Further to my last

[desperance]

Something else to be celebrated: the opportunity they offer, the uncritical audience they are for my undoubted wit. As f'rinstance, I am cracking open a bottle of wine; I can cry "I have paid my debt to sobriety!" and they neither groan nor throw things.

Or, indeed, cracking open their own supper, which comes in packets labelled in the French language: "Well, and would you like turkey for tea? Frankly, my dears, it's dinde if you do and dinde if you don't..."