A secret mason's handshake

I had not realised until the other evening how the men in pink use their special dialect to identify one another. I met "Tarquin" (not his real name) at a friend's barbecue and when I first started talking to him his accent was quite unremarkable, and much like mine really. Over the course of the evening as he relaxed, chatted, drank plenty of wine and smoked a few herbal cigarettes, his speech changed until he had become quite a creditable Julian Clary voice double.

Phoning for a taxi later in the evening, he remarked on the switchboard operator's camp voice.

This spoken badge of honour can be hammed up or played down, as the occasion demands. I just wondered why he had chosen to suppress it at the beginning of the evening, and then wheel it on later. Something for the amateur psychologists to consider perhaps.