Commonplace Book

'...There must, by the way, be one considerable advantage in being a child in a war-zone village; no one can attempt to teach it tidiness. The wearisome maxim, "A place for everything and everything in its proper place" can never be insisted on when a considerable part of the roof is lying in the backyard, when a bedstead from a neighbour's demolished bed-room is half-buried in the beetroot pile, and the chickens are roosting in a derelict meat safe because a shell has removed the top and sides and front of the chicken-house.'

from a piece entitled The Square Egg, in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki