CAMBRIDGE SPY RING

- I spy with my little eye something beginning with yod, said the hirsute man with the most well disguised bald spot in Christendom to the attending dons (and donette) gathered around the pub table, specially reserved for their weekly session.

- Yod? came a query from the bespectacled one.

- Yep. Upsilon, the Greek i. The semi-vowel. The yod. Y.

- Y Y Y… er… you.

- The second person pronoun? Pippa checked.

- Mmm. It’s obviously not. I’m just eliminating the obvious.

- No. It’s not you, assured the hirsute one.

- er… yellow, said the bespectacled one.

- Didn’t we proscribe random colour attributives? observed Pippa.

- We outlawed nothing per se. Consensus was: bad faith would be frowned upon, pedanted hirsute.

- Again. Just processing elimination, said Specs.

- Carl Jung? proffered Pippa.

- You thought maybe we’d noticed your copy of Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido when you popped the loo? No. Too devious.

- Youth? said specs.

- A mass noun? I thought we’d…

- That youth behind the bar.

- Technically no youth would be allowed to serve alcohol, noted Phillipa.

- I wasn’t aware mass nouns had been excluded.

- Bad faith?

- Bad faith.

- That’s the problem with existentialist I Spy. I mean almost anything could be an act of bad faith.

- Absolutely, but we argue it out, said Pippa.

- I very much prefer empirical I Spy. Least you know where you are.

- Youngberry.

- Youngberry?

- The fruit juices. They may serve Youngberry. It’s a hybrid of dewberry. A bramble fruit, explained Pippa.

- Nope.

- Er… Y Y Y

- It’s not another bloody chemical element, is it Julian? asked bespectacled.

- There's always the remote possibility.

- Help! cried Specs holding up his hands to the mock Tudor skies in mock agony.

- I doubt there’s any ytterbium or yttrium here, Pippa observed, even in our modern bodies’ lethal cocktail of chemicals. But I cannot be thoroughly certain.

- No. It most definitely is not an atomic metal, said hirsute.

- Yohimbine? speculated Specs.

- No. But please do expand.

- Toxic crystalline from the Yohimbe tree, elucidated Pippa, the resident botanist of the group. An aphrodisiac.

- Long story rather not go into it, said bespectacled.

The flush of his face due to the expansion of the peripheral capillaries did not go undetected by Pippa. Specs had never broached penile dysfunction with the group, even after substantive efforts in the area of men’s work.

- Phillipa, said hirsute with a cough.

There was uncomfortable silence. It was punctuated with a parenthetical huff of tedium by the fourth member of the troupe, a lecturer in English Literature from the former Anglia Polytechnic.

- You’re extremely quiet tonight Pav, said Pippa.

- Been waiting for the trimethylxanthine to kick in to be frank, confessed Pavinder, before yawning and so giving away the answer.

- Yawn! shouted Specs.

- Indeed.

- Thank Shiva for that, said Pavinder. I'll go get the Britney Spears in.