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.

Thought For The Day

Tags

aigret, Bad Hair Day, Barbara Cartland, davenport, dawn chorus, evil eye, fallaid, Farming Today, hammer drill, Harper Beckham, insomnia, John Humphrys, Land of Nod, lemming, Lionel Blair, Lionel Blue, Mary Wollstonecraft, Monty Panesar, Monty Python, murrain, National Anthem, Prayer for the Day, Rip Van Winkle, Sailing By, sauna, Shipping Forecast, struan, terminal moraine, Thought for the Day, World Service

(Mary Wollstonecraft: Wikipaedia.)

Carrie wandered into Costamuchamoulah must-seen cafe just as I

was ordering.

What’s that you are having?  she asked.

Struan nouveau, I replied.  Do you want to share?

It rings a bell.  What’s in it?

Cranberries, bilberries and caraway seeds.  It’s traditional-from

Scotland, you know.

Oh, it’s that thing the eldest daughter used to have to bake in the

Hebrides.

I’ll have a piece myself. Hi! I’ll have what she’s having.

(The latter was addressed to the baristress, who tried not to

laugh.)

What about fallaid? Do they serve that?  Carrie followed the counter with

her eyes.

No.  That was the meal leftovers which were put into a footless stocking

and flicked over the flocks to ward off the murrain.

Murrain.. Such a pretty name.

No, Carrie.  Don’t get broody now that you have got them all off to school.

Anyway, murrain was a kind of plague.  It was an animal disease.  In fact,

etymologically, it meant death, literally.

Like terminal moraine?  We did that in geography many moons ago.

Yes, well, fallaid also helped to protect you from the evil eye.

It would come in handy when you have to run the gauntlet of collecting your

kids from the school yard, Carrie remarked.  Actually it sounds like some kind

of subjunctive of the French verb falloir.  You remember: il faut etcetera?

Actually, I can’t think very clearly at all just now, I sighed.

What’s wrong?

Well, I am not sleeping.  Once I waken at about four, that’s it.

Do you get up?

I used to listen to The World Service and half doze off, but now they have this

really annoying clattery jingle thing before the news items.  It is so

raucous and repetitive.  It gets into your brain like a hammer drill.  I don’t

get back to sleep sometimes until Farming Today.

They should realise that nocturnal listeners are just wanting to have a gentle

white noise to lull them back into the Land of Nod, agreed Carrie.  Do you get

off to sleep all right when you retire?

Oh, The Shipping Forecast is brilliant for that.  I don’t like Sailing By and

 The National Anthem is a bit military, but you kind of respect that and it gives

you a Pavlovian emotional closure, I dare say.

You should write in and complain about the awful racket.

Well, I like Thought for the Day and Prayer for the Day and somehow, when

you wake up to John Humphrys, you feel soothed, even as you fall off a fiscal

cliff along with all the other lemmings.

I bet his wife doesn’t feel like that, retorted Carrie.

What? Like a lemming? She doesn’t have to see him first thing in the

morning, so it probably saves their marriage.  He looks like the antithesis of

Rip Van Winkle- ie/ as if he hasn’t slept for seventy odd years.

Thought for the Day represents people from all the different religions,

doesn’t it? Carrie said.

Oh yes.  (I am beginning to sound like that Churchill dog)  They had Lionel

Blue, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs too, I confirmed.

Hmm, I used to like Sikhs until that Monty Python guy, the cricketer,

urinated inappropriately.  I think he was a bad role model, though I think

those turbans would be brilliant for a Bad Hair Day.

Panesar. Don’t overgeneralise, I cautioned her.  We have had Black Swan

conversations before.  Anyway, I agree that the turbans might have their

uses.

Yes, agreed Carrie.  They’re very now.  Celebrities put them on their babies.

I bet Harper Beckham has quite a few to choose from.

I don’t think they’d suit me, I reflected.  Too Alexander Pope-cum-Mary

Wollstonecraft.

But you remind me of her, Carrie said.  Actually, turbans were very

Barbara Cartland too.

Well, I am not about to attend an Assembly Room any time soon,

complete with nodding aigret feather, swaying to the beat of a

chamber orchestra.

You, or the feather?

Oh, shut up!

So, what have you got against turbans?  I thought you could wear one and

cultivate that dreamy, faraway look, sitting poised with a quill in your hand,

composing a proto-feminist treatise at your davenport.

Well, it’s not my headgear of choice, ever since I came across an old dear in a

Leeds sauna, saving on her central heating and sweating it out, stark naked

except for her turban.  She actually accused me of sitting on her heart pills.

It was probably a shower cap, anyway.

And were you?  You know, sitting on them? Carrie enquired, a tad

aggressively, I thought.

No!  I’d have felt them under my folded towel, surely?

Depends.  If you were a princess, or not.  Also if you were less pneumatic

than you are now.

How very dare you! I swatted her with a Suttonford Weekly.

Anyway, Carrie laughed, surely the World Service is preferable to your

husband’s snoring.

Just give me the dawn chorus, I agreed.

But not too many aigrets, Carrie quipped.

Precisely.  I haven’t heard Rabbi Lionel Blair for a while, come to think of it.

Blue, corrected Carrie.

I can’t think straight.  It’s my insomnia, I yawned.

La Vie Boheme

Tags

Angelina's, beau monde, Bradley Wiggins, Brigitte Bardot, Cafe de Flore, Cocteau, Da Vinci Code, Gorden Kaye, Irma Kurtz, Jeanette Winterson, John Humphrys, La Boheme, La Vie Bohème, Les Deux Magots, madeleine, Mallarme, Manon, Maxim's, Mimi, Muriel Belcher, Musetta, Novello, Oscar Wilde, Perrault, Pippa Middleton, Proust, Rimbaud, Rodolfo, Rose Line, Rousseau, Shakespeare& Co, Something Understood, St Germain des Pres, St Sulpice, The Colony, Verlaine, Woody Allen

(Muriel Belcher by Francis Bacon)

Hi!  It’s Candia again.  I’ve been festively overwrought and last night I fell asleep listening to Irma Kurtz on Radio 4’s ‘Something Understood.’  She had constructed a compilation on La Vie Boheme, mentioning La Rive Gauche, Greenwich Village and The Colony in Soho, owned by Muriel Belcher, where Francis Bacon was paid to bring along interesting guests who were on an ‘odyssey of creativity’.

As a student, I had worn a cape and affected a feathered hat until my dad told me to tie my hair back and remove the offending headgear.

 Then I woke upto someone singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas with a voiceover chiding John Humphrys with a reminder that there were more things on Heaven and Earth than had been permitted in his philosophy. Rather surreal to have the announcement of Bradley Wiggins as Sports Personality of the Year juxtaposed with cosmology and moral philosophy at 8am.

I had a somewhat unusual request yesterday, Dear Reader.  A visitor asked if he could have a guest appearance in my blog.  And who is this budding self-publicist? I hear you wonder aloud.  Eh bien, he was a rather elegant Frenchman that I introduced to Costamuchamoulah’s café society via une promenade round the aspirational, but pas trop authentique Francophile Sunday morning market in our beloved ville.  This event of global significance was ‘appening on the High Street.  (Why do I always think in terms of Gorden Kaye’s Franglais when I am narrating anything of Gallic content?)  Anyhow, it was with un soupcon of Rousseau’s irony that I directed said gentilhomme’s footsteps down the less than sunny side of the street to Suttonford’s burgeoning version of Maxim’s.

We did not recognise anything remotely familiar to this European voyageur in le marche and so I headed him off past the bookshop-alas, not Shakespeare & Co, with a resident Jeanette Winterson, but to the cosmopolitan hub of Suttonford’s Café Society.  On the way across the street my boulevardier remarked approvingly on various expensive vehicles, parked in bays, which screamed mid-life crisis.

He seemed more interested in the clientele, though the owners of Costamuchamoulah have not yet cottoned on to the device employed by Cornuche, the proprietor of Maxim’s, who remarked:

An empty room!  Never!  I always have a beauty sitting in the window, in view from the [pavement]

Here it is more like Novello’s version of the experience: And Her Mother Came Too!

(There are one or two widows, but not necessarily of the ‘merry’ variety.)  Woody Allen was distinctly absent, but there were no Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds,(sic) at least.

Ensconced in a corner, at an unwiped table and on hard chairs- not the sumptuous banquettes which might reveal hidden treasures lost down the cushions- we ordered our upwardly mobile beverages, while he showed me photographs of his international girlfriends on his Blackberry – ( is that Murier, I me demande?)  Monsieur was keen to exhibit pictures of himself in Les Deux Magots. Was this a kind of Parisian, urban, if not urbane, Crocodile Dundee equivalent of showing me that THAT was a café, in the same way as Paul Hogan had demonstrated the superiority of his jungle knife?  Whatever.  I was miffed that he had assumed that I would not have heard of such an establishment, so beloved by les philosophes, let alone having patronised it with my custom.

Les Deux Magots has thankfully nothing to do with maggots.  Un magoh was the slang term for a miser.  I don’t think misers would search out the pitchers of decadent hot chocolate found therein, nor would they pay their prices to see Oscar Wilde, Mallarme, Rimbaud etc.  In Costamuchamoulah, we pay the prices, but don’t see Apollinaire, Verlaine or Hemingway.  Apparently, Pippa Middleton might have breezed through, though I don’t know whether it was to check the sales of her book which is displayed beside the edible ladybirds and so froth.  Pun.  Formidable rear isn’t la meme chose as formidable intellect, in my book at any rate.

But to my tale- pas Perrault, but tant pis!  Ah yes, I remember it well.  The Husband and I slipped on the glacial trottoirs of St Germain- des- Pres, in the days when he went out, seeking the church of St Sulpice with its Rose Line and gnomen, but thankfully with no resident albino monk assassins.  The fountain was frozen and great slabs of sheet ice almost prevented us from venturing to the Café de Flore or Deux Magots, for it was the Advent season, as it is now.  Ah, those were the days and nights of Angelina’s and other beau monde haunts, where we expected to encounter  Mimi, Manon, Musetta and Rodolfo and perhaps, if we were very blessed, Proust himself.  Mimi had wanted to lose her senses and Musetta had forgotten the regulation of their economies and had asked the boys to order champagne.  We were a little less extravagant.

For that is the problem with such cafes of Enlightenment. Before you know it you are emptying your bank balance, merely to see and be seen.

My current companion looked around the room, panning the four corners for a barefoot Brigitte Bardot perhaps, but his eye fell upon a smart blonde woman in her fifties.  Quel surpris!  He confessed that young girls were not for him.  Like Cocteau, he was well aware that:

..to undress one of those women [would be] like an outing that calls for 3 weeks’ advance notice…it [would be] like moving house.

So, it was on my first sip of Mocha that I had the flashback, the Epiphany-and it came without the madeleine.   I will enlighten you further.

A demain..!