Trying to remember a story

July 29, 2011 10:38 AM

I am trying to remember a short story I read in a fiction collection over 10 years ago. The author may have been British. It was written in a Kingsley Amis-like voice and featured a guest who offends his hosts by peeing in a vase. This is my only memory of the story, and it is hazy enough that the details may be quite off. Any help recovering this (hopefully not false) literary memory would be most appreciated.
posted by Morpeth to Media & Arts (2 answers total)

Are you sure it wasn't an episode of Black Books? I seem to recall an episode where Bernard is wondering why some friends are pissed at him and it turns out he'd relieved himself somewhere inappropriate while he was drunk. Not sure it was a vase, though.
posted by bricoleur at 5:37 PM on July 29, 2011

Damn, I know that story.

Could it be a scene from Waugh someplace? Or possibly Saki? Though it seems a little course for him.

Well, this is going to keep me up tonight

(The trope itself turns up here and there. There was a Simpsons episode, and in In Tearing Haste there is discussion of Evelyn Waugh (again) mentioning a used pot de chambre at some manor house or such he's staying at. They do like their toilet humor, the British.)
posted by IndigoJones at 7:02 PM on July 29, 2011