In the bulging sack of letters I received in response to the piece On Pickles And Pluck And Gumption, one particular missive struck me. “A lesser man would of course plunge the syringe directly into the flesh of the subject,” wrote a reader. There is some truth in this, though only a smidgen. Some would argue that a smidgen of truth is better than no truth at all, and they may well be right, but what my correspondent overlooks is that if one did plunge the syringe filled with essence of gumption and pluck directly into the subject, thus obviating any need for the pickles in the first place, what on earth would one do with all those pickles, and indeed with the jars into which they are crammed? The obvious rejoinder to this is “Offer them for sale, unmodified, at the church bazaar or fête”. This is a superficially attractive suggestion, one that might be leapt upon by the credulous, the dimwitted, or the poor. Those of us bounden to the glorious idea of pickles-with-a-purpose will disagree.