I quote from my advance copy of "Uncle Harry's Book Of Helpful Hints On How To Avoid Being Labelled As An Uncouth Northerner", to be published by Reet Good Books in 2011.
---------------
When taking breakfast down south, you have no chance of getting a good fried slice with it, but you
will be offered toast. You will probably not recognise it as such, because southern "toast" is a pathetically thin slice of lightly singed cardboard bearing little resemblance to the good thick slice of tasty bread that you are used to back home. If tempted to accept this southern "toast", be aware of the health risk! Southern "toast" is normally cooked in an electric contraption called a "toaster", which ejects the cardboard before it is properly done. This suits southerners very well, because they are too lazy to hold their "toast" over the sink and scrape the black bits off, so your "toast" will not only be cardboard instead of bread, it will not have been cleaned!
Should you decide to take your life in your hands by accepting this "toast", you will then be asked what you would like on it. This seemingly innocuous question is, in fact, a devious southern ploy designed to establish your regional origin!
Do
not say "Kippers'll do nicely"!
Do
not say "I don't need owt on it - just put a good black pudden on the same plate and that'll be fine"!
Worst of all, do
not say "Just a good scrape o' butter for me"!
This may seem a harmless and "safe" reply, and you may think you've fooled people by saying "butter" instead of "dripping", but even butter is regarded with horror in the south - your hostess will not have any. Unable to comply with your request but not wishing to offend, and/or making the assumption that you are merely being a little old-fashioned in your choice of words, she will instead cover your "toast" in a tasteless artificial substance called "Low Fat Spread", a concoction which has never been any nearer to a cow than passing those concrete ones at Milton Keynes on its journey from the factory. Just like the concrete cows, it is made to
look like the real thing but is 100% fake.
These, and other replies involving any normal breakfast food, will instantly give the game away, and you are likely to be the target of such remarks as "Why not go the whole hog and have a lump of coal with it, mate?" from sneering fellow diners.
Note: In the event of this happening due to you failing follow my guidance, so not giving the correct answer, pointing out that our coal, kept in the clean environment of the bath, not in some dirty outside bunker full of woodlice and spiders (which is where southerners usually keep theirs) is a damned sight cleaner than the "toast" they are merrily tucking into, which their hostess has not even attempted to clean, will only make matters worse - just ignore these illogical people, they are not worth arguing with.
The only acceptable answer to the question "What would you like on your toast?", when asked at breakfast, is "Marmalade". That's pronounced "Mah-m'-laid" - practice it before travelling south, so that it sounds as if it's your normal reply. This ridiculous southern product is rather like jam, there is a fruit content of sorts - but it is made from the bits which we throw away, or use on posh cakes just for a bit of decoration, or feed to the hens or pigs,
orange peel being the favourite ingredient. Lemon is also quite popular, and you may even encounter lime - but in both cases it will, like the orange variety, be the worthless
peel which you are getting, not the fruit!
Important !
Be aware that marmalade is
only eaten at breakfast, and should not be asked for at any other time of day! If offered "toast" at any other time of day, either politely decline or, if you find the idea of trying to spread dyed wallpaper paste on cardboard amusing, ask for "Strawberry Jam" with it, and try not to look too horrified at the southerner's notion of what jam consists of when it is presented to you.
"Why", you may ask, "is marmalade the only correct thing to ask for at breakfast, but only at breakfast, and why is strawberry jam, perfectly acceptable at other times of the day, treated as totally unacceptable at breakfast?"
Just for once, we have here a southern tradition with some logic.
The southerner is a slow-witted creature, incapable of thinking properly in what he calls "the morning". When, at a shockingly late hour when decent working folk have already finished their morning shift, he finally gets around to taking breakfast, he is still bleary-eyed and half-asleep.
Marmalade may
look something like jam - but it doesn't
taste like jam! It is not sweet and soothing on the tongue, it is
sharp, with a bit of "bite" to it. It is, therefore, the ideal thing for waking a southerner up enough for him to wander off to his "workplace" and push a few sheets of paper around before nodding off again over his desk. Because of this awakening property, it has become the obligatory response at the southern breakfast when asked what you would like on your toast, whereas asking for strawberry jam would imply that you had no need to wake up, suggesting that you were unemployed, and causing fellow diners to look down their noses at you.
One dose of marmalade is enough for the southerner, though! Feed it to him again at a later time, and the shock of being woken up
twice in one day would be likely to leave you having to explain your motives to an ambulance driver, and probably to the police too, as no southerner would knowingly take a second dose, so it would be obvious that you had slipped it into something without him being aware of it.
We are made of sterner stuff, of course, a second dose would do no harm, but by
asking for marmalade at any time other than breakfast you would give the game away, revealing yourself as a northerner straight away.