Dressing for the Dinner Buffet

The pasty-faced lanky-haired English girls (30-50 years old) who squawked and generally oxforded utter nonsense all afternoon at poolside ...

• "Oh do say, my word, but my hair takes at least fifteen minutes to dry on a hot dry day in summer."
• "My Frederick taught me an undercut method that lets your hair look longer than it is so you can dry it faster all year round."
• "I think she said that he said her sister had wanted me to tell her, but I didn't."
• "Whatever for?"
• "There's a special attachment for that."
• "I think it's fine he's getting his own place for his own space as I after all need my own space as well."
• "Whose children are they then?"
• "Those boats are surely quite dreary."

... came dressed for dinner in gowns designed for vaudeville shows only, carrying silly useless purses, like the QE2 herself, always dangling in the way and tangling in the tongs of the buffet from which you fetch your meal yourself here. They had mistaken this for the captain's table on the decommissioned QE2 one supposes.

Equally as over perfumed as dressed, they appeared a bit uncomfortable as the mockery, inevitable if subtle, of the at least 4 gay couples seated in the dining room at the same time performed their stilted tableware posturing better than they could, with unsubtly raised pinky fingers. But then, we all could savor the succulent dishes, while they certainly found everything rather tasted like the airport-duty-free-shop scents with which they had doused themselves.

Yet all their hair was dry and incredibly flat, more Englishly straight than ever, and at the desert buffet, they popped one pastry directly from the trays into their accented mouths for each piece of pie they piled on their plates.

• "What's that?"
• "I'd stick to the ice cream and pastries if I were you."
• "Could it be flan?"
• "Isn't that a gasket for automobiles?"
• "Moose?"
• "Someone told me Miriam said the Europeans call it thusly."
• "With her and I not looking, Saundra would open her purse."

They amply confirmed today what the delightful pair of Scottish ladies said about people with Oxford accents yesterday afternoon on the terrace. "You can never be sure if it's not simply affectation, because it very often is." The Scots dressed sensibly for dinner and had no purses about to strangle them and passers-by, enjoyed a red wine on the terrace afterwards.

I recall an episode of "Absolutely Fabulous" in which Patsy's sister visiting from France said, "I thought all Englishmen are gay." After seeing these manifestations of English femininity at poolside and buffet bashing today, I finally understand why she could think so.

Then again, someone has to provide models for drag queens to imitate in travesty shows around the globe, and since these dithering twittering English women are surely one of the reasons for the loss of British Empire, they can at least serve to spread British taste among transvestites.

Just the observations of a day of vacation in Mallorca, poolside in the sun and overfed for dinner. Burp!