The Inspector-General of Misconception Read Online Free

exquisitely structured way.
    Such a meal is also a reward for our labours that day or a consolation for the trials of that day.
    The leisurely meal with touches of grandeur in its food, napery, glassware, cutlery and wine also nobly defies the busyness and exigency of the crudely functional view of life (if you need the name of our naperer or cutler please contact our secretary).
    For two hours or so, we can live well.
    If you do not wish to extend the face-to-face conversational situation in your present domestic arrangement,please call our secretary and make an appointment.
    First Finding: The National Food Authority (there is such a body) is hereby ordered to acquiesce to the demand by the Australian Specialist Cheesemakers’ Association (nor are we inventing this body) that raw-milk cheese be permitted to be made in this country.
    Second Finding: The National Heart Foundation at present places cheese on the ‘Avoid Where Possible’ list. The National Heart Foundation is hereby instructed to remove crafted cheese, appreciatively eaten, from this listing.

DINING ALONE AT CHRISTMAS
    We now wish to address the question of Handling Christmas Alone intended not for those who are genuine waifs and strays but more for Those Who Do Not Believe in Christmas and Those Who Do Not Believe in Families and those other malcontents of the world who, because of having been given too many ‘educational’ presents as a child, find Christmas Gloomy Beyond Words.
    In particular, we wish to focus on the etiquette difficulties experienced by those who prefer to dine alone at Christmas in five-star restaurants.
    On being pitied
    The first problem is a gross misconception by Normal Society, that on Christmas Day the lone diner is to be treated as a focus of some pity.
    Those who pity the lone Christmas diner assume that he or she is either a stranger in a foreign land or has noone in their life who would wish to dine with them.
    The lone diner appears to others as a poignant, if not heartbreaking, sight.
    The lone diner is likely to receive notes sent from the other tables requesting that he or she ‘join’ a table of generous, joyous, pitying strangers.
    Or sometimes the staff of the restaurant, unable to bear the sight of a seemingly friendless soul seated there amidst all the ‘gaiety’ of intimate and loving tables of people, will invite the diner to the staff table in the kitchen.
    This may have the motive of removing the lone diner from sight.
    Naturally, the lone diner will refuse all these invitations.
    Dressing
    It goes without saying that dressing in tails, white scarf, and a homburg is the most snappy shield against the pity of the world. Or anything else from the world.
    At any time of the day or night.
    For men and for women.
    On meeting the accusing question
    Upon arriving at the restaurant, the maître d’ will, as he or she removes one’s overcoat, inevitably ask the indelicate question, ‘Is sir or madam dining alone?’
    It is important not to flinch at the question and all it implies. Social outcast, social outcast, social outcast .
    It is important not to ‘over answer’. Avoid rushing out with an over-elaborate excuse such as, ‘Oh, my brotherDon and his wife were supposed to meet me but his child is ill with a new strain of virus which he caught while on a school excursion to Mongolia and which is puzzling Western medicine and which involves half-hourly administering of a herb which can only be found in Antarctica and has to be flown in by airforce helicopter and which causes convulsions which requires the child to be held down forcibly by both parents. And so they couldn’t join me for dinner.’
    No. When asked if you are dining alone, simply say, ‘Most assuredly.’
    When you enter the restaurant, you may be asked to put on a ‘jolly’ paper hat. You may choose to wear it in the spirit of the occasion or you may choose not to wear it.