Sunday dinner.

Daughter: Well now, Mother, what was the most exciting thing you did today?

Mother: Um.

D: Anything to be grateful for? Did you do anything? At all. Come now, don’t be shy.

M: I practiced a bar in the Bach Musette I’m learning.

D: Very good. Anyone else want to share anything with the group?

Guest*: I haven’t done anything.

[*Long term guest. Obviously. Not a Sunday dinner guest.]

G: Though I did speak to my mother.

D: Thank you. Pater? How about you?

F: Mmm?

D: Would you like to share another of your shopping anecdotes?

Son: Oh no, please. I can’t bear the excitement.

M: Ooh, I have a shopping story! I went out to buy a cabbage.

D: It’s not your turn any more, is it?

M: But it involves a fire engine!

D: If it involved the Apocalypse, it wouldn’t compete with any of Father’s retail tales. Remember what he told us last week about the comparison of the price of potatoes in Lidl compared with Aldi?

F: Baking potatoes.

S: That was nothing to the peanuts-in-the-queue-at-Sainsbury’s story.

Tutti: Oh please, tell us the nut one again! Please.

D: What was it the woman at the checkout said?

Tutti [forte, on cue]: “My, someone likes his nuts!”

[Mass appreciation.]

D: Do you have another shopping story to share with us today?

Father: I have, actually.

[Universal gasp of suspense.}

M: Settle down in your seats everyone.

D: I shouldn’t. You’ll be on the edge of it in a minute.

F: I was browsing commentaries. And came across one. Of the Song of Songs.

M: This is going to be nail-biting.

F: Not by an academic. Just an ordinary pastor of a church in America. And he had simply done some reading, of about forty commentaries, and then written the book himself. It looks rather good. I bought it. For a tenner. Instead of twenty-five pounds.

D: Wait a minute. How did you do this?

M: Online, duh.

D: Ah.

F: And it has footnotes!

Tutti, unison: Oh my goodness. Not footnotes!

D: I do love a good footnote.

F: So do I. And this has lots of them.

D: Though they’re a pain to write. When I did the research for my EPQ, I didn’t bother to take any notes.

S: Why?

D: Because I’m lazy. So when it came to submitting the project I had to make most of them up.

F: That’s what Bink did with her degree.

D: Well I got an A so it obviously didn’t matter.

M: [Pompously.] You might have got an A star.

D: [Stares at her as if mad.]

F: Anyway, you know how, on Amazon, you can look inside a book? This showed the first three chapters, and all the footnotes. So I read them all.

D: That’s a bit dumb. Why would you buy the whole book if they’ve let you read all the best bits already?

M: My first book had some jolly good footnotes. Some of them were very funny.

Tutti: [No reaction whatsoever.]

F: Well, having read the footnotes, I thought I might as well read all the bits in between.

M: I said, my first book…

S: Were these footnotes at the end of the book, or the bottom of the page?

F: At the back, with the index.

D: Oh, those are the best! Because some people can’t be bothered with footnotes, you know.

M: Which is why you should put them at the bottom. It’s a lot more trouble to turn to the end.

D: Yes, but who cares about those kind of people?

F: [Gets up from the table.]

M: Oh, he’s going to read us some of it. This is going to be so thrilling…

F: No. I’m just closing the shutters.

Tutti: [Shattered disappointment. Group sigh. Long silence.]

[Another long silence.]

Daughter: Has it really come to this?

[More silence.]

Mother: Wait a minute. You went to church this morning.

Father: I did.

Mother: Real church.

Father: Yes.

Mother: Out of the house.

Father: Yup.

Mother: With real people.

Father: Indeed.

[General awe at such momentous news.]