Thumb and thumber

THE six-year-old grandson of reader Laura Thornton boasted that at school he was learning a rhyme from Jack In The Beanstalk, which he proceeded to recite, just as he recalled it.

“Fee-fi-fo-fum,” he trilled, “I smell an English thumb.”

Laura was most intrigued. “I wonder what’s so distinctive about the whiff of an English person’s stumpy digit?” she muses, before adding: “Perhaps it can be bottled and sold as a luxury perfume. ‘English Thumb By Givenchy’ sounds wonderfully glam.”

Reader Mark Brown says this sounds like an excellent service, though he adds: “What happens if Jim returns on the same day the horse dies?”