"Either of you chaps coming over to school?"
I’m trying to take breaks from Twitter—a site that I love and hate in equal measure—because everyone is stuck inside and tempers are running particularly high. And, because everyone is stuck inside and tempers are running particularly high, people who would have previously been doing other things seem to be delighting in picking fights and being incredibly nasty to folks I care about online.
So, a break. Of sorts. And new things to occupy my brain (whatever little of it is left).
One thing I’ve been delighting in for the last three days (or a year, if we’re converting that to quarantine time) is drawing pictures of tired animals in inappropriate clothing. My friend here is a tired sheep in a very warm-looking wool scarf. He’s pretty exhausted but at least he’s warm and snug.
Aside from finding solidarity with animals that have eyebags the same size as mine, I’ve been clinging to anything that feels familiar. Last weekend, I took part in a quarantine knowledge party and one of the presentations (on Victorian boys boarding school novels) prompted me to pick up one of my favourites of the genre: P.G. Wodehouse’s The Gold Bat.
In one corner of the room stood a gigantic globe. The problem—how did it get into the room?—was one that had exercised the minds of many generations of Wrykinians. It was much too big to have come through the door. Some thought that the block had been built round it, others that it had been placed in the room in infancy, and had since grown. To refer the question to Mr Morgan would, in six cases out of ten, mean instant departure from the room. But to make the event certain, it was necessary to grasp the globe firmly and spin it round on its axis. That always proved successful. Mr Morgan would dash down from his dais, address the offender in spirited terms, and give him his marching orders at once and without further trouble.
There are plenty of things around me that make me laugh every day. I’m hoping I can share just a few with you.