Guests Board the Boat to Hawthorn, Explained：running interference

What's really going on

The boat is the first course, and everyone is already being graded. The guests don't know each other, so they fall back on the only currency they have: taste. One guest wants a companion to "run interference," which tells you the polite mingling is a threat to be managed, not a pleasure. Another guest is mocked as "a big foodie," a label meant to flatter the person while exposing how badly he wants in. And someone sizes up the whole forced ritual with "this is like prom" — the same dressed-up anxiety, the same need to be seen by the right people. Nothing violent happens here; the menace is that these strangers are competing for proximity to a chef they have not met, and that the social performance has already started before the food does.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• Use All aboard in the same situation
• Hear running interference as pressure, not small talk
• Catch who the line is aimed at
• Notice how "All aboard" changes the exchange.
• Listen for the attitude carried by "All aboard".

発音のポイント

• All aboard — liaison
• don t — elision
• poor baby — liaison