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Polly is glaring at Monica because of what she's just said and Rex is watching them both with an amused look on his face, waiting to see whether Polly is going to go off one one like she does when Monica makes some crass generalisation about the state of the country, which Rex enjoys because it gives him a chance to use the kind of inane or inflammatory language that he knows will wind them both up but they'll be too caught up in trying to prove the other one wrong to direct their ire towards him, while Lil Jim sits back on the bench with his arms stretched out either side of him in a relaxed pose with a calm and benign look on his face that he likes to put on whenever tensions flare like this because he feels that radiating peace will somehow have an affect in dissipating the tension, which it never does, but now Monica is starting to realise that maybe it's too soon to be starting an argument, at least before she's got the ammunition she needs in order to end it decisively, so she offers to get a round in and takes the orders of each person at the table – Polly has a glass of wine, Rex has a vodka and coke, Lil Jim has an ale and Monica plans on getting herself a gin and tonic because what she really wants is a cocktail but she knows that this, their local, isn't exactly the kind of place that serves cocktails – in the hope that this will distract from the anger that Polly is directing at her, and give her a chance to check her facts on her iPhone and come back with some referenced material with which to quash Polly and make her see sense instead of clinging on to her ridiculously idealistic beliefs (it's a flawed hope, she knows, because she's been trying it for years)

…

and while Monica is at the bar, Rex turns to Lil Jim and starts explaining to Lil Jim why he [Lil Jim] is still single and that the main cause is his inability to be close or intimate with anyone because of his own moralistic hang ups and that the sooner he drops these and finally accepts that getting laid is the right course of action for leading a balanced psychological life in this day and age the sooner he'll stop being so fucking awkward every time they go out and meet new people and Rex goes on to explain what he means via a story about the last time Rex was out on the pull (last night) and how there are certain techniques which make getting a girl to sleep with you an almost certainty, only he uses particularly crass language and goes into full lurid details about what he and the girl did when they got back to his and throughout Lil Jim is trying to maintain his nonchalant expression and body language but Polly can see that Rex is getting to Lil Jim and she wonders whether she ought to intervene but she finds that she can't because deep down she agrees with Rex, although not his methods, and has always considered it a great waste that someone as lovely as Lil Jim has never had a romantic relationship with anyone because of his innate fears and for a long time she wondered whether he was deeply repressed or something and still hasn't found an answer to that question but finally Rex goes too far in his graphic descriptions and both Polly and Lil Jim signal this to Rex who just laughs his amused giveashit laugh and tells them both to lighten up

…

at which point Monica returns with the drinks and they all clink glasses for the 5th time and prepare for the next round of argument which begins almost instantly with Polly telling Monica that she's baffled at her confidence in having an opinion about the state of the nation when she has no real interaction with it as she spends all her time consuming and buying in the flawed hope of somehow filling the empty gap in her soul that her parents left there through neglect and Monica tells Polly not to get so fucking pretentious just because she [Polly] thinks she's somehow making a difference with all her action and opinions because she wouldn't be so free to do so if it weren't for people like her [Monica] making those opportunities available and she quotes some piece of text that she's just read on the internet that she thinks will prove her point, and Polly replies with a quote that she too read in an article that was a response to the one Monica had read and they both realise that they're in a deadlock because they've run out of original thoughts and so Lil Jim chips in with a trite bit of philosophy, as he likes to do, and no one has the energy or desire to tell him to fuck off, and so it's left to Rex to make some inappropriate joke so that they can move on and just get drunk together.