and detest memes, if it's Beaman, I suppose I must comply. So, the book close at hand is Notes from a Small Island, by Bill Bryson [Black Swan, 1995] and here are those sentences:

5 Once, many years ago, in anticipation of the children we would one day have, a relative of my wife's gave us a box of Ladybird books from the 1950s and 60s.

6 They all had titles like "Out in the Sun" and "Sunny Days at the Seaside" and contained meticulously drafted, richly coloured illustrations of a prosperous, contented, litter-free Britain in which the sun always shone, shopkeepers smiled and children in freshly-pressed clothes derived happiness and pleasure from innocent pastimes - riding a bus to the shops, floating a model boat on park pond, chatting to a kindly policeman.

7 My favourite book was called "Adventure on the Island".

8 There was, in fact, precious little adventure in the book - the highpoint, I recall, was finding a starfish suckered to a rock but I loved it because of the illustrations [by the gifted and much missed J.H. Wingfield] which portrayed an island of rocky coves and long views that was recognizably British but with a Mediterranean climate and a tidy absence of pay-and-display car parks, bingo parlours and the tackier sort of amusement arcades.

I pass the meme onto anyone on my blogrolls and may the Good Lord have mercy on your souls.