Can you just come down?” A man dismisses a stork bringing a bundle of joy: “No, I ordered the lifetime of doing whatever I want.” A man and a woman on a date laugh, at ease and engaged – while, underneath the table, their duck legs are paddling furiously. In one, Death himself stands on a doorstep, craning down to speak into an intercom: “It ruins the effect if I say who it is. As a regular cartoonist for the New Yorker, McPhail pokes gentle fun at social conventions and the ludicrousness of following them when, in the end, we’re all going to die anyway. McPhail has built a whole career on examining the minutiae of human interactions with fond exasperation and impish humour, the kinds of autopilot-patter we all deploy to smooth our passage through life. And then I said,” he winces: “‘That’d be 10 quid these days!’ These days! Like I know anything about coffee prices through the ages!” “I knew exactly where it was, the whole time,” says McPhail now, from his Edinburgh flat. “Nearly lost it there!” replied McPhail cheerily.
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