How to say "No"

I was talking to someone from  the Netherlands yesterday, about learning languages.  Without getting into the discussion on whether or not the English language has the largest  number of words (common words? what is a word? whose count?), my friend said he loved the diversity of English as a language, its nuances, its shades of meaning.

He had already lived for a year in London (and a fluent English speaker) when his company insisted that he attended English lessons, three days a week, two hours per lesson.  The first two weeks were concerned solely with how to say no, and how to interpret variations on saying no.  He explained to me that in Dutch, if they want to say "no", they say "nee", but you can't depend on an English speaker to do that:

Would you like a drink?

I wouldn't.
Not at the moment.
Perhaps later.
A nice idea but....
I'd rather not.
Thank you, but....

Are you coming to the xxx ?

Possibly.
I have a lot on at the moment.
I'll have to see if I can fit it in.
Could you ask me closer to the time?
It clashes with....
It certainly sounds interesting...
I'd love to but....

And so on.  the idea fascinates me.  How many ways are there to say no?

Lie back and think of England - part 2

Most of this was found on yaelf.com (young adult English as a foreign language?) and the rest on Wikipedia

1. From Dictionary of Catchphrases (1995) by Nigel Rees:

Close your eyes and think of England: Traditional advice given to women when confronted with the inevitability of sexual intercourse, or jocular encouragement to either sex about doing anything unpalatable.

The source given for this phrase -- Lady Hillingdon's (or Hillingham's) Journal (1912) is suspect and has not been verified:

I am happy now that George calls on my bedchamber less frequently than of old. As it is, I now endure but two calls a week, and when I hear his steps outside my door I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, open my legs and think of England.

However, the journal has never been found and there is therefore no verification of her authorship (and, in addition, the 2nd Baron Hillingdon was called Charles!).

2. Salome Dear, Not With a Porcupine (ed. Arthur Marshall, 1982) has it instead that the newly-wed Mrs Stanley Baldwyn was supposed to have declared subsequently:

I shut my eyes tight and thought of the Empire.

3. In 1977, there was play by John Chapman and Anthony Marriott at the Apollo Theatre, London, with the title "Shut Your Eyes and Think of England".

Sometimes the phrase occurs in the form "lie back and think of England" but this probably comes from confusion with "she should lie back and enjoy it".

4. Adrian Room, in Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable_(2000), writes:

Alice, Lady Hillingdon (1857-1940) married the 2nd Baron Hillingdon in 1886, but the whereabouts or even existence of her Journal is unknown.


5. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Fifth Edition (1999) gives in the "Sayings and slogans" section:

Close your eyes and think of England: said to derive from a 1912 entry in the journal of Lady Hillingdon (1857-1940), but the journal has never been traced.