Q. An elderly relative has developed the disgusting habit of licking her knife after using it for, say, jam, and then using it again to help herself to butter. It’s horrid having to take butter from a dish into which some one else’s saliva-strewn knife has been plunged. Any ideas?
B.M, North Berwick
A. Re-educate your relation by giving her tea at your own table. Serve scones from the oven, handing out the first one ‘to test’ by an accomplice who will have been primed to load it with butter, then lick his knife. As his knife-wielding hand now lunges for the jam, cry ‘Greystoke! Greystoke!’ and steer the hand towards the teaspoon he should use. ‘What does Greystoke mean?’ your relation is bound to ask as your accomplice apologises. ‘Oh, it’s our secret code,’ you can reply. Explain that ‘Greystoke’ refers to the 1984 film in which Christopher Lambert plays an aristocrat raised, since babyhood, by apes in the African jungle.
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