How a dirty old cereal bowl is related to Dumbo the Elephant.

Welcome back everyone, and I hope your half term gave you sufficient time to rest, even though it probably didn’t. Last week I asked for some feedback on the length of my writing. I have currently received feedback from two people, one of whom was my mother, and the other was a bloke called Jo. This tells me one of two things: either no one can be bothered to get up and respond to my request, or no one actually reads any of this and I am wasting my time; only entertaining my mum and a guy called Jo. I suppose another way of looking at this situation is that nobody has actually complained and therefore I am doing something right. Yes, yes I like that one…

Ma’am Reyburn started this site so that people would learn. So far I haven’t really learned anything, and I don’t think any of you have either. But that’s about to change! Every week from now on I shall give you one FREE!!! piece of occasionally relevant news and one FREE!!! very seldom relevant fact. How kind am I?

For anyone who’s interested (and I’m sure everyone is), the irrelevant news piece for the week is that yesterday (the 3rd of March) was the international day of square roots. Apparently they did this because of the date (I.e. today is 3.3.09, and 3 is the square root of 9). How quaint. The irrelevant fact for this week is this: in 1976, a Los Angeles secretary formally married her 50-pound pet rock. Two questions spring to my mind: why? and how?

Well now that the strenuous intellectual task of learning is over, and Ma’am Reyburn’s wishes have been fulfilled, I can get on with other things. I was sorting through a pile of old stuff that my sister had grown out of so it could now be gotten rid of and, wow, I had a couple of laughs. For example there was one children’s movie called Dumbo, which is basically about a big eared young elephant who learns to fly. This amused me, I mean, what type of paint thinners must you be sniffing to come up with a story about a 2 and a half tonne mammal using its ears as a flight tool? And they feed this drivel to small children! It’s rather upsetting to think that all of us were enthralled by such convulent and thrilling plots such as this one when we were younger. Whatever, I moved further into the pile of old memorabilia and found one of my very old music books. This brought back lots of memories, as at one time I had taken a combination of piano, violin, marimba and recorder (which, for those who don’t know, is basically just a glorified whistle). I had stopped recorder because it had a terrible screechy sound, I had stopped marimba because my old school had stopped offering the lessons and I had stopped violin because, frankly, I was utterly useless at it. And yes, I do currently take piano, even though I’m also pretty useless at that, compared to people with names like Malkovicjh Bragolevovikch, or Henry Thackeray, for example. So, with a tear of low self esteem in my eye, I moved on through the box.

My eye was caught by a dirty old cereal bowl, and suddenly the floodgates of memory were opened. This was the bowl that I had used to eat cereal with for the first 8 years of my life, and it was ‘my bowl’; some people have blankies, some people have teddy bears, some people have action figures that they treasure and don’t go anywhere without, and I had my bowl. I remember when I was really young I would fight at breakfast with my brother over the cutlery we got (I ALWAYS had to have the coco-pops spoon). I have obviously grown out of this behaviour, although to be honest at breakfast I occasionally notice that some people of the College apparently have not; the following is an example of something you might hear at breakfast: (Please circle appropriate...)

“No sir/ma’am, it wasn’t my fault, because he stole/ravaged/spat-on my bacon/spoon/plate, so I stabbed him in the eye/kidney/head with my fork/knife/pen. He then punched/kicked/head-butted me in my throat/stomach/leg so I obviously reacted by throwing a tray/table/printer at him. You see, that’s why there is blood/limbs/a mess on the floor and you can’t blame me.”
Really, some of the manners are despicable. Anyway, furthering my quest for old memories I found a tattered old book. I pulled it out and dusted it off and what do you know! It was my first reading book. I can’t remember exactly when I had read it but all I know is that it was an amazing story with an exhilarating plot and well thought out characters with a moral at the end that is very relevant in today’s society. So I picked it up and had a bit of a read. I opened on the first page and there was a picture of a dog. The text said “LOOK.” I turned the page to find a picture of a cat. The text said “LOOK.” The third page contained a picture of a man. And lo and behold, the text said “LOOK.” I turned the page once more, and (this is my favourite part) found the twist in the plot. There was a picture of a dog, a cat, and a man, all together, and the text said “LOOK!” Suck on that, J.K.Rowling.

I was about to pack away the box when I noticed one last thing. A crumpled up, dilapidated old piece of paper with some ink markings on it. Upon further study, the ink markings turned out to be badly written words. In fact, it was the first story I ever wrote. I vaguely remember writing something like this, but I must have been on drugs, because I could not tell what was going on. There was something about a pirate ship, some treasure buried on the moon, clowns and a guy called Steve. How they interlink we will never know, because it will require highly trained problem-solving decipherers to actually read and interpret what I wrote. Although, in all fairness no one can really tell the difference between my handwriting when I was 5 and my handwriting now, much to the frustration of any poor soul marking my work.

So my advice to you is this: If you’re ever really bored on a six and a half day holiday, take out a box of your old stuff and reminisce in good times gone by. But don’t write about it, because then you, like me, will have wasted 5 minutes of a bloke called Jo’s life as he reads about something that is completely irrelevant to society. I thank you very much.

James Hosken