Minus
“The earth is geoidal, i.e. earth-shaped.”
These words, dictated to me by the geography
master when I was about fifteen years old,
taught me that teachers didn’t really know
all there was to know. Nor, indeed, did they
need to know everything. “I don’t know,
I’ll check and tell you later,” breaks the myth
of infallibility but sets up sympathetic links.
“What do groundhogs eat?” the little girl
asks her classroom teacher. “Spaghetti,”
comes back the instant answer from one
who doesn’t know that every day the child
watches the groundhog that lives in her yard
devour delicate New Brunswick violets.
“Spaghetti, with mushroom sauce, of course.”
Then one day comes the spelling test:
“How do you spell minus?”
“M-I-N-O-S.”
“Wrong. Try again.”
“M-I-N-A-S.”
“Wrong again.
You think you’re so clever.
Everybody knows it’s
M-I-N-U-S.
Don’t we class?”
The class breaks into shrieks and giggles.
Everyone knows how to spell minus:
even the one who has just read how Theseus
followed Ariadne’s thread to escape from
the Minotaur who roamed the Labyrinth
beneath the Cretan Palace of Knossos.
That one was present too, in her own mind,
at the Siege of Minas Tirith, when Gandalf
held five evil kings at bay and Aragorn fought
the nameless Dark Lord who dwelt beneath
the shadow in the land of M-O-R-D-O-R,
a Lord not so powerful M-I-N-U-S his ring.
Excellent and clever with a sharp point as well. I never did well in school, I have always distrusted authority and vested interests.
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Vested interests? I trust them absolutely. I learned to do so in school (painful grimace of irony). I was always worried by the masters who won over the class by picking on the outsiders and showing them up.
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Yeah a short list of professions I do not trust: politicians (but who does) doctors (even our good friend Meg I was initially dubious about) teachers, the police, lawyers, the civil service as a whole, accountants and quite a few others. All have vested interests, which is human and understandable, and on a personal level doesn’t matter a bit, but I still don’t trust them.
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Play outside -half and you’ll grow to dislike flankers! Never trust a back-row forward when you are a half-back. Ireland were magnificent against England. A joy to watch. As for the Wales vs France game …
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Well the less said the better about that game. The Ireland Vs Wales football game was dour tonight with a horrific tackle on an Ireland player
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I read the report, but didn’t see the game. I did see Wayne Barnes’s demolition job … he hasn’t changed much over the years. Those last twenty minutes: “The referee’s equivalent of water-boarding …”
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It wasn’t pretty
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Excellent, Roger! It offers such a fun look at the thinking of children and our all-to-often feeble responses to them as adults. I loved it!
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Thanks, Tanya. I have just come away from a wonderful three and a half hour extended lunch, with friends. It was wonderful. Hopefully, you and some of my other online friends will visit sometime and we’ll be able to do the same thing, or similar! Blessings and best wishes.
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That would be wonderful! Have a great weekend, Roger!
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I bought a lottery ticket … now, if we win …
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Fingers crossed!
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Aha! That’s excellent! Very clever!
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Maybe it’s too clever. I have been working on several re-writes … oh dear! The pa on the back says I’ll leave it for now and keep my worries to myself.
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