STAND UP FOR ENGLISH

The comedian opened up with a rant against post-modernist flash fiction in a stream of consciousness to the audience. It turned into a Professor of Grammar With Laughter from Cambridge University’s Lexical Dept. He couldn’t think of anything funny to say, so he clammed up straight away.

Sod it. He’d have to take a sabbatical and write some material. There was the one about the lap dancer of short stature and the theology postgrad, though he wasn’t sure if it was ironic, offensive, cutting edge, dangerous or just hateful racist bile. He had a gig at Loughborough tomorrow night and he hadn’t gone through his set yet. First, it was time for class. Working Class Speech Patterns in Robert Tressell’s Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

There was a sign above his head. Bad Grammar: A Philosophy Of The Life Unto Itself.

He had spent best part of the morning thinking of new ways of avoiding the c-words: class, capitalism and the actual c-word itself. Lower down the social gradient, See You Next Tuesday Comrade, disadvantaged background, socially excluded, neo-liberalism, money, power, vaginal, hierarchy, laterally mobile and muff.

The Professor’s second favourite thing in the world was his Sheffield steel letter opener. His favourite was Billy The Kid - a collection of grizzly poems edited in 1963 he’d used to teach kids in Kirby with in the early 70s. He’d just finished a quatrain about a young boy who swallowed welly boots filled with rat’s poison for money, when he got the call from the agency. They told him it was on its way.

The letter was postmarked Iraq five days ago. The back of the manilla envelope read: Remitted on behalf of The Baghdad Flying Carpet Emporium Co Ltd. Magical Realist Services. He slid the smooth coldness under the flap and, counting to ten to control his breathing, he carefully removed the postcard.

The card read:

This is a cluster bomb. You are the victim of a literary device. Resistance is inevitable. You will, however, have been killed off by the end.

- My dear Professor. Whatever’s the matter, you look pale?

- The search for signifying content in an ontologically unstable environment has just taken a turn for the subconscious. I need a Lapsang Souchong, a deus ex machina and a dictionary.