The lady in the post office was very patient with him.
He stood looking around for an example of what he wanted, but couldn’t find one. This was annoying. After all, he was in a post office. The word hadn’t gone, of course, it had just been temporarily mislaid. Eventually he swallowed his pride and stood pretending to lick a stamp and put it on a letter. This was despite the fact that you didn’t actually lick them anymore.
“Ah!” she said, with a grin, “you want a stamp.”
“That’s it, yes, stamp! Thank you.”
How could he forget the word stamp? He went on into the shopping centre. He wasn’t looking forward to it.
It all went well until he was trying to ask the guy in the fruit shop if he had any pomegranates. He couldn’t see any on display, so he tried to get the message across by pointing at other fruit and wriggling his hand, palm down, to indicate that he wanted something similar. The shop keeper was less patient than the lady in the post office, but was reluctantly willing to rattle off as many fruits as he could think off that weren’t on show. This, of course, was not a good advertising strategy from his point of view.
A small crowd was gathering, interested to hear that the fruiterer could not provide any of the fruits being mentioned. Occasionally, one of the women would offer a suggestion. This went on until an elderly lady said, “Pomegranate?”
With a smile of relief, he said, “Yes. Thank you, madam.” There was a small ripple of applause while the shop owner shook his head and scurried to the back of the store.
At home, he relayed all this to his wife, who commiserated with him and made him a nice cup of tea.
That evening they sat watching the evening news. One of the topics, one that he felt particularly strongly about, dealt with the recognition of a local church.
Well now, he thought, this was an obvious case of a very strong opposition to the state withdrawing its support from what is, clearly, an established church.
He thought about it.
It was a clear case of antidisestablishmentarianism, and he wanted to say so.