Again they sit across from one another, pens and papers shuffling in the silent chasm. Flicking about in that state of mind where you're looking to keep an edge on composure, only to end up balancing a pen aimlessly in the web of your fingers.
"What we have here," starts the man in pinstripes and a shoehorn in his breast pocket, "is Morton's fork. And it's quite the dilemma of culinary proportions."
The table murmurs a scene of importance. Feigned of course. There's only so much levity to break in a room before all that is left is the science of scene and meeting theatre. Papers shift. Pens poise, ready to note down notes not at all noteworthy.
"We have two choices," he continues, "and neither of them, not one of them, would I prefer more than the other. We are, as they say, at the River Tyne."
"Who says that?" asks the gentlemen on the east of the board. A young man, with a fresh cut of hair and a dashing array of buttons. He continues, "Nobody and never have I heard of being at the River Tyne in such circumstance. Crossroads, yes. The river, no." Leaning in and setting up the aside, "It's as if," he pauses and eyes around in self-satisfied confidence, "it's as if you're being paid to slip such a phrase into our conversation. To subvert the flow and parlour games into the flow."
"I assure you, that is not the case. Still we deal in realpolitik. Return we must to the matter at hand." He picks up the fork and opens a cachet of dining utensils. "As the existence of forks has been outlawed in this chapter, we must decide on what to melt the last remaining fork into."
Bird-on of proof metal sits under thee
"Why not a spork?" says one of the rabble.
"A spork is the best of no worlds and the level of all evils."
Written on Friday, 4 June 2010