From Lucia on Holiday, by Guy Fraser-Sampson:

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[Sandwiches Are Funny, and Egg Sandwiches Are Especially Funny dept.]

Elizabeth, on the other hand, had fallen into the footwell and become hopelessly entangled with a travelling rug, some magazines, a Thermos flask and several egg sandwiches.

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The Contessa di Alto-Brandisci...flowed graciously around the room as though on well-oiled castors.

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[My favorite passage in the book!]

Georgie said "Oh" in a very pursed-up-mouth sort of way, until he caught sight of himself in a faded gilt mirror. Realising that his expression must seem somewhat strange, he experimented with trying to make it look like the natural result of needing to pronounce a particular word, but then found that he could not think of a single one which seemed appropriate. So, he slowly adjusted his mouth back to its normal shape, having spent several seconds pursing and unpursing his lips, looking rather like a pensive goldfish, as Olga unkindly said later.

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Amelia, Contessa di Faraglione, emerged through the French windows and greeted them without any unnecessary show of emotion such as might disturb her eye-glass.

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"The very surroundings inspire an almost tangible feeling in one of enduring beauty, don't they?...."

She drew a deep, quavering breath as though inhaling copious amounts of enduring beauty and testing its perfume.

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He practised crossing his legs for a while in the mirror, and found that if he concentrated really hard he could nonchalantly shoot his cuff at the same time as he straightened the crease on his knee.

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"Why yes, of course, so he is," Georgie concurred. He crossed his legs and shot out his cuffs perfectly at the same time, and was disappointed that nobody appeared to notice.

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"Let's just say I have a contingency plan."

She giggled to herself, and Georgie said, "Oh, aren't you wonderful?" in a very gratifying fashion, so gratifying in fact that, just for a fleeting moment, she almost felt guilty that she didn't actually have a contingency plan at all.

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He sat down but was so agitated that he forgot to check his trouser crease as he crossed his legs.

[There is a least one more instance of Georgie trouser-crease business--and I love the Georgie trouser-crease business--but at this point it's already on the edge of belabored, imho (a shortcoming--or rather, since it's too much rather than too little, a "tallgoing"?--of the book in many other areas as well), so this is the last one I'll reproduce.]

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At this point Major Flint usually said "Now, now" and if he found that did not answer, as generally it did not...then tried "There, there."

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She could hardly say "How you all work me so" again quite so soon, so she contented herself with a sad little shake of the head.

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Fortunately, as she grew angrier she lapsed spontaneously into Swiss-German, a language which Miss Flowers understood hardly at all and which seemed to consist largely of umlauts with a verb at the end every now and then.

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Georgie stopped to cast an expert eye over the docking operations, as befitted a man who owned a yachting cap and had once stayed in a hotel in Folkestone.

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Shouts of welcome quickly greeted Olga from her friends, who seemed mostly to be American, and were introduced to Georgie in a bewildering welter of middle initials.

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