a moment of mirth

well into the task of packing myriad books for the journey to our next home, of course i stop now and then to look at old favourites. i'll say it before i type this out - possibly you had to be there, but the following passage by bill bryson from 'notes from a small island' (the one with the belisha beacon on the cover) makes me laugh out loud and is bloody brilliant.

Bryson is in Corfe, about to eat dinner at Mortons House, an Elizabethan manor:

"Given the nature of the hotel, I'd expected the menu to feature items like brown Windsor soup and roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, but of course things have moved on in the hotel trade. The menu now was richly endowed with ten-guinea words that you wouldn't have seen on an English menu ten years ago -- "noisettes," "tartare," "duxelle," "coulis," "timbale" -- and written in a curious inflated language with eccentric capitalizations. I had, and I quote, "Fanned Galia Melon and Cumbrian Air Dried Ham served with a Mixed leaf Salad," followed by "Fillet Steak served with a crushed Black Peppercorn Sauce flamed in Brandy and finished with Cream," which together were nearly as pleasurable to read as to eat.

I was greatly taken with this new way of talking and derived considerable pleasure from speaking it to the waiter. I asked him for a luster of water freshly drawn from the house tap and presented 'au nature' in a cylinder of glass, and when he came around with the bread rolls I entreated him to present me a tonged rondelle of blanched wheat, oven baked and masked in a poppy-seed coating. I was just getting warmed up to this and about to ask for a fanned lap coverlet, freshly laundered and scented with a delicious hint of Lemon Daz, to replace the one that had slipped from my lap and now lay recumbent on the horizontal walking surface subjacent to my feet, when he handed me a card that said "Sweets Menu" and I realized that we were back in the no-nonsense world of English.

It's a funny thing about English diners. They'll let you dazzle them with piddly duxelles of this and fussy little noisettes of that, but don't mess with their puddings, which is my thinking exactly. All the dessert entries were for gooey dishes with good English names. I had sticky toffee pudding and it was splendid. As I finished, the waiter invited me to withdraw to the lounge where a caisson of fresh-roasted coffee, complemented by the chef's own selection of mint wafers, awaited. I dressed the tabletop with a small circlet of copper specie crafted at the Royal Mint and, suppressing a small eruction of gastrointestinal air, effected my egress."

pp 98-99, or where the crack is on the spine of my paperback copy. now to return to the boxes ...