Making an Omelette

Tags

cojones, Nick Clegg, omelette

(Rt Hon Nick Clegg: Wikimedia from Flickr;

Foreign and Commonwealth Office: 2010 United Nations Summit, London)

 

Nick Clegg,

you can’t make an omelette without breaking an egg.

Never mind Theresa and all her cronies.

As your wife said: show your cojones.

 

What’s in a Name?

Tags

cojones, Equal Opportunities, flamenco, horse leech's daughter, impersonal pronoun, Inklings, Nick Clegg, Pele Tower, Probate Registry, Proverbs 30, Rubicon, Spanish dictionary, St Trinians, The Ministry of Justice, tick box

Drusilla studied the Job Description, with its list of Key Responsibilities.  It had

twenty bullet points outlining duties and skills.  The person specification was

superhuman and its requirement of good time management skills was an

essential, but no single human being could have fulfilled its roles.  This was a

vampire-like predatory beast of a post which would be like the horse leech’s

daughter in Proverbs chapter 30-ie/ perpetually crying, Give, give!  It lent a

whole new blood-sucking dimension to the concept of the tick box.  It was

enough to give you the symptoms of Lyme Disease.

She had heard on the radio that women were inclined to lack confidence

about applying for jobs if they judged that they only possessed about 95% of

the desired skills.  Men, on the other hand, ignored all the hype and, even if

they only had 65% of the skill set, they would apply anyway.  So much for

Equal Opportunities and Investment in People!

Dru thought, Cojones!  She was grateful to Nick Clegg’s spouse for giving her a

useful expletive which had an educated ring about it.  She could imagine the

sultry spouse dispensing it with Latin fervour when Nick came back late, or

hadn’t remembered to take out the rubbish.  It had the harsh initial consonant

that would complement a castanet flick and a stamp of Flamenco heel on a

kitchen floor.

Dru had crossed her Rubicon now and was only slightly perturbed as she had

wondered about changing her surname.  Granted, she had dispensed with the

hyphenated addendum of ‘Syylk‘ and was happy to bear her mother’s surname:

‘Fotheringay’.  But should she be a ‘Snodbury’?  No, should she be a ‘Revelly’?

A laboratory accredited by The Ministry of Justice might provide a parentage

test.

She could have launched a court action to claim an interest in the Wyvern

Estate, but what was the point in filing a caveat in the Probate Registry?  No,

she would have to discuss it with her step-father, Murgatroyd Syylk.  He

needed to know that he was not her biological father.  Heavens to

Murgatroyd!  He might want a DNA test too.

Miss Fotheringay sounded as though the bearer had some gravitas and would

look good on the school prospectus.  Miss Revelly sounded a little flippant,

perhaps a shade decadent.  She would not want any connotations of St

Trinian’s high jinks.

The interview was in two weeks.  After that she would go up to the pele

tower for Whitsun.  But at least she had been shortlisted.

She fingered the gold harp on its chain which she wore next to her skin.

There might be no time for romance now.  And, would it be inappropriate

to start a relationship with one’s employee?  Surely one had a duty of

care?  She was practising the use of the impersonal and first person

plural pronouns already.  Better ensure that she did not become mad

through power, as Maggie Thatcher had, when she issued her

announcement of  grandparental status.

Nigel was fading into the background and for Geoffrey, frankly, she didn’t

give a-whatever the singular was for ‘cojones’.  She lifted her Spanish

dictionary off the shelf.  Life was all about educational opportunities.

But she could see why her father wanted to retain his Inkling status.

Maybe he had an inkling that there was no such thing as a free lunch,

even a school one.

As for personal strengths, she may have been accused in the past of

nagging in the Boarding House.  That could be transmuted into

‘powerful, motivational speaker.’

Hypogonadism

Tags

Bourbon biscuit, Carpe Diem, cojones, Eliza Doolittle, Gobi Desert, Harley-Davidson, Humber, hypogonadism, John Humphrys, Larkin, Low T, Marvell, Mastermind, Sarah Montague’, Stephen Colbert, Today Radio 4

Hypogonadism, Snod read.

So, The Head”s not coming back, he said to himself.

‘It means he needs to have continued treatment for the condition.’

The Headmaster’s wife added that her husband had self-prescribed a

Harley-Davidson and a trip through the Gobi Desert with a friend who

had been similarly challenged.  Apparently she seemed very happy

about the outcome, as he should be away for some weeks, if not

months.

Virginia came into Gus’ office quietly and put his rolled tie on the desk

and left him his tea tray, before exiting like a shadow.

He had removed the said garment at her house the previous night, but

had not removed much else and he had left ( in the early hours it must be

admitted.)

Being of the old school, he had not stayed the night chez Virginia.

In the morning he had nearly been late for the first time in his career, as the

only tie he could find was one that Diana had given him, which bore a tiny pig

and the initials MCP.

He thought that had been a joke.  Had it?

He looked in the mirror in his private loo.  He had felt an old rush of

testosterone last night.  He knotted his favourite tie and smoothed his hair.

He looked younger; his skin looked fresher than John Humphrys’ and yet

that old dog had scored in later life.  What did the presenter have to be

grumpy about? He was raking it in from Mastermind, no doubt.  Mind you,

he had to work with Sarah Montague on the Today programme.

So, the job advertisement would have to be published in order that interviews

could be held in May.  Would he apply?  As Eliza Doolittle nearly said:

Not By our Lady Likely! ( Snod always censored himself, even in quotations, which

amused his pupils.)  But was that adjustment blasphemy instead?  Hmm..

He sat down to drink his tea and eat his Bourbon biscuits- ‘Back to two now’,

he noticed.  Well, Lent was over and the flesh was operational again.

And how!

He typed ‘hypogonadism‘ into Google.  Yes, he had been tired recently.

Apathetic, even.  Grumpy?  Well, he had been irritable for years.  Pupils- he

would not use the term ‘students’ for boys in L5-9- such as Boothroyd-Smythe

had been grit in his oyster for decades.  No wonder he was a little impatient.

What didn’t kill you made you stronger, however.

He read a comment from a comedian called Stephen Colbert who quipped that

Low T, or a dip in manly hormone, was ‘a pharmaceutical-company-recognised

condition affecting millions of men with low testosterone, previously known as

getting older.’

Was that why he had bought the leather jacket in Turkey?  It didn’t look the

same in this cold Northern light.  Maybe he should get it out again?

Smiling to himself, he thought that he would ask Virginia to High Tea at

Bradley Manor some time.  It was a seduction technique that would

overpower most women, he suspected, never mind any age-related

inevitabilities of Low T.

And he was getting to be such an expert on women. Anthony Revelly’s genes

were still spiralling around his son’s DNA, like moths round a guttering flame.

Anyway, if Life was Too Short to Stuff a Mushroom, as he had read

somewhere, and goodness knows, he had never felt a desire to perform

such an activity, one’s mortal coil was definitely too short to allow his

vegetable love to grow vaster than empires yet more slow, or however

Marvell had cavalierly put it.  He should seize the moment- by the cojones,

if necessary.  Where had he learned that word? Carpe diem and all that.

He could even take up fly fishing. He didn’t have 30,000 years to appreciate

Virginia’s quaint honour.  (He was uncomfortable with the etymology of this

adjective, but no matter..)  No, they would make the sun run.

Complaining by the side of Humber he would leave to miserable poets, such as

Larkin, so he would serve out his time as Senior Master only.  Let others take

up the accursed mantle of Headship; he was going to take up his life-and walk,

nay gallop!

He may even apply to be on Mastermind.  Maybe it was the moisturiser he had

taken to using recently, at Diana’s insistence, but-yes!- he definitely had fewer

wrinkles than the Today presenter.  It couldn’t be attributed to post-coital

relaxation, as the activity had not yet taken place.

Smarter than Your Average Bear

Tags

assessment objectives, Bethesda, Bluebeard's Castle, Boo-Boo, chatelaine, Chicxulub, Clegg, cojones, Cro-Magnon, Esau and Jacob, faggots, flat, Flat Earth, Granny Smith, Harris tweed, herbivores and Carnivores, How weary, I Pagliacci, infinity pool, Knock! Knock! Who's There?, metaphor, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, mitrochondrially, Munn and Dunning, my friend., Neanderthal, Orwell, Paglicci caves, patter songs, Permafrost, Rusalka, Send me roots rain, simile, Spotted Dick, stale, synapsid, taxonomy, teachers' planner, Those Were the Days, Vesti la Giubba, woolly mammoth, Yogi Bear

Augustus Snodbury, Senior Master at St Birinus’ Middle School, opened

the ring box in his filing cabinet and looked long and hard at the heart-

shaped diamond ring that had lain snugly in its hiding place for over thirty

years.  He placed it on the tip of his little finger. Its white gold band was

obviously for a digit much slimmer than his own- as slender as the chance

of it ever finding a female finger to ornament.

He sighed, put it back in place, covering it with a pile of obsolete worksheets

and locked the drawers, rattling his key-ring which contained

as wide a selection of redundant keys as the chatelaine of Bluebeard’s

Castle had carried about her waist on a- well- chatelaine.

The bell was late.  Post-prandial indigestion had struck. He opened his

Teachers’ Planner wearily.  Gone were the days when one simply scribbled a

vague lesson plan on the back of an envelope. Then spiral-bound aide-

memoires had been unnecessary and the lack thereof led to spontaneous

combustions, Krakatoa-like performances on the apron stage of the classroom

crucible of learning.  These were fervent, tangential and memorable

expositions on (say) the metaphor:

What’s a metaphor for, Boothroyd-Smythe?.

How do you spell ‘simile’? (covering orthography as well as figurative language)

What’s the ‘therefore’ there for?

Such probing, intellectual dissection was eternally branded on impressionable

minds, on students– daft word (at their age they were pupils)- such as

Boothroyd-Smythe, who would thereafter reflect on such ingested material for

the rest of his proverbial.  Such acolytes would ever after be able to decline

Latin verbs and translate useful phrases such as ‘the farmers will have prepared

tables for the soldiers’. Such was the efficacy of the time-worn, but

time-tested approach and the analogies were more time-resistant than the

concepts they were endeavouring to illustrate.

But now tailoring the module content to individual needs and ticking off

assessment objectives was the order of the day.

No longer were masters to be found puffing away in faded chintzy staff rooms

with saggy seating- and that not restricted to their shiny trousers.  No longer

did they exchange information on crossword clues, cricket scores, nor barter

seedlings for their allotments.

No longer was a knock at the staffroom door considered  a vile intrusion

and an impertinent interruption worthy of some kind of suspension from

school, not literal, one hoped.

Shakespeare summed it up as usual:

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world..

Snod looked at the planner again.  Five hours to go- in theory.  Monday. 

Another four whole days-28 hours for the sake of argument. Saturday morning

coaching: three at least.  Sunday- supervising the junior forms on their way to

Mattins.  Call it another three. Was that 41 hours?   Multiply by how many

weeks in the term?  How many sessions till pensionable retirement?  I didn’t

factor in marking and preparation.  Not that I do much of the latter

nowadays.

Red pen or not?  Out of ten, or A-C?  Add stars, pluses and minuses or not? 

Give bribes, or not?  Take bribes, or not? Efficacy of lines? A learning

experience?  Well, they learn that if they waste my time, I will waste

theirs. Corporal punishment?  ‘Best not to go there’, as the wet-behind-

the-ears brigade would say.

Classroom management?  Tables of six, pairs, rows?  Have the blighters run

all over open plan space with clipboards?  No fear.  Blow that for a game of

tin soldiers! Free expression?  Hold your tongue, you scallywag!

So, retrospectively-speaking, had he wasted his life?

He had counted out his days in coffee spoons.  He was as good as

anaesthetised upon a table.  And what about the mermaids?  Yes,

what about them?  He hadn’t heard so much as a police siren for

decades.

Here he hummed a few bars from Rusalka’s Song to the Moon.  No time

even for his beloved opera.

As for a peach!  It wasn’t that he didn’t dare to eat one; it was just that

the staffroom bowl never contained anything other than blackening bananas

and tasteless Granny Smiths.  (The latter also being the moniker of an elderly

French teacher, coincidentally.)

How was it all going to end?   Not with a bang, that was for sure.  More with

a whimper.

O Lord, send my roots rain! he implored.

What did you say, Sir?  A member of staff passed the open door and stuck his

head into the room.

It was that effervescent and intensely annoying Milford-Haven, the Junior

Master. A stirrer of the pool, if ever there was one.  And not necessarily an

angelic one at that.  What he failed to recognise was that Senior Masters,

such as Snod, who had paralytically lain for years by the Bethesda pool of the

staff study, had no desire to be moved out of their comfort zones, by helpful

jejeunes into a maelstrom of extra-curricular activity.

Cricket was one thing, but wading out of one’s depth and abandoning the gentle

eddies and zephyrs of poolside life for the spas, jacuzzis and whirlpools of

‘extras‘ would be merely a revelation of one’s misunderstanding of the

etymology of the abstract noun: ‘revolution.‘  It only required a cursory

knowledge of Orwell- ‘George’? they would ask- to enlighten them to

the ultimate futility of trying to successfully introduce anything, novel,

or to channel anything educationally on trend.

Ghastly phrase!  He hadn’t out-lived Munn and Dunning to get on that

creaking theoretical treadmill.

No, let them slip over the edge of their infinity pools of educational

speculation.

He was no believer in a Flat Earth; he did acknowledge far horizons and

boundaries, but, more often than not, what went around had an unerring

habit of veering back and slamming you on the back of the head when you

were least expecting it.

That’s why he had never, in his entire career, fully turned his back on a class,

having mastered the art of writing on a blackboard in a somewhat oblique

fashion.

But, just look at Milford-Haven! He walks the walk and wears the Harris tweed,

but he will never fit in.  He is a Neanderthal among Cro-Magnons.  The hand

may be Esau’s, but the voice is Jacob’s, he inwardly articulated. (Snod had

been teaching RS before lunch.)

Personally, he felt that he, himself, was Cro-Magnon, mitrochondrially.

He had a nice, solid body and wasn’t a chinless wonder like that

nincompoop of a Junior Master.  He had what Miriam Gonzalez Durantez,

Clegg’s other half, called cojones. He enjoyed learning new vocabulary,

especially from the Romance languages, as he was sure Nick did too.

He felt himself smarter than your average bear.  More like Yogi than

squeaky clean Boo-Boo.

It would explain why he liked I Pagliacci.  Cro-Magnons were associated with

the Paglicci Caves and he assumed there was a link.  He knew some of the

staff thought he was a bit of a clown, but they recognised his talents in

renditions of opera buffa patter songs in the school concerts, so there!

He really must ‘go‘ before the bell.  His prostate was not what it used to be.

Vesti la giubba was ringing in his ears, as he reached for his academic gown

from the hook on the door.

But, if the previous anthropological metaphor could be extended without mixing,

or diversified without confusion, he considered that he might be a woolly

mammoth, frozen for aeons in permafrost, but only recently thawing out, owing

to that debatable global warming the kids were all obsessed with, or with which

they were all obsessed. (The pedant in him was still very much alive.)
No, the Chicxulub impact that killed off the dinosaurs had somehow passed over

him, like an Angel of Death and, as in some unusual space collisions, his biological

components had been miraculously preserved, as had his cojones.

He could predict that those at the forefront of research would be mesmerised by

his exotic vulnerability and rarity.

By Jove!  Scientists would probably stuff him and analyse the contents of

his stomach. And what would they find?

His digestive processes reminded him.  Faggots and Spotted Dick.

His favourites.

No lunchtime coaching was going to deprive him of those. That was why he

had substituted an after-school detention for Boothroyd-Smythe.  He would

waste his time.

And if he, personally, was a woolly mammoth, what was Milford-Haven?

A Synapsid.  The answer came easily.  He had read something even that

day about juvenile transitions from carnivore to herbivore, and, judging by

the tong-fuls of greenery Milford-Haven heaped on his plate, Snod could

easily slot the Junior Master into the taxonomy.

He hated self-service.  Oh, for the days of yore when Mrs Stevens served

you and remembered that you liked seconds.  There was a song about it:

And they called it cupboard love..

Even the music has degenerated, he thought.  Those were the days, my

friend, lalalalalala.  But have I lived the life I chose?

Knock! Knock!

Who’s there?

Can this be Love that’s calling?

No, it was Milford-Haven.

Sir, the bell’s not went.  It’s Period Seven.

‘Gone’, you imbecile, he muttered to himself.

And through the door he took his solitary way.