Final Word...

This week's Final Word comes from a post office clerk's childhood memories of rural life:

"As she went on her way, gossamer threads, spun from bush to bush, barricaded her pathway, and as she broke through one after another of these fairy barricades she thought, 'They're trying to bind and keep me'. But the threads which were to bind her to her native county were more enduring than gossamer. They were spun of love and kinship and cherished memories."

The winner of last week's competition, who correctly identified Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind , is B. D. Josephson of Cambridge.