Entry 12:

Dear Sarah,

I was as surprised as you were when I discovered that the British had invented ketchup. I read it in that important work The Man Who Ate Everything, by Jeffrey Steingarten, the learned food writer of Vogue. Actually, I shouldn't have said that the British invented ketchup. Nations don't invent things. People do. But Steingarten tried out all the recipes he could find for making ketchup at home and compared them with all the commercial brands and concluded, of course, that the best ketchup in the world is manufactured by Heinz. But he also found that the nearest thing to it is produced by following a recipe written by an Englishwoman in the 1820s, or somewhere around that time. I don't think the Americans stole it. I think it just didn't catch on in Britain at the time, and only the Americans were clever enough to understand how good it was. By the time we realized that the Americans were right, it was too late for us to ketch up, as Britons with posh accents say.

Modern studies have shown that ketchup is also one of the healthiest things you can eat, which has never been said of salad cream. Salad cream is, as you say, perfectly disgusting, as well as unhealthy. It is so disgusting, in fact, that even the British have lost their appetite for it, and Heinz--for, yes, it is also Heinz that makes salad cream--recently announced, to great rejoicing in Afghanistan, that it is going to stop manufacturing it. There is some sadness about this in old-fashioned households like ours, where World War II is remembered with nostalgia and Spam is still greatly missed. But Britain really couldn't carry on eating it and consider itself "cool" at the same time. I don't think Tony Blair would have permitted it in any case. You had better stock up quickly.

Oh dear, I wish I wasn't so tired. It is all that smoking and drinking I have to do. It is also rather late. Let readers not be fooled into thinking it is still breakfast time over here. Breakfast was over long ago even in Seattle. Here in London people are pouring out of the theaters and going to nightclubs (or so I imagine, never going to the theater or visiting nightclubs myself). What an exciting city this must be! I think you said that tomorrow morning you may write to me early because you are going to visit the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, the greatest waste of money--at around 1.5 billion dollars--that Britain has ever seen. I think I know without having been there that it has all the charm and entertainment value of an industrial fair in Frankfurt. But I hope you will tell me I am wrong. Can't wait to hear from you tomorrow.

Alexander xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx