"An evernasty ashtray."

(502.6-504.2)  It appears we're settling in for a little while, in a sense, because today's reading continues the dialogue between Shaun and the old man who is conducting a kind of courtroom witness examination.  The first part of the passage has Shaun continuing to give a description of the "entire horizon cloth" as it was on the night in question.  The moon (actually "a pair of pritty geallachers," according to Shaun . . . perhaps he means that the bottoms of the two young women were exposed that evening) was shining, and the weather was alternately hot ("Absolutely boiled.") and cold ("Obsoletely cowled.").

The reason we're looking into the events of this particular evening becomes clearer as the reading progresses.  This was the night when "the illassorted first couple first met with each other" (both Adam and Eve and HCE and ALP) in "the wellknown kikkinmidden" (the Garden of Eden and the dump where ALP's letter was found).  Outside of that kikkenmidden was a warning sign that read, "Trickpissers vill be pairsecluded," both telling people to keep out and letting them know that they might come upon a pair of urinating women.  There was also an elm tree (the "evernasty ashtray" and "overlisting eshtree"), which doubled as "the grawndest crowndest consecrated maypole in all the reignladen hsitory of Wilds."  The tree is a kind of Tree of Life.  Shaun says that "we are fed of its forest, clad in its wood, burqued by its bark and our lecture is its leave."