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I have a terrible, humiliating and very specific speech impediment. I find it painfully impossible to pronounce the term 'English Literature' in mixed company. I can say 'Russian Literature'. I can say 'English cricket team'. Hell, I can say 'Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevskij' without blinking, but I honestly cannot say 'English Literature' without dislocating my mandible. It has haunted me since I was sixteen when, in a profoundly influential life event, I was psychologically traumatised by a bowl of scone dough.

There is an explanation for this, but to make it requires that we briefly revisit a party I attended a couple of weeks ago.

It was the birthday party of someone whom I know only slightly, and her friends not at all, so I found myself shuffled into that most desperate of all party graveyards, the sad ring of door-watchers in the corner who don't know anyone else.

(For those who have never experienced it, the Ring is the worst possible circumstance to find oneself in at a party: everyone in it, regardless of their normal level of gregariousness and eloquence, is turned pale and struck dumb by the shared shame of not having any friends here, and the terrible awareness that everyone else in the Ring knows it. Since no one can speak, and there is nothing to listen to, everyone quickly ends up drunk, the Ring's only mercy. More terrible than any Japanese horror film, beware the Ring.)

I stumbled into my place and swapped names with my fellow victims. We all checked our watches and glanced furtively at the door, intending to broadcast an unspoken message that a dozen friends may arrive at any moment but actually signalling our barely sublimated urge to flee. In desperation, someone started a round of 'So, what do you do?'s, and as the talking stick travelled around the Ring it occurred to me that I was about to have my first opportunity to say to a group of strangers, "Actually, I'm a writer". Obviously, "Actually, I'm unemployed" would have been just as accurate, but I felt it lacked a certain zing and elected to go with my first instinct.

I got a pleasing number of raised eyebrows. "Oooh," said the woman next to me, "a writer. Lovely."

We checked our watches. The door was clear.

"So," she said, draining her second glass of red, "you must have done a lot of courses in writing, then."

"Well actually, no."

"Oh?"

"Not as such."

"Oh."

The door was still clear. It was still eight thirty-seven.

"I'm sort of self-taught, I suppose you could say."

We turned towards each other, sensing a possible escape from the clutches of the Ring. My companion re-filled her glass, then didn't put down the bottle. "So you haven't done one of those degrees, you know, where you study great writing..."

Oh no. I could feel it coming. I tensed up.

"You know, what are they called, you read poetry and analyse great, thingy..."

I began to sweat. If I didn't help this woman out, she'll think I've snubbed her, and I'll be cast back into the Ring.

"You mean..." I licked my lips, "...Englischschlichacha?"

There was a brief pause.

"Sorry," I said, "I meant, ahem, Engischittchacha." A tiny, perfectly formed spit bubble floated through the air between us and gently alighted on the surface of her drink.

"Englyishischlature?" I tried desperately.

My fellow escapee bit her lip, gave me an encouraging little smile then turned, almost imperceptibly, back to the others. Worse than the Ring, banishment from the Ring. I checked my watch.

...to be continued in Englischschlichacha (part two)