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Situation: Duelling; having both realised the absurdity of the disagreement; the fragile mortality of one's opponent considered; pistols discharged harmlessly into soil and air.
Attitude: Gentlemanly.
Solution: Clap each other across the shoulders, laughing heartily. Exchange copies of Etiquette Of Common Situations by Mrs Bookery; continue to laugh heartily, swearing friendship and beckoning in seconds until the entire duelling party is shaking hands and laughing heartily to the point where an imaginary observer might reasonably be expected to have withdrawn from the scene; go home for a large breakfast. |
| etiquette archive |
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Sir:
I have developed mastery of the weather. If you do not send a thousand guineas to me, via my man, by noon tomorrow I will have the clouds viewable from your windows assume a profane shape. |
Name withheld by request
West Beckt... South Beckton |
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| letters from the editor archive |
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Bill to Abolish Slavering Throughout Empire introduced by the Rt Hon Pemlit Atrahay (Lub), Member for Drule.
i. That the foul practice of slavering is a repugno-bombination in GOD'S EYES, and must be ended.
(Abstensions secured by the powerful Honourable East India Napkin Company lobby; bill moves to Lords as part of the debate on spitting on doorsteps.) |
| the bill before the house archive |
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The BRITON'S SCIENCE has shewn that The Weekly, the magazine which strives to maintain Britain's standards, has topped* one million readers since 1871.
"I am also available for music-hall," said MR MILLINGTON of this mathematically inevitable achievement.
MR NASH added: "Set against such a number, the life of one person seems insignificant. Or, indeed, the lives of all the people on that train. History will judge me."
* Though not, of course, in the sense of assassination. The Weekly has had cause to assassinate no more than fifty specially selected readers. |
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Sup from the issue broth with the random ladle. New issue every time, subject to blind unfavouring chance. |
| feature archive |
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| This chap's purchased an OFFICIAL THE WEEKLY T-SHAPED SHIRT and now he's working off his shame at indulging in such wasteful extravagance. You too may display similar penitence, and perhaps press hot coins guiltily into the hands of a stooped clerk for a copy of MR MILLINGTON's improving books Things About Which My Girlfriend And I Have Argued, A Certain Chemistry, Love and Other Near-Death Experiences and Instructions For Living Someone Else's Life, by patronising the The Weekly Corner Shop corner shop. Items despatched under plain wrapper, school-boys will be chased from the premises with a broom. |
| corner shop |
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Position: Symbolic Gardener.
Responsibilities: LIFE! The very word thrills with the sound of fife or perhaps knife. And in the BRITON'S LIFE much is communicated without words and sometimes even without eyebrows; and it is for these times the symbolic gardener lives, or perhaps sieves. As a symbolic gardener you will be tending allusions of vital potency, so must demonstrate equal facility with cutting back dead wood, watering a single tragic rose with a cup of tears wept by a strangely unmemorable woman in grey, and raising firm, juicy pears and big melons. The ability to tamp a simple blackened pipe in an unhurriedly silent and reflective manner when impulsively entrusted with a frippish secret by the youngest lady of a house is an advantage, as is snipping a bloom from a tufty bush of scribbly corymb at the exact moment of a colonel's death in his high lonely palace. You will inexplicably own a swanee-whistle.
Remuneration: The post is paid in a purely symbolic currency, usually a handful of broken child's toys to stoke the perpetual bonfire or a house-plant to be re-potted now its owner is engaged to a quiet fellow with prospects. You may eat whatever you can grow, but this is strictly limited to vegetables, &c, with names of hinted impurity.
Prospects: Gatherer of souls by figuratively shaving individual blades of grass to the soil with a tiny pocket scythe; bemusing dowager by unexpectedly appearing through gap in hedge in a back view while manipulating the stream of a hose-pipe; suggestive metaphor. |
| better yourself archive |
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| Remain UP-TO-DATE and KEENLY ABREAST with a subscription to BRITAIN'S ADVOCATE OF QUALITIES. You will receive notification by e-mail of forthcoming issues of the magazine which inspires Britons everywhere to forge ahead to a better newness. Alternatively, sub down from the list in weary satiety. |
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