Me, myself, I

If you simply type something like 'quiz questions' into your favoured search engine, you'll inevitably be met with an avalanche of stuff aimed at bored teenagers or self-obsessed adults who never quite stopped being bored teenagers. You'll be regaled with questions such as 'Which Friends character are you?', 'How do you know if your partner likes your best friend?' and 'How do you know if your best friend likes your partner?'

Sometimes I'll get distracted by these things and, instead of identifying Uruguay's second biggest city will discover that I'm Chandler (from Friends) or that Rachel Green likes my best friend's partner or something. As a rule, it's all fairly innocuous, run-of-the-mill stuff but this week I stumbled on one of these websites which managed to reach a new nadir of the genre.

The very first question it posed in comic sans font (always a worry) was 'Which dessert are you?' I read it twice, hoping that it actually said 'desert' and I could take dignified refuge in the majestic sweep of the Sahara. It didn't.

There was then a series of ten further questions which, presumably, would have led to me being enlightened as to whether I was an apple crumble, a Bakewell tart or, indeed, a spotted dick. I somehow resisted the temptation to partake of the survey and returned to the plot of A Picture Of Dorian Grey in order to research a fiendish question about the portrait in the attic.

However this minor diversion did leave me wondering how far we can take our unbridled self-love before we all implode in a plume of narcissist-scented smoke. Only the other day, I passed a premises on the high street which offered passers-by the chance to look in detail at their own irises via a special piece of kit they had in there. Crumbs, tourists' conversations must be quite different from how I remember them.

"What shall we do today, love? Fancy visiting the cathedral or the Picasso museum?"

"Actually, I thought we could grab a quick pizza and then spend the afternoon gazing intently at our own eyeballs."

Anyway, let's hope it's all just a passing phase and that future generations will come to laugh heartily at our folly which, come to think of it, sounds just like something Chandler might say in the circumstances.

*Charles II, **Vera.

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