101 YEARS OLD AND STILL AS MEATY AS A PRINCESS...

AYOUNG lady rang me this morning, or yesterday morning as you probably like to think of it as you won’t be reading this until the day I call “tomorrow”, and told me that her name was Chloë. I asked whether she put two dots over the e and when she confirmed that that was indeed the case, I encouraged her to proceed.

“I’m phoning about a restaurant also called Chloë,” she said, in fact, they are called “by CHLOË” and they are Meghan Markle’s favourite fast-casual restaurant.

“Do they also put two dots over the E?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “They omit the umlaut, possibly because they spell the name in capital letters.”

“Wait a moment,” I said, as I crossed out all the dots I had placed over the final letters of Chloë and CHLOË in her previous utterance. When I had done so, I pointed out that the dots that were not there were not a German umlaut anyway, they are a British diaeresis.

“How can you tell whether it’s an umlaut or a diaeresis if it’s not there?” she asked. “Anyway, by CHLOE is neither German nor British but are an American chain that has now opened in London’s Covent Garden.” “That’s no excuse,” I said. “Furthermore,” she added, “they have just created a Royal Poutine in honour of Meghan Markle and the forthcoming wedding.” “A royal what?” I asked. “Poutine,” she said. “It’s a Canadian delicacy of French fries and curds topped with gravy which Ms Markle loves and by CHLOE has created a vegan version for her ‘week-day vegan diet’ and you can have it brought to your door by Deliveroo.”

“This gets more and more worrying,” I said. “Do you think that they might have dropped the dots over the E because they thought they were animal-based, or possibly they were held in place above the letter by gelatin? Did you know, incidentally, that there is a new baby okapi at London Zoo called Meghan Markle?”

“Okapis are vegan,” Chloë with a diaeresis said. “In fact, they are folivores and only eat mature leaves, even avoiding any leaves that have algae growing on them.”

“Fusspots,” I said. “So even Meghan Markle the okapi would decline an offer of a Poutine because it’s not made of leaves.”

“Probably correct,” she said. “But it is made of signature Air Baked Fries and Spicy Seitan Chorizo topped with Cashew Mozzarella, gravy and housemade Chipotle Aioli, which we are sure would appeal to the nearly-princess of the same name. Would you like to try it? We can have Deliveroo deliver it.”

“Madam,” I said, “despite my admiration of your diaeresis, I can assure you that if any dotless Chloe, Zoe or Noel comes to my door and starts stuffing vegan food through my letter box, I shall add slow-cooked, well-marinated beef to it and sprinkle the deliverers with dots from my patent-applied-for diaeresis sprinkler (available only from Beachcomber enterprises).” And we left it at that.