It's pretty good dressing, to be fair, but you do wish you had a bit of salad to go with it, and one or two more courses. Alas, you've been a mite strapped for cash lately and it's been a tricky thing keeping the old wolf from the old door. This is why it's so important for you, the Hon. Ampersand Fodge, to be on extra-top, supra-gentlemanly form when dear old Aunt Cedilla - dear old un-inherited Aunt Cedilla - arrives, wretched poodle Gladstone in tow; and why it's so thick that all you've got to wine and/or dine the old plague with is a bottle of balsamic vinaigrette. Perhaps you'd better not ask her to stay for supper after all.

There is a knock at your front door. You absent-mindedly down the vinaigrette, and wipe your mouth on your cuff.