The English
Peeled plum tomatoes
To check that the residents of a house are truly English, check the kitchen cupboard. There will be a small sacred space filled with dusty, dented tins of Peeled Plum Tomatoes. It is a form of shrine. They are believed to be provisions for the after-life. This superstition derives from Egypt.
[From My Nightmare in England by Colin Lynes & Kotaro Sarai, 1996]
Wanda, do you have any idea what it's like being English? Being so correct all the time, being so stifled by this dread of doing the wrong thing, of saying to someone "Are you married?" and hearing "My wife left me this morning", or saying "Do you have children?" and being told "They all burned to death on Wednesday." You see, Wanda, we're all terrified of embarrassment. That's why we're so ... dead. Most of my friends are dead, you know. We have these piles of corpses to dinner.
[From A Fish Called Wanda by John Cleese and Charles Crichton, 1988]
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