Last night we were having dinner and I said: can a person make broccoli cheese where instead of a cauliflower you have a broccoli?
And both my parents said yes, and Felix looked quietly confused. I asked him what, and he said "I don't know why you would do that."
And I said well it's because it would be delicious, and then there were a series of I suppose half-questions, the upshot of which was the "revelation" that he thought cauliflower cheese was like a block of cheese that had small pieces of cauliflower in it. "You know how blue cheese has blue in it? Like that," is what he said. The confusion of course now makes sense - cheese with bits of broccoli in would be probably horrible. Although so would a cheese with cauliflower in.
Everyone has those stories where they go: Until I was sixteen or whatever, I thought something adorable, and then I was humiliatingly set straight by my mother/a cashier at Buxtons/etc"
I don't think this is one of those stories though. There will probably never come a point in Felix's life were it will seem ludicrous to him that he ever thought that.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/10/05/091005fi_fiction_saunders

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/08/09/040809fi_fiction

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/01/11/100111fi_fiction_egan

a thing I never ever want to forget

Is that Dan's dad has a friend called Bart Simpson.

Felix once told me that a good conversation filler is asking someone what they had for lunch

I'm sure he doesn't remember this, and I'm very very sure that this isn't one of the rules by which he lives his life, but it is a thing I think about quite often. You obviously can't do this to like a stranger, but when there is a lull in a conversation with someone you know well (especially if you have got on their tits, or even more especially if they have got on your tits and you want to make a point of Forgiving And Forgetting)and you can't think of what to say, you just go "So what did you have for lunch?"
It really actually does work, and also it is interesting. I love to find out what people had for lunch.
Another thing that seems like a way to fill a silence but is actually FASCINATING is asking people what their scariest movie is. I asked everyone the other night. My mum said Psycho. Cathy said Silence Of The Lambs. Allan said "Cape Fear. That bit where he hangs on to the bottom of the truck. That's when I thought, Jesus Christ, this guy will stop at NOTHING."
I don't know why that makes me laugh so much.

An experiment that anyone can do is to go into an English supermarket, buy some stuff, and after the cashier is finished beeping your stuff through, ask for a packet.
What will happen is that they will look at you with complete, complete incomprehension. Sometimes they will look angry also, or else a bit frightened, but the thing they will look the most is entirely confused.
"Can I have a packet please?"
"What?"

Like that.
It drove me demented. Mae also. Then you would say, just louder, "Could I have a packet please?" and they would say "I'm sorry, but what did you say?" like you had given them some bad news about their family. And then you mime what a packet looks like (you sort of sketch a circle in the air with a half circle lying on top), and then they say, always, "ohhhhhhhh, you mean a BAG!"
Like all pleased with themselves.
It really does happen every time. Once I asked Dan What The Fuck, and he said "it's because a packet is something different here."
I said, "How different can it possibly be?"
and he said "oooooh, it's just different", and sketched more of a square in the air.
He said "You put your money in a packet"
I said "No you don't you put your money in a wallet I have seen it over and over."
He said "Look, it's just one of those things"

If by one of those things he means "the English tendency to look theatrically bewildered when you don't understand something, in a way that makes the other person feel like they have been actually rude", then yes okay.

Towards the end, I would remember sort of halfway through and say "Can I have a pag, please?"
And they would say "a WHAT?"
and I would just start screaming my head off in the middle of Waitrose.

What I think about when I am at Buxton's

Today I was in the car with my dad, listening to Elton John*,and we drove past this antique shop. I said "They have nice stuff in that shop", and my dad looked at the shop, looked at me, looked scornfully back at the shop and said "I've never gone in there." He said it with such utter conviction that I find it hard to believe he was consciously lying. But in was in fact a total lie. I've been in that shop with him, at least twice, and stood around irritably while he bought a painting. But if me and him were in court, and he said in a Grand Voice, "I have never been into that shop", and I said, "ooooooooooooooooh, yes he has yes he has yes he has he bought a painting and now it is hanging above the piano in the lounge for Christ's sake," the person that the judge would believe would be my dad. Definitely.
Now. Is it because he is a lawyer? Is it because he is a chap? Is it because I am his daughter? I have been thinking about this all day. Because I know that sometimes I will say something with a lot of conviction, like "My worst is to swim" or "my best is to only eat sweets from dawn to dusk", and it will just be total bullshit, but whoever I am talking to will listen, and believe me. And worse, they will remember, and bring it up at some later and humiliating date. Now. Why is this? What does it mean for my Future?
This is what I have been thinking about while walking around Buxton's in a bit of a trance, forgetting to buy half the things on the list.

* Even though I have known this my whole life, it still totally bewilders me that my dad likes Elton John. It's like when I found out that Simon liked Bjork. It made me reevaluate every single thing I knew about him. Sometimes Simon will do or say something a bit sort of different, and when I remember to, I think "this must be the part of him that likes Bjork".