Staff Meeting

Tags

acronym, arrythmia, Bourbon biscuit, correcting fluid, Daily Mail, faggots, gender fluid, Hippocratic oath, Jammie Dodger, Jeremy Paxman, libido, testosterone, University Challenge

Augustus Snodbury, Acting Head of St Birinus Middle School, looked out

on his assembled staff.  It was the first meeting of 2014 and he felt

uncomfortable in The Headmaster’s chair, amid so many grumpy men.

He nodded curtly to Geoffrey Poskett, relaying an unspoken message

which underlined the transmission that their coincidental holiday

encounter was, in no way, to imply any kind of partiality or informality

now that they were back in their normal routine.

Yawn! Yawn!  There were the usual parental missives, if not missiles,

informing staff of snowboarding fractures.  Then there were Boys To Be

Discussed.  This provoked an excited background hum and Snod had to

lay down the law firmly:  One of you may buzz, I mean, speak.

The School Calendar had been printed at the end of the previous term,

but was now distributed.  Usually each fixture had to be gone over in fine

tooth detail, but Snod pronounced: Well, you can all read, I suppose, so, in

the manner of Jeremy Paxman at the start of University Challenge, I will just

invite you all to crack on.

He eyed young Milford-Haven who was about to snaffle his own favourite

Bourbon biscuit from the trolley.  However, when the young puppy felt the

elder educator’s gimlet gaze bore into him, he eschewed his first choice

and opted for a Jammie Dodger instead.  Very wise as a future career

move.

No conferring! Snod emphasised.

He glanced at dates for the end of term and mused:  Oh, why does Easter

have to be so late this year?  If it is a moveable feast, then why can’t it

be shunted closer to release us all from scholastic torment?

Nigel Milford-Haven put up his hand.  As John Boothroyd-Smythe’s form

teacher, he felt compelled to put one and all in the picture re/ behavioural

issues and their mitigating causes.  One of these was that B-S’s sister had

apparently ‘come out‘ recently as being gender fluid.

I’ve heard of correcting fluid, remarked ‘old school’ Snodbury, but never the

sexual variety.  Pray, clarify.

Several know-it-alls who had been paying attention at the previous in-

house training on Psychosexual Proclivities and the Learning Process came

to attention and tried to contribute to the allegedly open forum.

One of you may answer! boomed Gus.  Well, fascinating though the subject

promises to be,..His olfactory sense had just radared that the first sitting

of lunch was a possibility.

Who is on Lunch Duty today? he asked.

Poskett, always poised for a hasty getaway, was crouching near the door.

I am, sir!  He bowed his head and fled.  He had known that they would

never get round to the pressing matter on his agenda.  Maybe next week!

he muttered.

A final notice, Snod declared.  The smell of faggots was making him lose

concentration.  You may be wondering how The Headmaster is.  The good

news is that he has not suffered a stroke.  Not even a TIA, to use a medical

acronym.  His wife assures us that he has only been experiencing mild

arrythmia, brought on by an arduous Autumn term, combined with an

overindulgent celebration on Christmas Eve.  And, if you have been reading

The Daily Mail lately, which, God Forbid any member of this illustrious

academic establishment would..

Here the aroma of hot beef olives, to use a more polite culinary term, was

really distracting..

…Where was I?  Oh, yes, apparently the acme of journalistic achievement

has suggested that some men d’un certain age develop irrational anxieties,

heart palpitations and alter their personality through low levels of

testosterone. (He stroked his new leather jacket in a spontaneous gesture

of subliminal self-awareness.)  They can even lose their..

Libido, supplied an earnest Milford-Haven, who was probably the only one

in the staffroom attempting to follow his drift.

Suddenly thirty two pairs of eyes widened and their owners ceased to

dwell on stuffing and onion gravy.

Snod coughed.  Aaagh, whatever! he agreed. Anyway, to cut a long story

short, his wife has persuaded him to combat excessive grumpiness by a

course of hormone injections, which should render him more..

Subservient! Milford-Haven nodded.

Compliant! re-stated Mr Snodbury, glaring at the exhibition of impatience

shown by the Junior Master.  He recognised a desire to conclude proceedings

in the worthy cause of nutrition.  But the boy should know his place.  He had

to restrain himself from awarding the member of staff an order mark and

detention.

So, not a word of this confidential information is to pass beyond these walls,

stressed The Acting Head.  He then had to watch everyone else exiting the

room before himself, which probably meant that he would have to go to the

second sitting in the dining room and there would be no faggots left.

Meanwhile, in a mockery of the Hippocratic oath, The Headmaster’s wife was

discussing her husband’s alarming symptoms in Costamuchamoulah must-

seen cafe, over two lattes, with the GP’s spouse, who was going to relay

the absorbing details to multiple caffeine addicts in the weeks to come.

cafe

The Tenderness of Stone

Tags

cairns, Daily Mail, Fools' Gold, heavenly ladder, lisanthus, Na zdrowie!, pickpocket, Princess and Pea, stone effigies, stone skimming

Ginevra took a surreptitious sip from a hip flask which she concealed under

the tartan throw which her carer, Magda, had spread over the mentally alert

nonagenarian’s knees.

I don’t want to read any more about the terrible things people are doing to

children nowadays, she aid, tossing The Daily Mail onto the side table.  You’d 

think that human hearts have turned to stone.

Carrie came in to see her mother-in-law just then.  She put a

bunch of lisianthus down on the same table and Magda whisked

the purple blooms away, to find a vase for them.

Maybe not all human hearts, Ginevra qualified, having noticed the floral

tribute.  Oh, I like those- they last a long time.  She nodded at Magda’s

retreating rear.

What’s all this about hearts and stones? asked Carrie, pecking her

mother-in-law on her wizened cheek.

Oh, Magda was just reading out some awful things in the press.

She patted the sofa beside her and sneakily shoved the hip flask

under a cushion.

Carrie sat down, having noted the prestidigitation.  She could feel the

bottle shape against her thigh.  She must be a princess after all, or did

it only work with peas?

Don’t get too depressed, she advised the cunning old lady.  According to

Candia, stones can be tender too.

What’s that woman on about now? Ginevra asked.  She is always writing

some poem or other with a complicated theme.

Stones, I think, oddly enough.  She has just given me a copy of her latest

outpouring, serendipitously on the very topic you were discussing with

Magda when I came in.  She unfolded a piece of lined paper and gave it

to Ginevra.

What does it say? asked Ginevra.  My glasses are next door.  You read it to

me, if it’s not too long.

So Carrie did and Magda stood in the doorway and listened. (Her English

has improved so much.)

The Tenderness of Stone

We know beggars would rather have a loaf

so, when they cry, they do not want a stone.

Too long a sacrifice can turn a heart

into one of us, as can persistence.

Children will skim us time and time again

over a still loch and troubled adults

will cast us out as far as they can see,

to drown their burdens, like a sack of cats.

We are chips off the old block, rocks, boulders,

pebbles, grains, irritants that create pearls.

We have been molten, crystallized, polished;

we have been dragged, eroded, scarified.

Attrition has been our second nature.

We have fissures, fossils, fool’s gold, dark seams.

Look at us: though we have been rejected,

we also have been chosen corner stones,

cairns, sheepfolds. Hollowed out, we became homes.

Thirsty crows dropped us, one by one, until

the water level rose to meet their beaks.

We have been used as missiles to kill men-projectiles

of their own guilt, but one Man

made a mad crowd release us to the ground,

rather than hurl us with the force of law.

We have borne words and cryptic alphabets;

we have been pillows, then piled as pillars

to mark the place where angels ascended,

descended on a heavenly ladder.

We mark time, are thresholds, lintels and sills.

Some implore that we should fall upon them;

some sense that they should fall on us and break.

We are the worn handclasp of effigies

and the spray of gravel at a shutter,

the shrapnel signal of elopers’ trysts.

The mobile statue of the petrified,

whom faithless men implore to punish them,

finds in rapprochement there’s no rebuke.

In a future world the shattered will cup

palms, to receive a stone, white as an egg,

bearing their new name. And stones will not chide.

Heaven will be in every grain of sand.

This I like, said Magda meditatively.

Mmm, so do I, agreed Ginevra, forgetting that Carrie was watching

her as she took another very small sip in a very deft and light-fingered

movement that would have out-performed a seasoned child pick-

pocketer from some obscure Eastern European town on a cheap day return

flight with its minder to fruitful venues in the UK’s capital city.

This I like very much.  Na Zdrowie! Ginevra hiccuped.

Na zdrowie.  Vivat, echoed Magda.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Tags

cabinet of curiosities, Calypso Carol, Carmen, Daily Mail, Easter Island, Financial Times, Hawaiian shirt, huzun, Istanbul, Moai, Monteverdi, Nobel Prize, Orhan Pamuk, oxymoron, Panama hat, Rolls Royce, Royal Yacht, Simon Schama, Singer sewing machine, The Longs Arms, Weekend Magazine

I always feel guilty when I destroy the barista’s carefully created fern on the

top of my coffee, but, then, one has to drink the frothy arrangement.

Goodness knows, one has paid enough for it, especially at Costamuchamoulah

must-seen cafe.   At least The Financial Times Weekend magazine can be

appropriated from the public wall rack, to compensate.  The Yummies always

go for The Daily Mail, I find.

Oh, the ecstasy of finding Simon Schama and Orhan Pamuk in the same article.

I loved the novel Istanbul and was fascinated by the concept of huzun, a state

of collective memory.

Pamuk has gathered a series of objects which he stores and displays in

cabinets and these items resonate with memory traces of significant moments

in his characters’ lives.  Once these memories are categorised, they can be

stored and owned.

I wondered if I could rent or purchase a building in Suttonford where I could

collect objects connected with the narrative of my characters’ lives?

Re-winding some of my posts, I could imagine the first vitrines exhibiting a

crystal ball which belonged to Sonia, the medium who lives in Royalist House.

An empty bottle of Dewlap’s Gin for the Discerning Grandmother would

represent Sonia’s neighbour, Ginevra.  The latter’s e-novel based on a meeting

of geriatric hearts and minds could be referred to by a mobility scooter, which,

of course, would take up a large glass box on its own- something like the one

which protected HM’s Rolls Royce on The Royal Yacht, Britannia.

Doomed romance would be conveyed by the original Valentine, complete with

its proposal of marriage (never received) which the youthful Augustus

Snodbury slid under the nubile lax mistress, Diana Fotheringay’s door all those

troubled years ago.  The diamond ring which fell down the cracks in the

floorboards at The Longs Arms, but which was recovered, though not without

embarrassment, would also speak volumes to the tender-hearted.

Perhaps there could be an unmade bed which still belongs to Tiger-Lily and a

string of knitted women bishops which was removed from the cathedral

railings in Wintoncester, having been yarn-bombed there by Juniper, the

increasingly famous, gender-fluid, street graffiti artist.

The town’s canine lovers might donate a diamante pug collar belonging to

Pooh-Bah and the ever-present risk of animal vandalism might be portrayed

by the photograph of the priceless Pre-Moai figure from Easter Island, which

Andy, the Border Terrier so thoroughly digested.

Academic life could be shown by the Hawaiian shirt which one of the

Willoughby twins wore when he played the solo marimba in The Calypso Carol

at the end of term concert at St Birinus, and which provoked a caution

regarding the upholding of school rules regarding uniform.

Staying on a musical theme, the programme notes for the Monteverdi concert

in Bath which so riveted Drusilla, Diana and Gus would be interesting to study

in future years, as the cast list so clearly displayed Geoffrey Poskett and Nigel

Milford- Haven, of whom much more has to be said in future posts.

Snod’s battered Panama hat, which he sat on inadvertently at the

aforementioned concert and which Nigel effectively ruined by wearing it

when painting his mother’s bathroom ceiling, should be juxtaposed to set

up a dialogue with the alternative headgear which Nigel’s mother fished out

of her black sack and gave to him to wear to the opera, Carmen.  Placed side

by side, the museum-goer should be able to detect that this hat which Nigel,

or Caligula as he is affectionately called by the children in his care, is going to

return duplicitously to his older colleague in lieu of the original- oh, drat, I’ve

given away the plot..- will be seen to be a size seven and a quarter, and not

the seven and three quarters which Snod has always sported on his rather

large dome of a head.

History, and family history at that, will be brought to life by the inclusion of a

Singer sewing machine which belonged to Jean Waddell, Carrie’s maternal

grandmother.

I am excited by the prospect of making the intangible tangible.  Oxymoron

creates such dynamic tension!

Thank you for the idea, Orhan.  I won’t expect a Nobel Prize for it as it would

be akin to plagiarism, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

(To understand the exophoric references and intertextuality of this entry,

please refer to previous posts!)

Flat White

Tags

Asda Mum, Camp coffee, Consumed, Daily Mail, Evan Davis, Farleigh Wallop, flat white, Guardian, Guinness Book Records, Harry Wallop, Hello Dolly, Hyphen- Leighs, Juicy Princess, Middle Wallop, Middleton classes, Nether Wallop, Portland Privateer, Rockabillie, social semiotics, Sun Skittles, Sunday Post, Today, Wood-Burning Stover

Hello Dolly!

Dolly?

Yes, it’s so nice to see you back where you belong! I remarked sincerely to

Carrie as we queued in Costamuchamoulah.  How did the funeral go?

Brilliantly, thanks.  It was lovely to catch up with the family.  I haven’t

been north for some time.

And did you go to a Burns Supper, as you said you might?

I certainly did!  It was good to flash the tartan and sing a few rude

songs from The Merry Muses of Caledonia.

Well, don’t sing any in here, will you?  I don’t think they’d appreciate

it.

We chose our usual spot in the corner after ordering two flat whites.

What on earth is that? asked Carrie.  It sounds like a base coat of

emulsion. Carrie, being half-Italian, is knowledgeable about coffee,

so I was surprised that she hadn’t cottoned on to this trendy option.

No, it’s something that Evan Davis was banging on about with Harry

Wallop yesterday, on the Today programme.  There is a new book

out: ‘Consumed: How Shopping Fed the Class System.’

Evan’s not in here, is he? she asked.  I don’t see any Spock ears

sticking out from behind an ‘FT’.

No, he was researching the different socio-economic groups and their

caffeine consumption correlations in London.

So, who is this other guy you mentioned? Does he hail from Nether,

 Middle, or Farleigh Wallop? 

Not as far as I know, I laughed. In my day, ‘wallop’ was something

that happened to children in my socio-economic group if we came home

after the street lights had gone on.  And, as for social semiotics, they

had scarcely got around to antibiotics back then.

Which is what this stuff tastes like, actually. So, what does a flat

white determine about your origins, then?

Apparently that you are a Wood-Burning Stover, I explained.

Well, I am-and proud of it!  What else could I be?

You could be an Asda Mum- not too many of them around, judging

by the absence of ‘Juicy Princess’ buggies. Or am I getting mixed up? 

Maybe they do affiliate to that brand.  Or, you could be a Portland

Privateer.

What’s that?

Oh, someone who books themselves into a private birthing clinic.

Well, that’s clearly not a category that I aspire to join, is it? she laughed.

Any other groups that I might belong to, without my knowing it?

Well, you don’t affixate your children’s names with a –leigh suffix, do

you?  Mind you, Tiger-Lily is hyphenated.  That could loosely connect

 you to the Hyphen-Leighs- ie/ those of the ‘Marillion’ generation..

She looked alarmed.

Oh look! There’s a Rockabilly.  Don’t turn round yet.

I’ve heard of Huckleberry, but what’s…?

Someone who sports red trousers and frequents the Cornish coast.

Any other categories, then?

Emm…Middleton classes- as in Carol, not Kate and Pippa.  And Sun-

Skittles..

Who are they?

Those who read ‘red-tops’ and play skittles.

Well, judging by the graphics on the BFLs round here, Bags For Life,

you know, I’d say we are a mixed breed.  We stuff our wood-burners

with fallen branches like babushkas and yet there isn’t a ‘Guardian’ in sight

in here.

No, it’s definitely ‘Daily Mail’ terrain.

And, I bet they’ve never heard of ‘The Sunday Post’, Carrie observed. 

Now that was a social leveller if ever there was one.  Here! Take a look! I

brought one down from Scotland.  It used to have the highest per capita

readership anywhere in the world and was in The Guinness Book of Records.

And what kind of coffee drinker would be associated with it?

Camp, I should imagine.  And not just because of the articles by

Francis Gay. Pure chicory! 

And better than this emulsion, we agreed.