Mel's Meanderings Brave New World Day 45

When I got my Professorship at Coventry University some years ago, it was basically for setting up and leading a new Post Graduate Sports Law Course. My ex-daughter-in-law, Jenny with two hard won Doctorates under her belt ( is that an appropriate term for a woman? Maybe should be “ under your garter… ) was very scathing and dismissive of it. “ How many Papers and Dissertations have you had published ? “ she asked , rhetorically as she knew full well that the answer was none. “ “ What sort of Professor are you ? “chimed in my sons, then answered themselves immediately by saying “ The Nuttty One “ Who remembers that film now? I mean the 1963 original with Jerry Lewis, not the awful 1990’s remake. Not sure why you would remake it anyway as it wasn’t great the first time around. Anyway, Nutty Professor or not, I was a Professor and to this day I get letters addressed to me a Professor Stein. Indeed, that’s how I sign myself when I write a letter to The Times. Not that it makes a blind bit of difference because they don’t publish them anyway. But unlike my ex- daughter-in-law and my wife and my daughter-in-law, Rachel, I never got a Masters. Until now. Now, I am a Master of Reality ( not quite like The Master in Dr Who ) but this blog has enabled me to master reality with no need to encumbrance myself, or even to acknowledge, the existence of the uncomfortable bits.

That’s why I have the ability to ignore the uncomfortable bits when I write this and if you ignore the uncomfortable bits (to be distinguished from the naughty bits so beloved of the Monty Python team ) then there’s a wealth of stuff to form the new reality. I left you with a cliff-hanger yesterday of the connection between this scientist who’s been caught seeing his mistress ( early readers may recall I dealt with the death blow to adultery brought by the Big V…but I was wrong because it’s alive and well and kicking and all you need is a bike to cycle over for a bit of hanky panky and then when you’ve been dumped to be told “ on yer bike “ ) and a car chase. In Cumbria on the M6 , the police stopped the driver of an Audi convertible travelling at 100mph on an errand of mercy from Birmingham to Glasgow. The errand was to collect a Christian Dior bag and my thought was that this had to be the Professor bloke getting a pressie for his girlfriend to make the visit worthwhile. As it happens, to add a bit of topping to the story, the driver was uninsured ( So, to avoid a libel suit definitely not the Professor) . I assume that the lack of insurance cover was both in respect of his car and the valuable bag. It seems that after the driver was stopped, the police, being the kind-hearted crew that they are, requested a taxi back to Birmingham for him. Although, actually nowhere in the little news piece did it say whether the driver was male or female.

I had to look very carefully at the date today because for a moment I was sure it was April 1st. Amongst the headlines there was , “ Henry’s longbows fired medieval dum-dum bullets “ I couldn’t bring myself to read the rest of that as thought it might be best left to the imagination. A kind of “ Gangs of London “ meets “ Ivanhoe “ ( actually don’t think he was Medieval, but you get the analogy ) Then, even more surreal “ Businessman who turned to farming crushed by Buffalo “

I mean where was he farming for Heaven’s sake, Oklahoma ? I just had to look up which US State had the most buffalo, by the way although there seems to be little distinction between buffalo and bison. I thought that a “ Bison “ was a male child with mixed sexual feelings.

But moving along, more than half a page about Lenny Henry’s daughter posing as him in emails. Well, I thought, she has inherited his talent for impersonation. There’s more though. A picture of two dogs and the bye-line “ Intrepid duo trained to sniff out knot weed. “ Have to say, my experience of Japanese knot weed is that you don’t have to sniff it out. It’s like the Triffids. It comes looking for you and then you have to spend the rest of your life digging it out, rather than just inhaling its somewhat unpleasant odour.

Had to start a new paragraph for this final peek into the covers of the papers on this day of total insanity. “ Meet X AE A-12“ Seems that for Elon Musk, the billionaire with an obsession with space travel and his musician girl-friend, ‘ Grimes ‘ (not making this up, I promise…. I just don’t have the imagination ) Peter, Paul, Mark and John just weren’t good enough first names for their new son. They didn’t want him to be named after a disciple so they named him after a spy-plane instead. Won’t go into their convoluted thinking about the first part of the name ( I am the Master of Convoluted Thinking and even I would not have got near that) but the A-12 is a reference to the favourite plane of the doting parents, the Lockheed A-12 which is a spy plane built for the CIA in the 60’s. The A also refers to Mummy’s fav song, ‘ Archangel ‘ which coincidentally was also the internal code-name for the plane itself. At least no problems to come at school then, the teachers will just call out “ A, you “ and he’s come flying over to them.

I was going to mention the sub-marine crew who organized a Barbeque during the Lock-Down but that would have been too much of an anti-climax after bullet filled long-bows, trampling buffalo on an English farm, and little A-12 etc.

So, back to the world of intellect and brains. I am surrounded by brainy people in my family. That’s why I hate quizzes. Everybody else knows everything about anything and all I can do is provide the names of obscure authors of even more obscure books. In fact when I was on the treadmill this morning I was reading some of the titles from my collection and “Fugitive Pieces “ by Ann Michaels came on my eye-level and I realized that was probably the best book I ever read in my life time . Out of all the thousands. I read fast and I read voraciously always with three books and the current edition of “The Cricketer “ magazine on the go. Not a lot in this month’s edition, you won’t be surprised to learn as Big V Stopped Play. Makes a change from rain of course. I always marvel at how cricket commentators can fill hours and hours on the radio when there is absolutely nothing going on except for some rain falling and a few bedraggled pigeons on the pitch . Henry Blofield and John Arlott were the masters of that particular art. Some of my friends ( Scott in Scotland ) say that watching cricket is like watching paint dry. In these times of stress the paint drying process can be a welcome alternative to what else is going on in the Reality that I am totally diluting and then re-writing. Welcome to my world.

Think I mentioned very early doors when Sam consigned me to the back seat of our car with my wife driving and when I complained said, “ Welcome to my world, “ We write all of his funny sayings down in a little book and that was one of them. My wife was throwing away a dead plant display that she had created in a glass during a class ( well it wasn’t dead when she made it ) and I suggested that like Monty Python’s parrot it might be only sleeping. No, she said it’s definitely dead which reminded me of a lady bird in the garden of Sam’s home when he was very little. This poor lady bird had got stuck under the glass top of the table and we told by a very concerned two year-old that it was sleeping. However, as it became more and more faded under the glass and as bits of it fell off, that was a view that became more and more difficult to support . Fortunately, eventually he grew up and the lady bird disintegrated altogether.

I was heading somewhere on the quizzes and brains subject when I got diverted. “ Mastermind “ We both love the programme. Just like “ University Challenge “ you get to know the contestants who progress. I was cheering on in the Final a history teacher who taught at Yavneh school in Hertfordshire as I know the headmaster, Spencer well and he had appeared in her introduction on the Final. Sadly she didn’t win and nor did the nice young Scottish student. The victory went to a guy who is a Pub Quiz Master by profession. I mean, come on. I didn’t even know that was a profession, but “Mastermind” being won by a professional? Not sure about that. What next? Is Wimbledon going to be won by a professional? Pause for a sigh over the lost days of amateurism. Gentlemen v Players at cricket using separate changing rooms and being served different teas , Rugby Union when nobody could be paid ( yeah right, ) noble Corinthians riding home the winners of the Grand National trained in their own back yard, Pegasus football team winning the old Amateur Cup Final when such a thing existed. Let’s restore the purity of “ Mastermind “ in the next series

I felt yesterday’s effort might have been a little gloomy and dark if my purpose is to bring a smile to the face of a nation ( or my readers at least, unless somebody out there wants to offer me a column in a National newspaper ) At that point if I am offered money to write it I will be more than happy to turn professional

So, leaving you with a cheery smile on your face, watching Death depart, scythe over his shoulder ( wouldn’t mind borrowing that to cut some of the longer grass in my garden ) on Binky for the moment, I will see you all tomorrow if we are spared. Stay safe.