@edgarblythe,
I'm out of my depth now. Whoever it was who defaced izzy's book should be traced and informed that remote ripples of his actions continue to emanate into space. I feel sure that if Herr Spengler's parents could have foreseen this event they would have called him Wolfgang or something. Then where would izzy be?
It reminds me of an occasion when I was in the demolition and dismantling business and the head teacher of a Catholic school rang up to see if I might be interested in 200, or so, old desks which had been taken out of service so that contracts for new desks could be signed and the budgets, by which status is measured, could be increased up the various chains of command within one niche infested by the species
paperworkus imalrightjackium and provide a boost to the Gross National Product. Each level being added by the Office of Budget Control. But I'll not expand on that seeing that this is a thread for simpletons.
I have always been artistically drawn towards large numbers of similar objects. The gaudy pebble on the beach was never as interesting as the mass of ordinary ones. And it had struck me that the desks might be renovated and sold to lower-middle-class parents who were seeking to prove the superiority of their genetic constitution by driving their little kids a lot harder than they had been driven themselves. Or as ornaments and garden shed furniture. Or all the lot to a film studio. And they were free. So I took them.
I stored them in a surprisingly small area and took two of them round to a retired cabinet maker I had got to know in the pub who would work for no compensation, other than a pint or two, because he liked nothing better than being busy with his hands and he had a fully kitted-out workshop in his back garden and a termagant in the house. When he had finished with them they would make any lower-middle-class other- improver pair-bond proud to see their offspring sat at them in the evenings and at weekends cruddling over their algebra homework and writing essays about the effects of the El Nino on weather patterns in the USA. And learning the Thersites part for a Dramatic Society's production of Troilus and Cressida with certain passages having been put on Ignore. Presumably because the intended audience would be an aggregate of LMCOIs who wouldn't notice anything anyway apart from how wonderful each one's little monster is performing in the costume made of cut up old nighties, shirts, cornflake packets and such like in which each Mum takes just pride.
When I told him there were 200 he looked at me in a manner which caused me not to pursue the matter any further. But he told me that the timber in them was excellent stuff and could be sold to those engaged in antique restoration. It was when a few were dismantled that I noticed the graffiti on the lids. Blimey I thought, after I had studied a few superficially, 200 true life confessions of kids within a certain time frame, in a mining town and all good Catholics. Not a long time frame because, to mangle Robert Frost--"Something there is that doesn't love a desk".
Some of it was carefully chiselled. All of it, put together, boiled down to "I HATE ******* SCHOOL" with a sub-text relating to the opposite sex.
So I approached the local council chap who was in charge of Contemporary Arts. Displays, exhibitions and PR basically plus about £60 grand a year not including perquisites. He had a well tended moustache. I wanted them to be exhibited. The honest gut feeling of kids of about 15 all laid out. On tables in a smallish annexe. Where Johnny Rotten and Sid came from. And I'll give the guy his due. He saw what I saw with only minor guidance. Not as powerfully. He glimpsed it and said he would approach those responsible for the allocations of monies. Which some call the "swag". When he came back to me about a month later he informed me that after due consideration it had been decided that it wasn't the sort of thing the council's Contemporary Arts were seeking to promote. And, like the cabinet-makers frown, I knew it was no use arguing. I was acquainted with a few of those responsible for allocating monies. I had helped them to get elected.
Later on I found out that a colleague in the demolition business had a collection of doors of ladies toilets from the public buildings he had removed. Usually old-fashioned pubs of the type made popular by the drinking classes. Ones with no access for modern delivery vehicles.
The graffiti in izzy's book is one item. It's a next-to-nothing thing. My 2oo desk lids were as covered in graffiti as this page is. Fluff is not something to get any big ideas about. One can't denigrate swots because some 15 year old girl carefully printed on a desk lid "SWOTS IS HORRID".
