The aspidistra appears to have been a symbol of (lower-)middle-class English respectability. George Orwell wrote a depressing novel (in 1936 -- a depressing year) called _Keep the Aspidistra Flying_, about a poet who sells out to become an advertising copywriter, but that's O.K., because now he can afford to get his wife pregnant. I summarized its plot in the following song, to be sung like an American football song:

Keep the aspidistra flying!

Fight fight middle class!

Rob your brother! Sell your sister!

Up up up your aspidistra!

You can make a life of lying --

You'll be glad you did!

Aspidistra! How we've missed yer!

Time to have a kid!

--- Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||: The things you think when you're not thinking! :||