If you don’t have a job, what you can do is head to the Covent Garden Odeon at eleven forty-five in the morning for the cheap shows, four pounds fifty for Jake Gyllenhaal and the wide, low skies of Wyoming, USA.

“D’you want to go watch ‘Brokeback Mountain’?” Henny’d said, and I’d said, “Which?” and she’d said “With Jake—” and I’d said, “Gyllenhaal? The gay cowboy movie?” and she’d said, “I hear you’re not supposed to call it the gay cowboy movie,” which is how we ended up at the gay cowboy movie yesterday morning, Nai sending us a text that said: “How come you all watching movie in the middle of the freaking day? SO ENG AH???”

(“Brokeback Mountain”, run, do not walk, it is beautiful and good, even though within the first twenty minutes I had to lean over to Hens and whisper: “Are they speaking English?” for it turned out it is not just a gay cowboy movie but a mumbly gay cowboy movie. These boys, they slouch about like cowboys and mumble like the best of them. It’s like Cletus learn’d ’em how to speak or somethin’. When Heath Ledger ups the stakes by popping a cigarette in his pouty little mouth, it’s pointless to even try to understand what he’s going on about. Just lean back and enjoy the view.)

Being eng means being free as the birds, with the day to ourselves, with ramen soup lunches at Taro till the nice Japanese boys come to shut us down, with coffee and toasted-coconut macaroons at Foyles while we read Chinese horoscopes over the free wireless connection. “Canela? For mint tea?” we said, then, and we thought Yes, but then on the way I stopped in at Neal’s Yard Dairy for a loaf of bread, and then we were undone. Because clearly we could just as easily make mint tea at home, and if we went home we could have raisin toast, too, and cheese, and a smoked trout salad, and brownies for after. May I just say, though, in our defence, that we didn’t come completely undone, we merely unravelled a little. The cheeseman kept slicing us samples—the cheese that would go with the bread, the cheese that would go with a sweet white wine, the cheese that tasted like strawberry ice cream (it really did!), the cheese that tasted like pineapples (canned ones, in syrup)—and it was a minor miracle we only came away with a Childwickbury, light and fresh like a day of being eng.

Nai came over to be eng with us, later, and I think he tries, dear heart, to keep up, but he had to resort, I believe, more than once, as we collapsed into hearty laughter, as we beat upon the table with our fists, to asking if we’d been drinking. No, darlin’, it was just the day of being eng.

Some time in the night, I was drawing a stick figure of Audrey Tautou being the lame girl in “A Very Long Engagement” to answer a question about the movie, and Nai said “pai kah,” which of course reduced us to tears. By then John had arrived, and John is a nice Englishman, so he just watched, uncomprehendingly. “It just means ‘lame’,” we explained, “but it’s funny because it’s in Hokkien.”

“Hokkien funny meh?” I think Nai said, or at least that was the sentiment he expressed.

“Funny what,” I said. “It is so chor-lor sounding.” “But eh hallo,” I said, “not say I don’t like Hokkien—it is good for squatting. I like to squat and speak Hokkien, dunno meh?”

His hand went to his forehead, then, and he said: “Edward Said is rolling over in his grave right now.”