‘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 pips in a muslin bag to get extra… whatsit.’
‘Pectin.’
‘That’s the stuff.’
‘Fine cut.’
‘Coarse.’
‘I cut mine up in the Magimix.’
‘Cheat.’
‘My friend Hazel does hers in the pressure cooker.’
‘But that’s my point. It’s like boiling an egg. Or was it frying? They did a survey and discovered everyone does it differently and everyone thinks theirs is the right way.’
‘Is this leading anywhere, O keeper of the communal narrative?’
‘What Larry was saying. About us all being the same. But we aren’t. Not even with the simplest things.’
‘The marmalade theory of Britishness.’
‘That’s why you shouldn’t be afraid of being Europeans. All of you guys.’
‘I don’t know if Larry was in the country when our distinguished Chancellor of the Exchequer, now soon-to-be-ex-prime minister, Mr Brown, laid down a number of conditions before we would submerge the good old British pound in the filthy foreign euro.’
‘Converge. Not submerge. The tests for convergence.’
‘Can anyone remember them, by the way? Even one of them?’
‘Of course not. They weren’t designed to be comprehensible. They were designed to be incomprehensible, and, therefore, unmemorable.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the decision to join the euro was always going to be political not economic.’
‘That’s very lucid and may even be correct.’
‘But does anyone think the French are less French, or the Italians less Italian, because they joined the euro?’
‘The French will always be French.’
‘That’s what they say about you.’
‘That we’ll always be French?’
‘Anyway, you don’t need Seville oranges to make marmalade.’
‘I’m glad we’re back on the subject.’
‘Dick’s made it with every kind of citrus fruit.’
‘There goes my reputation.’
‘There was one year he made it with a mixture of – what was it? – Sevilles, sweet oranges, pink grapefruit, yellow grapefruit, lemons and limes. Six-fruit marmalade, I put on the labels.’
‘That wouldn’t get past EU regulations.’
‘Remind me – mint tea, mint tea, nothing, decaf, mint tea?’
‘I’ll switch to nothing tonight.’
‘So much for my chances later on.’
‘David, sweetie…’
‘Yes, Sue, sweetie?’
‘OK, since you raised it. Just to ask a non-British question, have any of us, in recent memory, left Phil and Joanna’s table and gone home and…’
‘“Had a spot of old-fashioned nookie” is what she’s trying to say.’
‘What counts as old-fashioned?’
‘Oh, anything involving intromission.’
‘Isn’t that a horrible word?’
‘I was told a story about Lady Diana Cooper. Or was it Nancy Mitford? One or the other, anyway, posh. And they were – she was – on a transatlantic liner and whichever of them it was fucked one of the stewards one evening. And the next morning he ran into her in the fo’c’sle or whatever and said hello in a friendly way -’
‘As one would.’
‘As one would. And she replied, “Intromission is not introduction.”’
‘Ah, doncha love our upper classes? There’ll always be an England.’
‘That sort of story makes me want to stand on the table and sing “The Red Flag”.’
‘“The Ruby Flag”.’
‘You’re all avoiding my question.’
‘How can we be if we can’t remember it?’
‘Then shame on you.’
‘It’s not really the alcohol, or the lack of caffeine, it’s not even the tiredness. It’s more that by the time we get home we’re what we in our house call TFTF.’
‘An acronym you are about to deconstruct.’
‘Too Fat To Fuck.’
‘Talk about secrets of the bedchamber.’
‘You remember Jerry?’
‘The guy with the plastic testicules?’
‘I thought you’d remember that detail. Well, Jerry was abroad for a few months, and Kate – his wife – started getting worried that her tummy was a bit on the fat side. And she wanted to be in perfect shape for Jerry’s return, so she went to a plastic surgeon and asked about liposuction. And the guy said yes, he could give her a flattie again…’
‘A flattie?’
‘I paraphrase the medispeak. The only downside, he said, was that she wouldn’t, as he so tactfully put it, be able to take any weight on her stomach for quite a number of weeks.’
‘Oh-oh. Posterior intromission only.’
‘Don’t you think, actually, that’s a story about true love?’
‘Unless it’s a story about female insecurity.’
‘Hands up all 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.’