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Thus, if you liked a girl, you gave her a nickname. Elmore Weldon, for instance: a pretty, sturdy thing with whom he flirted furiously for weeks. He called her Elmo, after St. Elmo's Fire, that miraculous light seen about the masts and yardarms of ships during a storm. He liked to picture himself as a mariner in peril on the seas of life, while she illuminated the dark skies for him. Indeed, he almost became engaged to Elmo; but then, after a while, he didn't.

He was also much concerned at this time about nocturnal emissions, which had featured little in the Morte d'Arthur.

Julian Barnes, Arthur and George