Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Sorry: there is no special relationship

America pays no attention to what we think about anything

issue 29 July 2006

We’ve got enough pollution around here already without Harold coming over with his fly open… peeing all over me. Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1965

The words ‘special’ and ‘relationship’ contain within them an endless multiplicity of meaning, all the more so, paradoxically, when they are deployed in combination. You may describe your relationship with another person as most definitely ‘special’ if you lavish love and affection upon them, and in return they break your glasses and spit on your shoes.

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