The Inspector-General of Misconception Read Online Free Page B

with disappointment, that she looks ‘different’.
    â€˜I’m not in that dreadful uniform,’ she says.
    â€˜Oh,’ says Walter, regretfully, ‘it wasn’t so bad.’
    But the life rule is that one should take and give fondness, or anything resembling fondness, wherever you find it in life.
    A further reason for not reading pornography while dining alone in a restaurant is that it could inflame the passions of the table attendants who inevitably have a glance at what you are reading, and they will not be able to carry out their work calmly.
    They will become fixated on your table and neglect other tables.
    They will visibly tremble when delivering dishes to your table.
    They will become flushed and their conversation will be breathless.
    Their dress will become dishevelled and their conduct increasingly lewd.
    We remarked earlier that all forays into Servant Loverequire judicious and sensitive assessments both of feelings and the methods for showing those feelings. The displaying of dirty pictures on the restaurant table is not considered to be sufficiently prudent or circumspect.
    On being traced by a relative
    If, on Christmas Day, relatives come looking for you and manage to trace you to the restaurant, the only response is to say:
    On evil days though fall’n, and evil tongues I hear
    In darkness, and with dangers encompassing me around,
    In solitude; yet not alone, while thou
    Visit’st my slumbers nightly, or when morn
    Purples the east: still govern though my song,
    Urania, and fit audience find, though few:
    But drive far off the barb’rous dissonance
    Of Bacchus and his revellers.
    Adding, sotto voce, ‘Bacchus, you may stay’.
    This will usually work.
    Your relatives will wish you well in the coming years, shake your hand, and back away out of the restaurant, giving you one last glance and a nervous wave.
    You may never see them again.
    On abundance and its converse
    Lone dining permits you to order idiosyncratically.
    Consequently, you do not have to follow the traditional Christmas menu although restaurants often find this annoying, if not sacrilegious.
    You may, for example, order three or four entrées (presumably, without requiring a main course) or two or three main courses, in entrée size; or, you may leave some of each dish uneaten.
    Or you may order two or three desserts. Or you may challenge tradition by choosing to begin the meal with dessert.
    While abundance and idiosyncrasy may be the whimsical freedoms of eating alone, paradoxically, it also allows for delicacy of pleasure; it invites minute attention to the art of eating.
    Hence, one of the pleasures of solitary eating is that you can painstakingly and deliberately ‘assemble’ a forkful of food.
    Whereas, when one is eating in company, conversation and other matters distract our attention from the making of a forkful and it tends to be done habitually, without thought.
    However, be careful that you do not take too long over the construction of the forkfuls and in contemplation of them.
    Studied attention to a forkful of food will eventually attract worried attention. Even clinical attention.
    On knowing the path of intoxication
    Do not have more than two pre-dinner drinks.
    This is a snare called Drinking for Two which is a disorder which comes from imagining that you havea companion, or, that you are the companion.
    It can only lead to early garrulousness which, in the absence of company, will very likely be vented on the table attendant.
    Or it will lead to talking to oneself. Or to the imaginary companion.
    Nor should you drink the house wine by the glass.
    This is an indication of gastronomic apathy. Buy a half bottle of excellent wine or better still, buy the Whole Damn Bottle.
    The buying of a whole bottle does not require that you drink the whole bottle . Mother’s Rule of eating everything on your plate does not apply to alcohol. It means that you can have as much of it as