Back in the Jug Agane

by Geoffrey Willans

  PASS THE SPUTNIK, MAN!

  ‘Wot is yore opinion of colin wilson, the new philosopher?’ sa fotherington-tomas, hanging by his weedy heels from the crossbar.

  ‘Advanced, forthright, significant,’ i repli, kicking off the mud from my footer boots.

  ‘He takes, i think, the place of t.s. eliot in speaking for the younger genneration. Have you any idea of the score?’

  ‘Not a clue.’

  ‘Those rufians hav interrupted us 6 times. So one must assume half a dozen goles. If only our defence was more lively, quicker on the takle! Now as i was saing about colin wilson —’

  Yes, clots, weeds, and fellow suferers, it means the good old footer season is with us and jack the shepherd is a good deal warmer when he blows his nail than we are. Birds are frozen: little children sink with a vast buble in the mud and are not heard of agane: sigismund the mad maths master don his long white woollen hem-hems. Yes, this is the time when we are driven out with whip and lash upon ye old soccer field.

  Mind you, there are some who think soccer is super. These are the ones who charge, biff, tackle and slam the leather first-time into the net ect. They hav badges and hav a horible foto taken at the end of term with their arms folded and the year chalked upon the pill. This foto cost there parents 7/6 on the skool bill and i hope they think it is worth it. i would not care for grabber’s face on my walls, that’s all.

  Of corse i’m no good… no, i mean it… i simply am no good… no, please, grabber, my body-swerve… well, it go in the wrong direcktion… o, i sa, no… wot a nice thing to hear about myself… if i try hard i’ll be in the seconds! And then how much further on would i be in the career of life, eh?

  I speke for millions when i sa i AM NO GOOD AT SOCCER. You can, of corse, watch it from the touchline in that case. Very diffrent.

  ‘Pass… get it out to the wing… move in to the centre… wot are you plaing about at?… Get rid of it.’

  I need hardly tell you the esential thing about a football i.e. nobody need tell me to get rid of it. i do not want it in the first place. Wot is the use of having a soaking wet piece of leather pushed at you? Give me a hadock every time, at least you can eat it.

  However, where would headmaster GRIMES be without the good old game? No longer would he be able to look up from those delicious crumpets, which he eat before a roring fire and observe: ‘The third game ort to be finished in about 20 minits. Cold out there. About 50 below zero. Damn it, forgot to stoke the baths! o well, a spot of cold water did nobody any harm, eh?’

  However, there is no doubt about it the honour of the old skool depend a grate deal on whether you can score more than wot i may litely call ‘the opposition’. Scoring more than the ‘oposition’ is practically imposible, but it sometimes hapen. Beware when it do becos you hav to bang yore spoon on the table, just when you want to help yourself to the jam, and yell RA, RA, RA! Well done SKOOL, SKOOL, SKOOL!

  And who is it who have achieved this sukcess? None other than the games master, who hav given his life, his time, his bootlaces and his premium bonds into making the 1st XI into a well-oiled footballing machine. There are lots of diffrent kinds of games masters, but there are usually 2 types who are able to be distinguished by us weeds on the touchline e.g.

  Type One: He do no not sa anything: he put his hands in his mack and watch. After about 17 minits of the first half he is heard to sa ‘O, potts-rogers’. He knock out his pipe at half-time when the team are sucking lemons and whisper: ‘good show, get on with it.’ Then he relapse into silence and, about 2 minits from time, sa ‘o god’.

  The other type of games master is exactly the oposite. Remembering his own football prime (one day we must go into the rekords of games masters, must we not?) he think he can score a gole with his own voice. Some of them can: or ort to be able to.

  ‘Mind you, there are some who think soccer is super.’

  ‘COME ON, ST. CUSTARD’S… GET INTO HIM… PASS!… MARK YORE MAN!… BLOW YORE NOSE… INTO THE CENTRE…. NO, THE CENTRE NOT THE ARTERIAL ROAD… GET IT IN!… COME ON NOW! SHOOT!…’

  This is the last desparing cry. Lots of games masters have been carted awa murmuring faintly ‘Shoot!’ In 999 cases if they were aiming at gole someone missed: but ocasionaly the shot hit the mark. And it was an elfin-ray pistol with atommic atachment that do the damage.

  A TEACHER’S WORLD

  ‘The New Year stretches before us, molesworth,’ sa fotherington-tomas, skipping weedily.

  ‘Wot of it?’ i sa ‘Wot of it, o weedy wet? It will be the same as any other, all geom.fr. geog ect and weedy walks on sunda.’

  ‘It was just — well, have you ever thort of becoming a skoolmaster when you grow up?’

  Curses! Curses! That i should live to see the day when these things were spoken!

  ‘Sa that agane,’ i grit, ‘and i will conk you on the head and/or thoroughly bash you up.’

  ‘Do not,’ he sa, ‘get into a bate, i was only trying to help. A skoolmaster is better than a fashion designer. Besides, you hav all the qualifications.’

  ‘Hav i?’ i sa, in spite of myself. ‘How super, fotherington-tomas. Tell me about them, go on o you mite.’

  ‘You are qualified,’ sa fotherington-tomas, ‘becos you can frankly never pass an exam and have o branes. Obviously you will be a skoolmaster — there is no other choice.’

  Enraged i buzz a conker at him. It miss and strike the skool dog wandsworth who zoom across the footer field at mach. 1 and trip the reff cheers cheers.

  As it hapen this witty conversation take place during the 2nd XI footer match v porridge court. There comes a warning shout from the spektators. fotherington-tomas skip back weedily into gole and i remane where i am, a bleeding hart on the left wing.

  All the same the conversation have me worried and affekt my game. (See report)

  ‘For the rest of the match molesworth 1 was not in the smashing form which have earned him the soobriquet of the “Dribbling Wizard.” He was not fastening on to his passes.’ (m. thinks: you mean when someone hack a huge muddy ball in my direction? Wot a pass.) ‘The opposition had him at sea.’ (m. thinks: it’s amateurs still at prep skool, isn’t it? Or are porridge court buying players?) ‘Where was that body swerve? That familiar jink?’ (m. thinks: Gone, my dear. Absolument disparu like mother’s mink.)

  And so it is the old story. The better team won, ha-ha. All clap each other on the back and hug each other. ‘Where are your lovely flowers, molesworth, which porridge court spartak hav given you?’ ‘i hav thrown them to ye olde matronne before disappearing into the dressing room.’ Well you kno wot go on in there. WAM BIFF SOCKO ZOOSH. CRASH. BASH. Headmaster GRIMES emerge smiling. ‘A little disappointing but we must learn to swallow defeat.’

  ‘Of corse,’ sa mater. ‘How are nigel’s spots?’

  ‘Hav he got spots? gosh chiz i haven’t had measles yet myself, i must get awa from this.’

  ‘i was a little surprised to find him playing, nigel is so delikate, so thin, so nervy, so tense, so neurotick (strike out the word which do not apply), i felt that he mite perhaps hav been in bed ect….’

  And so it go on at football matches. But, as that nite i lie awake on my downy couch hem-hem in the PINK DORM the conversation come back to me as it was a nightmare. Me a Skoolmaster! Me a BEAK! Me an Usher! Wot an idea — and yet look around you. There are so many of them that it is obviously a fate which is difficult to avoid.

  My head nods the tired brane drowses, i slip i slide (peotry THE BROOK) into merciful oblivion. Soon the dorm resound with a steady note plaster falls off the ceiling, the paint blisters pop. My snores join the others but there is no rest i am shaken by a terible NIGHTMARE.

  i am sitting at the master’s desk looking with horor at a see of faces, fat ones, thin ones, contorted, spotty, green, and black ones, there is no doubt of whose they are — it is 3B.

  And who is that horid creature dodging behind gillibrand and trying to conceal the fact that he is chewing buble gum? It
is me, molesworth I chiz chiz chiz. i am teaching myself!

  ‘Boy!’ i rasp, in a voice i can scarcely recognise it is hoarse and thick with pasion. ‘Boy, stand up. Wot is yore name?’

  ‘molesworth i, sir.’

  ‘That is very interesting, molesworth very interesting indeed. Can it be, however, that you are having some difikulty in enunciating? i thort there was some slight suspicion of er congestion in the mouth? Some er impediment of the speech?’

  ‘N—no, sir. Nnnnnnn—no, sir.’

  ‘BOY HOW DARE YOU?’

  My face is red as a tomato i shake with rage my eyes are those of a MANIAK. Like any other master i hav forgotten that i was ever a boy i hav forgoten brave noble fearless youth cheers cheers. My hand go back like a flash and i buzz the red chalk striking the victim on the nose. The rest of the klass titter they are sicophants and toadies i diskard them.

  ‘If there is another sound i shall keep the whole klass in. Molesworth, go outside and remove that disgusting objekt.’

  It is too horible. i struggle to awake but the nightmare continue.

  It is still the same lesson and i am the master. Everything is normal i am feeling a trifle lazy and set the boys some geom propositions to get on with. Before me is a pile of uncorekted exercise books i pop outside for a quick cig and return to study a book on grips and tortures for boys. i am immersed in this when i hear a sound.

  ‘Sir,’

  (A spasm of anoyance run through my frame. i pretend not to hear.)

  ‘Sir, sir, sir please sir.’

  CURSES! Is the child not to be put off? am i never to be rid of his importunity? Wearily i raise my bespectakled face and gaze at him over a mountane of exercise books and bottles of red ink.

  It is me, molesworth I chiz chiz chiz — i am teaching myself.

  ‘Well, wot is it molesworth?’

  ‘Wot is the verb-noun infinitiv, sir?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The verb-noun infinitiv, sir. It sa in the Shorter Latin Primer…’

  ‘All right all right. i heard you the fust time’ (thinks: verb-noun infinitiv? i dunno. search me.)

  Open lat. grammer under cover of books. shufle shufle. Sweat pour from my brows i must play for time. i cover my action with stinging words.

  ‘So molesworth you do not kno the verb-noun infinitiv? Wot crassness, wot ignorance ect…’

  Masters ushally keep their cribs and answer books in the dark depths of their desks and wot a collection there is in there — kanes, beetles, chalk, thumscrews, old tin soldiers which hav been confiskated, fotos of gurls, bat oil, fleas and cobwebs.

  in here i find the lat. grammer. i prop it against a tin of pineaple chunks and find the answer. My blak beak’s heart is filled with relief. Also i thirst for revenge, i switch to geom and make the chalk squeak with the compass on the blak-board until all howl it is worse than molesworth 2’s space ship.

  SCREE SCREE SCREE SCREE delicious torture! i draw a collossal Angle A and make it equal to Angle B. Gloat Gloat. Wot does it matter if it is half the size? pythagoras could make an elephant equal to a flea…

  Restlessly i toss from side to side in my bed. Can it be that i have eaten too much skool cheese? Why can i not awake? The nightmare continue…

  am i popular? Do the boys like me? O grief. perhaps they do not. i will do anything. tomow i will read to them. i will give them the water babies that always sla them. it sla me too. Poor tom. And yet… are they making enuff progress? perhaps it should be the confidential clerk by t.s. eliot. But will that make me popular hem-hem?

  THE BELL! The BELL!

  I am telling a story about how i won the war. WEEE PING EEEAUOOWOO. Men, there is a nest of pea shooters under that map of the world i want you to silence them. CHARGE TA-RAN-TA-RA. BANG BONK BISH. Who zoom past then? it is molesworth 2 beating us up in his super-jet speed hawk ur ur ur ur. Take cover, Sigismund, these boys are fiercer than the mau-mau and many look like them. This is rebelion and the boys mean business. Give me my kane i will die like a man.

  THE BELL.

  Why have not mrs grabber given me the ushual 50 cigs for an xmas box? Where are my yelow socks and pink tie? i am alone the skool is empty. Where are the boys? Gone. it is the old story, caruthers, too many masters chasing too few boys. Too many…

  THE BELL.

  And this time it is the skool bell bidding me rise and face the chalenge of the new year hem-hem. Sun shine, birds sing, skool sossages frazzle in the kitchen — hurrah hurrah i am not a master after all. I stride forth with new knoledge e.g. even masters hav their problems, i will remember that in future.

  MOLESWORTH WOT ARE YOU DOING WITH YORE HAIR UNBRUSHED YORE SHOES UNLACED AND WEARING ONE FOOTER SOCK ECT? DO 1000000000000 LINES.

  So you see. There you are. There’s nothing you can do about them.

  2

  HURRAH FOR EXAMMS

  Do examms hav any teror for you, clots? Are the 11-plus, G.C.E., common entrance ect preying on your tiny mind? Are you posessed with a feeling that you may fale? HAV YOU NOT WORKED HARD ENUFF IN THE PAST, EH? Perhaps you may not enjoy a briliant future as an atommic physisist?

  It is strange that i, molesworth, the goriller of 3B, do not share these fears with you. Observe with what confidence i stride into the examm room with new sharpened old h.b., bungy, ruler and a stop watch on ye olde chippendale desk. And wot then? I take off my coat, roll up my sleeves and fold my stout arms awaiting the q’s with impatience. Not for me the worried frowns of les autres, those careworn looks. When the Beak bring round those papers which smell so swetely of printer’s ink this is wot i sa:

  Q.1. Complete the following series TR. S.G.P.

  ME: Potty!

  Q.2. Write the nex 3 numbers in this sequence: 1. 79. 232. 6 billion.

  ME: Larrfably easy!

  Q.3. A stupid old man walked 6 paces to the east, 12 to the north, stood on his head, then ran 100 yards at 100 m.p.h. Where is he?

  ME: Too simple for words!

  And so it go on. Of corse, criticks may point out that i occupy the lowly position of 9th out of 9 in 3B and am in some danger of relegation to div. 3. Why dost thou always put the obj in the nom, clot, aussi? Alas i canot deny the truth of these harsh words. Wot, then, is the sekrett of my sucksess in examms?

  Hist, cave, come close felow skolars and suferers of the world of space and listen with all thy mitey ears, which, no doubt, hav not seen a towel for years.

  My sucksess is not due to any stroke of good fortune but to careful planning in the past in association with my grate chum and felow research worker hem-hem wet peason. The results of our activities can now be anounced to the world i.e.

  1. The molesworth/peason electronick brane which is disguised as a stop-watch. This amazing gadget can answer the most dificult question in a matter of secs enabling the skolar to sit back after 5 minutes with a look we kno so well in others which sa, ‘That’s pappy ect.’ Any fule can use it and no beak will suspeckt.

  2. The molesworth/peason portable roving eye. This is an intrikkate system of mirrors which can be flicked out of the poket (along with fluff, beetles, old cig. ends, stamp swaps ect) when the Beak is not looking and, in the space of 1/8 secs can obtane the answers from all the other candidate’s papers. The portable roving eye hav one serious operational defeckt, however. It hav been known to get 15 diffrent reports, all of which sa Puellam amas puer, which, for some reason always get a cross aganst it and o marks.

  3. Another triumph of science is the new molesworth/peason very high frequency radio set so that all boys can talk to each other on a wave length so high that no Beak can hear i.e.

  CALLING BADGER ONE, CALLING BADGER ONE. HOW DO YOU HEAR ME, EH?

  The molesworth/peason Portable roving eye hav one serious defeckt.

  THY SWETE VOICE IS LOUD AND CLEAR, NIT-WIT WOT CAN I DO FOR YOU?

  CALLING BADGER ONE. WOT IS THE ANSWER TO NUMBER THREE?

  X TO THE POWER OF A OVER BETA, CLOT, AS ANY FULE KNO. WOT DO YOU MAKE OF NUM
BER ONE?

  NOTHING.

  SAME HERE WE HAD BETTER CALL UP FOTHERINGTON-TOMAS WHO ALWAYS KNO.

  O.K. BADGER ONE. OUT.

  So, by a carefull system of cross-checking each boy in the examm can get exactly the same answers.

  Two further inventions upon which me and my emminent colleague are working are a magnifying glass for thumbnale cribs and a pill which send the Beak off to slepe. So why be worried, restless and iritable as examms approche? Give your mater and pater the poor skoolmasters confidence by yore calm attitude. These epoch-making products are on the market now, so send for catalog at once.

  KO-EDDUKATION AT ST. CUSTARD’S

  Hay ho! Wot a lot of problems we dere little chaps of the 20th century hav to face — there are H-bombs, missiles, spacemen, russians, yanks, electronick branes, headmasters, apart from the weedy ones in the arith books. Now as if these various chizzes are not enuff there is another i.e. i rede that in the society of the future there will be no such thing as boys skools and gurls skools. This can only mean ko-eddukation and already there are millions and trilions of brave noble and fearless boys who are being submitted to this fearful torture chiz chiz.

  IT IS TIME THE SKANDAL WAS EXPOSED!

  It is easy to immagine wot hapen at these ko-eddukational skools and we must rite it down fearlessly. It is time the people knew. Pause while this scruffy scribe draw the CURTAIN aside.

  Scene; a klassroom. This is much as ushual with blotch in the inkwells, ice cold radiator, railways carved on the desk, portrate of caesar crossing the rubkon (1896), bits of aple core and beak’s desk bulging with artikles which he hav confiskated. A klass is in progress with all the boys gazing out of windows with their mouths open and all the GURLS looking intent, eager, keen ect.

  THE BEAK: molesworth, wot is the first rool of the 4 concords in lat.