Pulse

those who might like to know the derivation of the word “marmalade”.’
    ‘I thought you’d been a long time having a pee.’
    ‘It’s nothing to do with Marie malade . It comes from some Greek word meaning a kind of apple grafted on to a quince.’
    ‘All the great etymologies are wrong.’
    ‘You mean, you’ve got another example?’
    ‘Well, posh .’
    ‘Port out, starboard home, best accommodation to and from India, quarters on the side sheltered from the sun. Word applied to Lady Diana Cooper and Nancy Mitford.’
    ‘Afraid not. “Origin unknown”.’
    ‘That’s not a derivation, “origin unknown”.’
    ‘It says, “Possibly connected to a Romany word for money.”’
    ‘That’s most unsatisfactory.’
    ‘Sorry to be a spoilsport.’
    ‘Do you think that’s another national characteristic?’
    ‘Being a spoilsport?’
    ‘No. Inventing fanciful derivations and acronyms.’
    ‘Perhaps UK really stands for something else.’
    ‘Uro Konvergence.’
    ‘It’s not that late, is it?’
    ‘Maybe it doesn’t stand for anything at all.’
    ‘It’s an allegory.’
    ‘Or a metaphor.’
    ‘Will someone please explain the difference between a simile and a metaphor?’
    ‘A simile’s … more similar. A metaphor’s more … metaphorical.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    ‘It’s a question of convergence, as the prime minister put it. At the moment, the euro and the pound are miles apart, so their relationship is metaphorical. Maybe even metaphysical.Then they become close, like similes, and there’s convergence.’
    ‘And we finally become Europeans.’
    ‘And live happily ever after.’
    ‘Teaching them all about marmalade.’
    ‘Why didn’t you guys join the euro, as a matter of fact?’
    ‘We had the introduction, we just didn’t want the intromission.’
    ‘We were too fat to fuck at the time.’
    ‘Too fat to be fucked. By some lean and hungry Eurocrat.’
    ‘I think we should join on St Valentine’s Day.’
    ‘Why not Friday the 13th?’
    ‘No, it has to be the 14th. The celebration of both love and impotence. That ’s the day we become fully paid-up members of Europe.’
    ‘Larry, do you want to know how this country’s changed in my lifetime? When I was growing up, we didn’t think about ourselves as a nation. There were certain assumptions, of course, but it was a sign, a proof, of who we were that we didn’t think much about who or what we were. What we was was normal – or is it “what we were was normal”? Now, this might have been due to the long overhang of imperial power, or it might be a matter of what you earlier called our emotional reticence. We weren’t self-conscious. Now we are. No, we’re worse – worse than self-conscious, worse than navel-gazing. Who was saying about that proctologist who told him to squat over a mirror? That’s what we’re like now – arse-gazing.’
    ‘Mint tea, another mint tea here, that’s the decaf. I’ve ordered two minicabs. Why the silence? Did I miss something?’
    ‘Only a simile.’
    After that, we talked about holidays, and who was going where, and how the days were getting longer, apparently at the rate of one minute per day, a fact which no one disputed, and then someone described looking at the inside of a snowdrop, and how you lifted the head of the flower expectingit to be all white inside as well, only to discover a lacy pattern of the purest green. And how different varieties of snowdrop had different internal patterns, some almost geometrical, others quite extravagant, although it was always the same green, and of a vibrancy that made you feel spring was eager to arrive. But before anyone could say anything about or against that, there was a concerted and impatient hooting from the street.

Gardeners’ World
    THEY HAD REACHED the stage, eight years into their relationship, when they had started giving each other useful presents, ones that confirmed their joint project in life rather than expressed their feelings. As they unwrapped sets of coathangers, storage jars, an olive stoner or an electric pencil sharpener, they would say, ‘Just what I needed’, and mean it. Even gifts of underwear nowadays seemed more practical than erotic. One wedding anniversary, he’d given her a card that read, ‘I have cleaned all your shoes’ – and he had, spraying everything suede against the rain, dabbing whitener on an old pair of tennis pumps she still wore, giving her boots a military shine, and treating the