Last night I exorcised my dining rites at Corpus. I took my husband with me, and luckily, this time he did not commit any politically incorrect faux pas. We discovered another dramatic change in British culture. During the long evening drinking bottle after bottle of fortified wines, we found that cigars we not available. Instead we were offered snuff. Yes. Really. Snuff! ..and I'd thought it was only Japan that was culturally still in the 18th century.
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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 9/09/2010 02:04:00 AM
8 comments:
Now you've got me humming the Flying Pickets' theme for Porterhouse Blue.
I've always imagined meals there to be composed entirely of communion wafers, which works nicely with the exorcism theme.
The snuff thing is entirely weird. Insufflation for the insufferable?
You mean you only noticed this dramatic change in culture from cigars not being available rather than the much more obvious signs of groups of employees standing just outside in the rain?? How very unobservant of you!
Chris,
We'd seen people smoking in doorways all over the place on this and previous visits, but I must shamefully admit that our life is insufficiently debauched to regularly feature after-dinner port and cigars, so this is the first time we realised the latter had been effectively outlawed! I'm not sure the combining room really counts as a workplace, but there you go. We did our best to drown our sorrows at the passing of an era.
Steve, do you mean the insufferable enjoying their pursuit of the insufflable?
The rhyme improves, yes. But having passed judgment, I am quite curious as to what sort of person was actually willing to be seen in semi-public using snuff.
FYI, here at the center of the anti-smoking universe the next steps seem to be bans an out-of-door smoking in places prone to crowds and on smoking in residences with shared walls.
I should say anti-tobacco universe, there being little tolerance of the "smokeless" variety.
And hey, how do they dispose of the used product in those hallowed precincts? Spitoons?
Mmmmm! 18th century!
(What happens if you push the red button?)
Early 19th innit?
If you push the button a chronophage will come out and eat you (if the porter doesn't get you first).
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