The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3152 by Angharad Copyright© 2017 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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“You look tired, Mummy,” observed Danielle.

“If you’d sat through two hours of an examiners’ meeting, you would too.” I said back to her. Am I really doing the right job? I thought to myself. Then people say how good I am at it or how nice it is to work with me and I wonder if they’re telling the truth, or are they just being polite?

“Isn’t that better than sitting the exams, Mummy?” asked Livvie, ever the pragmatist.

“My staff and I work harder than any of our students throughout the year,” I declared believing every word of it as true.

“Yeah but you’re getting paid for it.”

“Remember, in order to be on my side of the exam paper, I had to pass exams too, which involved three years of my initial degree plus three more of the second and several more for my doctoral one. I’ve paid my dues, too you know.”

“But you know the answers to the questions, so sitting the exams would be easy-peasy.”

“Liv, we have to construct the question so it gives our students a chance to show what they know and how they interpret it. Then we have to devise a marking plan for scoring the answers. That’s all agreed by a committee. Then we have to invigilate the exams, mark them, second mark any unusual marks or answers. Notify the students of their marks and meet again to discuss and evaluate the results. The students sit the papers and clear off pretty well as soon as they finish them, usually to a week or two of parties.”

“Don’t you go to any of the parties?” asked Hannah.

“Bet they don’t have jelly and ice cream,” said Trish dismissively.

“I don’t particularly like parties,” I told them.

“I do,” said Danielle and the others agreed.

“What’s wong with parties, Mummy, don’t you wike pwaying games?”

“They don’t have games, you dummy, they sit around getting sozzled.” Trish rounded on her sister.

“I’m not a dummy, you a dummy.”

“Hey, no fighting,” I instructed, “there are games but not the sort you play, except unconsciously. There is sometimes dancing, sometimes food and sometimes people sit around and talk.”

“Don’t you wike dancing, Mummy, I wuv it.”

“I’m not very good at it, Daddy is. I don’t drink much alcohol, so not interested in that either, and unless it’s a good dinner party with excellent guests, I’d rather stay at home.”

“What’ so special about the guests, Mummy?”

“If they’re not very interesting, it would be like any ordinary party, full of boring morons that I wouldn’t normally speak to, and after a few drinks they’re even more moronic. So I’d rather stay home.”

They all laughed, probably the word, ‘moron’. It does tend to invite ridicule of the person it’s used to describe. That took me back to a sketch I saw years ago, probably from, Not the Nine O’Clock News. In it President Reagan had given a speech and the crowd was calling for more. More, Ron,’ they were calling and as the speed of it picked up... It tickled my funny bone. I suppose it could have been the cartoonist in the Guardian. I can’t remember.

“You’re a snob, Mummy,” said Danielle, hitting the nail squarely on the head. “We’ve been looking at ‘Desiderata’.”

“Oh Max wassisname’s poem.” I replied thinking it was years since I had read it and at first reading it seems amazing, then on further consideration is full of platitudes and contradictions. Suggesting you avoid the noisy but listen to the ignorant because they have a right to their opinion—then kill ’em. That last bit might be mine.

Danielle bored us all the way home telling her younger audience that Max Ehrmann was such a wonderful writer. I preferred the writings of his contemporary, Robert Frost who I learned recently was a good friend of the English poet Edward Thomas, and in fact Frost’s poem ‘The Road Not Taken,’ was inspired by a series of walks Frost took with Thomas, where Thomas agonised and dithered about his future. There was a programme on Radio 4* about it, or about Thomas and his nature writing—he was very fond of the English countryside and wrote extensively about it. Naturally I enjoyed it (no pun intended).
Thomas is often classified as a War Poet because he was killed during the First World War. Quite why he joined up, I don’t know, because he was aged thirty six and with wife and family and could have avoided it. Instead he was shot during the battle of Arras in 1917. In fact Thomas began life as a critic and book reviewer and it was suggested that it was Frost who told Thomas his prose was like poetry and he should try writing poetry with the same rhythm. It’s also suggested, Frost’s poem caused Thomas to enlist as he took the meaning personally and stopped dithering.

Life is cruel at times, the news is filled with stories of hate and malice from the use of poison gas in Syria on civilians, including children, twenty eight of whom died, to a lorry being driven into a crowd in Sweden. How people can even consider these actions let alone carry them out, sickens me. It’s designed to outrage me and promote anti-Muslim feelings apparently strengthening the resolve of those who wish to support various terrorist groups including ISIS, presumably by some sort of reverse psychology. Mind you, the radicalisation of mainly loners by these terror organisations is at time seemingly, quite clever and being lone wolf killers are very hard to predict or intercept. The sad thing is they are usually people who were either born in the country they attack, but to foreign parents; or had lived there for many years.

I suspect they are very sad individuals who have a chip on their shoulders about the size of a house and who blame their own inadequacies on everyone else. This is seized upon by the terrorist recruiters and they groom them, encouraging the hate presumably with the opportunity to hit back at their enemies.

I accept that sometimes individuals have received racist or religious abuse from the natives in their locality, probably as children, which probably shows why racism is a crime and the effects it can have on, especially, young minds. It’s so easy to insert a negative into someone’s life and very difficult to remove it. My one to one tutorials sometimes brought up negative feelings which prevented, especially female students, from succeeding because some significant adult, usually a parent, had told them they were wasting their time at university and they were too dumb to succeed. Occasionally, I was able to help them see the falseness of the statement and to overcome it; in others, I suspect a significant minority, they went on to see the negativity as a self-fulfilling prophecy and left the university without a degree, probably to go anddo something else and fail at that, too.

* ‘In search of Edward Thomas.’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08kxyks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thomas_(poet)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost