What you might have heard if you'd been walking past the office this afternoon

Pigs&Bees (eating a packet of Swizzels Matlow Fizzers):
Call me pedantic but it says on this wrapper, no artificial colours. Surely that should be 'no artificial colouring agents' or 'no artifical colourants'.

Scoth Eggs:
Yes.

Pigs&Bees:
Yes, it should be 'no artificial colouring agents'?

Scotch Eggs:
No, yes it's pedantic. But I see what you mean. Colours are naturally occurring. Perhaps it should be 'no artificial pigments'?

Pigs&Bees:
Colours aren't naturally occurring though when you think abut it. They're abstract constructs. You know, a way to label something intangible. They're the label we attach to the perception that arises from our senses and, if you subscribe to a constructivist theory of perception, its integration with stored knowledge. So all colours are artificial in that we construct them.

Scotch Eggs:
But if artificial colours exist that would imply a naturally occurring variant of the same thing. So the packet might be correct.

Pigs&Bees:
Yes.

It's raining again.

Scoth Eggs:
It'll do the lettuces good.