Snod’s Law

Tags

Attila the Hun, Bonnard, causality, context sensitivity, Copernican mediocrity, Genghis Khan, infant sauvant, IQ score, irritable bowel syndrome, laws of thermodynamics, Marthe, Pilate, reflexive verb, Sods' Law, William the Conqueror

(Tete de Bonnard)

 

Augustus Snodbury, Senior Master at St Birinus Middle School peered

into his fogged up shaving mirror in the manner of Bonnard, but sans

le Maitre’s obsession with la salle de bain.  Was it just the bain– or the

occupant thereof?

He drew his razor across his chin.

Merde!   Marthe.  Strange coincidence that the two words are so similar. 

Bien sur, Marthe is a proper noun and merde is …well. merde is…  Cela ne

fait rien…

(He only swore in foreign languages- usually of the moribund  variety.

Mehercule! was another well-favoured expletive…)

It was Sod’s Law that he should nick himself just before Parents’ Evening.

Au contraire- it was, en effet, Snod’s Law- absolument typique.

There seemed to be some underlying thermodynamic law which ensured

that every literal slice of toast that he would ever drop in his allotted

threescore years and – hopefully plus- would land sunny side down on the

fluffy lino of his kitchenette.

Once he had tried to fathom out the underlying principle, but he had grown

exasperated by the philosophical discussions re/ context sensitivity and

causality.  He usually just scraped the spread off and hoped for the best.

If the odious mater of the dreaded Boothroyd-Smythe boy should smell

blood, she would, no doubt, be after his teacher like a pack leader at a

drag hunt. She would want to ‘discuss’ her infant sauvage/ sauvant’s

penultimate ink exercise-at length.

Each parent/ guardian had been given a four minute and forty nine

seconds’ window of opportunity.  There were others to be seen-and heard-

so Snod had planned his personal defenestration technique, which

involved a pre-set travelling alarm clock.  The previous time he had tried

to utilise the device, it had been confiscated by the school caretaker, who

said it might be mistaken for an incendiary device.

 I mean-mehercule!- Snod had remonstrated- do I look like a terrorist, man?

The caretaker had not ventured an opinion, other than to reinforce that

it was against ‘Elf and Safety.

Snod wiped the condensation away with his pyjama sleeve and applied

pressure to the little bleeder (not the caretaker, you understand.  We are

back in the privacy of the lavatory.) However, the flow was not to be

easily stemmed.  Neither would Mrs B-S ( ‘Irritable Bowel- Syndrome’ was

how he thought of her)…neither would the aforesaid indignant parent

tolerate any hypothetical exploration of her son’s behaviour.  She also

was difficult to staunch.  Snod wondered if her ex-husband had found

the same difficulty in dealing with her when she was in full spout.

Counter factuals interested her as little as the laws of thermodynamics,

or grammar, for that matter, he considered.

Well, we are living in an age where no one cares about the subjunctive, he

mused, so why would anyone contemplate the ‘what ifs’, or the hypothetical

‘other’?

Who do you think you are, Mr Snodbury? she had written in a note delivered

to his poste restante, ergo his pigeonhole in the staff-room.  How could you

give my gifted son such a discouraging assessment when he has an IQ of

160, which is, no doubt, sixty points above most of the masters’ scores in this

establishment?

He could predict that she would bang on about some theory of Copernican

mediocrity, ad tedium.

But the initial interrogative got beneath his skin, just as his rasoir had.

After some meditation, he considered that her opening gambit was not

so much a rhetorical question, but rather, a declaration of war.

He stuck a shred of toilet paper over the wound.  But maybe she had a

point…

Who am I? he asked himself, while recognising the reflexive modal aspect

of the verb. ( I don’t mean the verb ‘to be‘; I refer to his self-examination.)

He had never felt the need of a gap year, to go off and find himself, but a

sabbatical would have been nice.

That genealogy programme was popular, he knew: the one where

celebrities discovered that their direct lines went all the way back to

William the Conqueror.

Whose didn’t? he thought.  We are all five handshakes from…whom?  Am I

really descended from Genghis Khan, or Attila the Hun, as the boys suspect?

Well, so long as I am not related to Boris Johnson, in spite of our shared

love of the Classics!

He had always felt that he was the terminal bud on a twig which had been

grafted onto someone else’s native tree.

Maybe he should exhibit some natural curiosity and find out the truth of

his generation- etymologically-speaking.

Whatever truth is, as Pilate once so eloquently said, he mused aloud.

It seems to have stopped haemorrhaging now.  I can’t be haemophiliac, so

my blood-line can’t be true blue.

 

 

Sin of Presumption

Tags

Alice in Wonderland, Bathsheba, Boldwood, builders' tea, David Cameron, hagiography, Lucozade, martyrology, misogyny, Neutral Tones, Proust, Prufrock, sin of commission, sin of presumption, Sods' Law, St Brigid, St Patrick, Thomas Hardy

Fortunately Snod had a double free period before Lower Five and so

he slumped into his favourite lumpy chintz armchair and waited till

he could be sure that the rest of the staff were in Lesson One.

Virginia came in sheepishly, carrying a tray with some builders’ tea

and a plate with two Bourbon biscuits.  He was allowed two since it

was not every day that one became affianced.

He didn’t look up at first.  He felt that she had committed a sin of

presumption, or at least commission, but he wasn’t going to split

theological hairs at this point.  Taking  a sledgehammer to break

a walnut came into his mind too, but he felt that was a violent

metaphor.  Still, he probably would never have succumbed to a

more gentle persuasive technique.

Yes, he had heard of St Brigid and her relationship with St Patrick.

He simply didn’t want Virginia to activate any of the ideas that the

female saint of yore had favoured, such as giving away all her

counterpart’s worldly goods and so on.  Virginia would probably never

understand the vital importance of his oiled cricket bat, or piles

of Wisdens.  He wasn’t swayed by aspirations to a ranking in the

hagiography through denial in any shape or form, and, if he was

to wed, then it might be more appropriate to consider an entry

in a martyrology.

He looked at the cup of tea.  There was no such thing as a free drink.

He felt like Alice, in Wonderland– a novel concept.  The eponymous

heroine had been confronted with a phial which was labelled: Drink Me.

If he accepted the bone china mug and its contents, did it imply an

acceptance of the proposal?  Was he about to drain hemlock?

He risked a sip.  Aaah!  Just the way he liked it: slightly stewed.

He swirled it round his mouth in a Proustian reverie.  It wasn’t too

disagreeable, after all- the whole idea and not just the cuppa.  It

took him back to reminiscenses of past times of security, as when

Matron had brought him just such a beverage when he was in San with

measles.  She had warmed his jammies on the radiator and had

given him Lucozade.  He remembered looking at the confines of

his life through the orange cellophane, which he picked off the bottle,

and feeling that life was still an adventure, if only for Boys’ Own

readers.

Virginia tiptoed out, knowing that he needed a little space.

He gazed at the poster of Thomas Hardy alongside the English

Department noticeboard.  That wretched man had caused him a

lot of trouble over the years.  (see the original misdirected Valentine

which had ended up between the underlay and the carpet of a boarding

house-mistress’ apartment, many moons previously.)

And now he had to ask himself a typically Hardyean question:

Was he, like Boldwood, being set up by a teasing woman?  Virginia

did have some Bathsheban tendencies.  He tried to resist thinking of

her in a state of deshabillement for the moment, as it distracted him

from the thrust of his current thought processes.

Then Hardy came to the rescue.

How so? you ask, Dear Reader.

Boldwood gave him the idea.

Gus took his hymnbook from the side table and threw it into the air.

Virginia came into the room again, having given him what she

considered was sufficient time- to hang himself, some would have

added.  She carried some correspondence as justification.

What are you doing with that book? she reprimanded.  You’ll break its

spine!

Snod inwardly whispered, Open-to wed; Shut-to…

Sods’ Law: it fell open.  Or was it Snod’s Law?

Virginia picked it up and placed it in his pigeonhole.

Then she came over and took his plate and mug, spat on her

hanky  and wiped an indeterminate stain from his tie.

So, that’s settled then, she pronounced.

And he knew that it jolly well was. But a quote from Neutral

Tones,  one of Hardy’s finest, suddenly sprang to mind:

The smile on [his]mouth was the deadest thing

alive enough to have strength to die…

No, although he felt chidden of God, it couldn’t be as bad as all

that, surely?

Could it? Happy misogyny, here we come, he mused.

He had measured out his life, unlike Prufrock, in oxymorons,

rather than coffee spoons.