The British best man’s speech starts, "Eeh, I’ll never forget the time our Terry shagged fifteen birds in one night and got the pox."
A difference I’ve seen between Brits and Americans is that Brits feel free to heckle a boring or bad speaker, whereas Americans will applaud politely.
No, no, heckling a bad speaker is kicking someone when they’re down. It’s the boring speeches that get the polite applause. The good heckles are directed at good speakers, who are able to ad lib the necessary put-downs.
I don’t know why either, but I do recall my mother being quite upset that a wedding she attended did not have a fruitcake as a wedding cake. The way she went on, you got the idea that the couple wasn’t really married if they didn’t have a fruitcake. Of course they were, but that’s the weight of tradition for you.
Thankfully, by the time I got married, Mom had been dead for a number of years, and could not complain about my American bride’s wish for a “nice vanilla cake” rather than the traditional Canadian fruitcake. My bride got her preferred cake, but I didn’t really care, since either it or fruitcake would have been fine with me. I actually like fruitcake.
As I said, I like fruitcake, but I have to add that I liked my grandmother’s fruitcake best of all. Store-bought ones just aren’t the same.
Grandma always said that a good fruitcake is never bought; rather, it must be made. And making one takes a lot of time–she would begin to make her Christmas fruitcake in mid-October, for example. No later than then, because if she waited until late October or early November, she didn’t think it would be ready for Christmas Day. But perhaps this is the reason why so many people have such bad thoughts about fruitcake–because they’ve never had the chance to try one that has been properly made and allowed to age.
A good fruitcake, IMHO, isn’t terribly cakey, and only uses cake as a binder for all the other things: fruits, peel, nuts and so on. Indeed, the word “moist” comes to mind. The ingredients give it some moistness, and some comes from an ounce of brandy (according to my grandmother, though I suppose you could use another alcoholic beverage in another amount, if you wished). The aging allows all the flavours and ingredients to mix and marry, and the end result is, IMHO, delicious. Kind of wish Grandma was still alive; I miss her fruitcakes.
Anyway, BiblioCat, I hope that answers your question–it’s not dried-up, and it is certainly better.