God, are You there?

A local Catholic girls’ school was recently infested with rats.  The girls made a fuss, understandably.  The school, understandably, defended itself, saying, in essence: ‘These are not our rats.’  It blamed the food waste generated by commercial premises next door, and complained to the council. 

The school also dismissed the girls’ “hysteria.”  The Health and Safety Officer said it was not an infestation, more a “steady trickle of visitors.”  That’s reassuring.  I’ve visited that school myself.

Councils are not normally responsible for what goes on in private schools, but these were public rats.  The council sanitised the building, and some of its inhabitants, though it took a while.  

Not everyone can wait.  In a school I visited last week, a teacher sanitised himself in front of me.  I walked into the staffroom at the end of the day.  Two teachers were standing chatting, a young man and a woman.  Without interrupting the conversation, the young man put a hand inside his bag, took out a can of deodorant, and sprayed himself twice in each armpit, on the surface of his jumper.

I suppose if you’re talking and you get the urge to spray, you won’t take your top off to do it.  And it’s not something you can hope to hide, like shingles or a fart.  Do it too quickly, and you might look embarrassed.  The young man sprayed methodically, peering at the woman all the time. 

Teenagers spray themselves and sometimes each other, even during class, in places you’d expect to find an odour, on the outside of their clothing or straight down the front of their shirts.  I’d never seen an adult do it.  The lady didn’t blink.  I don’t know what was in her mind, but I couldn’t help thinking: He’s cleansing himself of children. 

Teachers.  You have to watch them.  They won’t always sanitise themselves.  The Head of PSHE (personal, social and health education) at a local secondary school was sacked for starring in some pornographic films.  All the right experience, you'd think, but they said he'd brought the teaching profession into disrepute.  Or the porn industry.  I wonder how he viewed his different roles.  Was he moonlighting as a porn star or a teacher?  And it’s not clear who recognised him naked.  (Stop chuckling, this is serious.)  Another teacher?  A parent?  A pupil?  Someone ratted on him.  Most teachers don’t make films like that.  They don’t have the body.  

Sanitising children is just as much fun.  In the old days, when pupils said a rude word, they had to wash their mouths out with soap.  A mouth for a mouth, or something.  There are teachers in England who still like the old-time religion.  A Catholic primary school was in the news.  Like most schools, it’s got naughty children, but the Head was worried.  She wanted to teach some naughty ones a lesson.  She took them into the prayer room and said she was phoning God.  She told them to lie on the floor, face down.  It was ingenious.  Children stretching out, prostrating themselves – it felt more like an act of penance, and they made a bigger target for His wrath.  

“Hello, God.  Miss Gargoyle here, St Hairshirt’s.  Not so well, I’m afraid.  We have some bad children.  You know already.  Of course.” 

She used her cell phone to make the call.  Ingenious again.  A landline wouldn’t work.  A child knows that.

“That’s right, the ones on the floor.  Can You do something with them?  Really?  Millions of bad children?  All right, God, when You’re able to.  You know where to find them.”

The Decline of the Australian

We learn things in libraries.  Books are serious business.  Humorous books are no exception, it seems.  They're books.  They must be serious too.  We need a good reason to laugh.

In Australia, the new Russell Prize for Humour Writing was recently awarded.  Alex Byrne – not the winner, but the NSW State Librarian & Chief Executive – wrote:

‘Humour writing is not an easy genre to master, and Bernard Cohen and his fellow shortlisted authors have shown how humour is not only there to entertain us but to, perhaps more importantly, raise and promote important discussions about our contemporary culture.’

Raise, promote.  It sounds like the job I never had.  I like the perhaps more importantly.  I find it, well, humorous.  Why not send it in for the next Prize?  It could make some noise.  Sorry, Al, to pick you off like this – I say silly things too – but you did poke your snout above the shelves.  Just keep it down a bit.  You don’t need me to tell you.  I scribble fragments.  You’ve got whole libraries to be quiet in.        

Before I go on – I do go on – I’d better explain the title, The Decline of the Australian.  It doesn’t sound nice, does it?  Not if you’re Australian.  I borrowed it from the BBC – precisely the kind of behaviour that needs to be discussed.  

The BBC article explores why fewer Australians are doing unskilled jobs in London.  Either they don’t need to top up their travel money thanks to the strong Australian dollar, or they're doing professional work like accountancy, or they can’t get a UK visa in the first place, and are going to Bali instead.  One Australian writer said that young Australians have “come of age culturally” and are just not bothering to visit London.  They don’t have to prove themselves now.  No more borrowing.  They’re as good as Britain.

Confusing increased affluence with cultural maturity – that’s another thing Australians are good at.  The Chair judge, Kathryn Heyman, does not make the same mistake.  She knows we’re still screwed up, noting the ‘nervy restlessness in the Australian psyche.’  The winning entry, she goes on, gives us the ‘most elegant kick in the teeth we never knew we needed,’

There were 57 submissions for the 2015 Russell Prize.  At $66 a submission, plus 5 copies of each text in paperback, that makes … a lot of numbers.  Serious business.  The taxman could be interested if no one else.  Perhaps not even him.  The guidelines point out: The provision of the prize money may be subject to the GST.  Not sure yet?  It's that psyche again, or else a one-liner, the trotter in the teeth we weren’t expecting. 

The Chief Executive also refers to the ‘unique Australian sense of humour.’  Come on, Al, we all know where that hails from.  It’s as British as pork pies, which have VAT sometimes.  That’s UK GST, not mad pig disease.  

When he mentioned our contemporary culture, he meant, of course, Australian.  If the Russell Prize focuses on that, it may or may not inspire a sense of identity, but it will, without doubt, encourage insularity. How can culture be invigorated by placing limits on creative expression?  Let writers write, and the rest of us can say, ‘That’s real literature,’ not just ‘real Australian.’

Patrick White won the Nobel Prize for Literature.  He was Australian.  It’s a pretty big prize.  But it wasn’t big enough.  For the psyche, I mean.  Prizes are good.  Next time, though, librarians of Sydney, you might make it ‘The Russell Prize for Serious Humour Writing’ so writers who aren’t serious will know.