Pulse

funnier when you don’t strain so much.’
    ‘I remember one of the first times I went into a lavatory stall and read the graffiti, there was one that said, “Do not bite the knob while straining.” It took me about five years to work it out.’
    ‘Is that knob as in knob?’
    ‘No, it’s knob as in doorknob.’
    ‘Changing the subject entirely, I was in a stall once and taking my leisure when I noticed something written down at the bottom of the side wall at a sort of slant. So I bent over until I could read it, and it said, “You are now crapping at an angle of 45 degrees.”’
    ‘I would just like to say that the reason I mentioned marmalade …’
    ‘Apart from its link to bowel cancer.’
    ‘Is because it’s such a British phenomenon. Larry was saying how we’re now all the same. So instead of saying the Royal Family or whatever, I said marmalade.’
    ‘We have it in the States.’
    ‘You have it, in little pots in hotels at breakfast. But you don’t make it in your homes , you don’t understand it.’
    ‘The French have it. Confiture d’orange.’
    ‘Same thing applies. That’s just jam. Orange jam.’
    ‘No, it’s French to begin with, it comes from “ Marie malade ”. That Queen of Scotland who had French connections.’
    ‘FCUK. They were here already?’
    ‘And Mary, Queen of Scots, or Bloody Mary, or whoever it was, was ill. And they made it for her. So Marie malade – marmalade. See?’
    ‘I think we were there already.’
    ‘Anyway, I’ll tell you why we Brits will always remain British.’
    ‘Don’t you hate the way everyone says “the UK” or just “UK” nowadays? Not to mention “UK plc” and all that.’
    ‘I think Tony Blair started it.’
    ‘I thought you blamed everything on Mrs Thatcher.’
    ‘No, I’ve switched. It’s all Blair’s fault now.’
    ‘“UK plc”’s just honest. We’re a trading nation, always were. Thatch just reconnected us to the real England that is for ever England – money-worshipping, self-interested, xenophobic, culture-hating. It’s our default setting.’
    ‘As I was saying, do you know what we also celebrate on February the 14th, apart from St Valentine’s Day?’
    ‘National Bowel-Screening Day?’
    ‘Shut up, Dick.’
    ‘No. It’s also National Impotence Day.’
    ‘I lurv your Breedish sense of yumor.’
    ‘I lurv your Croatian accent.’
    ‘But it’s true. And if anyone asks me about national characteristics, or irony, for that matter, that’s what I tell them: February the 14th.’
    ‘Blood oranges.’
    ‘Let me guess. Named after Bloody Mary.’
    ‘Did you notice a few years ago they started calling blood oranges “rubyoranges” in supermarkets? Just in case anyone thought they might really contain blood.’
    ‘As opposed to containing rubies.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘Anyway, they’re just about coming into the shops, so they’re overlapping with Sevilles, and I was wondering if that happens as often, say, as Friday the 13th precedes Valentine’s Day.’
    ‘Joanna, that’s another reason I love you. You’re able to impose narrative coherence on the likes of us at this time of night. What could be more flattering than a hostess who can make her guests imagine they’re sticking to the point?’
    ‘Put that on next year’s Valentine, Phil.’
    ‘And does everyone agree tonight’s blood or ruby orange salad was fit to set before a queen?’
    ‘And the neck-of-lamb stew fit to be set before a king.’
    ‘Charles the First’s final request.’
    ‘He wore two shirts.’
    ‘Charles the First?’
    ‘On the day he was beheaded. It was extremely cold, and he didn’t want to start shivering and have Ye People believe he was frightened.’
    ‘ That ’s pretty British.’
    ‘All those people who dress up in period costume and fight Civil War battles all over again. That’s very British too, I always think.’
    ‘Well, we do it in the States. I guess in lots of other countries too.’
    ‘OK, but we did it first . We invented it.’
    ‘Like your cricket and your soccer and your Devonshire cream teas.’
    ‘If we can stick to marmalade for the moment.’
    ‘It gives a good glaze to a duck.’
    ‘I bet everyone here who makes it does it differently and wants a different consistency.’
    ‘Runny.’
    ‘Sticky.’
    ‘Sue boils it so hard it falls off the toast if you aren’t careful. No stick at all.’
    ‘Well, if you leave it too runny it pours off the toast.’
    ‘You have to put the