“Incidentally, when you put inverted commas around a word in this way, as I just did around the word 'sick,' it means that you don't really believe that the word in question is true. In this case, I know that you weren't' really sick that day; you just felt like having a morning off to watch children's television in your pajamas. Hence 'sick,' instead of, well, sick. If you really want to annoy someone, you can make little inverted commas by holding up two fingers of each hand and twitching them gently, as though you're tickling an invisible elf under the armpits. For example, when your mother calls you for dinner, and dinner turns out to be boiled fish and broccoli, you can say to her, 'Well, I'll just eat my 'dinner,' then,' and do the little fingers sign. She'll love it. Seriously, I can hear her laughing already.”