I sat down in a secluded corner of the cafe at the British Library on a break from not working hard enough. I was drinking my green tea and playing hearts on my computer.
Suddenly there was a loud and unfamiliar single pinging sound. It sounded like it came from my computer, but my computer had never made a sound like that before and in any case was on mute. What had gone ping? Had I just had a brilliant idea and not noticed? Wouldn't that just be my luck. I had had a revelation and yet had been too busy wasting my time playing a stupid game on my computer that I hadn't even noticed it.
Then I became aware of unexpected voices from the wall behind me and was momentarily confused, until I turned round and saw that there was a small discreet lift there about the size of a doorway that I hadn't noticed. The ping had in fact come from that, which was a relief as it meant that I hadn't had a brilliant idea after all. My brain has as yet been unfettered by an idea worthy of a ping and a light bulb, but I live in hope.
There was something else I meant to write about from Banter yesterday. We'd been asked to choose our top three lessons from school and I had been reminded of our biology classes at school. We had a teacher called Miss Button who was an incredibly sweet, but rather fragile and meek woman who we took enormous liberties with, taking advantage of the fact that she wasn't the most authorative of people. Me and my friends really were little shits and I wanted to take the opportunity to apologise, whilst getting more laughs for the stupid annoying things we used to do. Every time Miss Button said "mitosis" or "myosis" we would always (and I mean always) say "Your what?" Every time she said "hormone" we would say, "Don't pay her!" It was so relentless and I suppose that is what amused our puerile teenage minds. Thank goodness I have changed and now have a more mature sense of humour. Sorry Miss B.
Anyway I was reminded of the lesson where we had to dissect a rat. We were all given a pin board with a dead rat on it. I remember they were all yellow due to whatever had been used to preserve them and I can still recall the unusual scent that this gave off. The rats were pinned up, spread-eagled by their limbs rather like they had been crucified. I remember wondering if the rat that I was dissecting might actually be the rat Jesus. I think it is reasonable to assume that Jesus would visit all the species in the world to bring them the good news (after all CS Lewis thinly veiled wardrobe allegory famously springs from the idea that Jesus would visit even magical kingdoms) and rats would be no exception. In fact rats probably need Jesus more than anyone, with their antisocial and selfish behaviour. No doubt my little rat Jesus had spent his short life preaching to the rats, telling them not to spread plagues and forage in dustbins and sewers, but instead lead lives where they carried out good deeds for others, like licking the sores of orphaned children clean. I don't know. I'm not a rat. It's hard to know what their moral system would be.
But if I had happened to dissect the rat Jesus then I would go down in rat folklore as a Pontius Pilate figure, hated by generations of rats for depriving them of their rat saviour. In fact given the rat's life span, many generations have alreadh gone by in the last 22 years, so rat Christianity will probably be fully established round the world by now. Pontius Pilate had the advantage of dying before man Christianity had taken a grip and never really knew what he'd done (though presumably the burning in Hell must have given him a clue), but here I am still alive with loads of angry rat Christians with a big bugbear about me. I mean I know that the rat Jesus would have preached a message of forgiveness and turning the other whisker, but you know what Christians are like. They don't seem to bother listening to that and doubtless out there there is some rat version of Christian Voice plotting my downfall. Rats are a powerful enemy to have. It could have been worse. I could have been the mosquito Pontius Pilate - how many generations of those have gone by, how fundamentalists would the mosquitos be by now? How many fatal malaria filled bites would I be getting in my daily life?
So I guess I should count my blessings!
