Hospitality

I went to see George in hospital, where he'd just had a replacement knee fitted. George is a stout elderly fellow with a bluff manner who has never been in the Army but has a sort of military bearing about him (even more so when his knee works). I found him lying on a bed in a somewhat bleak ward where he'd just been moved.

'I'm afraid all I can offer you is lemon squash', said George. So generous are his instincts that even in a space in which, strictly speaking, hospitality was not his to provide, he still felt constrained to offer it, and also implicitly to apologise that there was no sherry.