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Bob was eleven: a fact which distressed him somewhat. He'd rather have been twelve but he'd been told that in
order to become twelve he had to be eleven first, so he accepted it and carried on with his life regardless.
It was Tuesday and therefore Bob was at his grandfather's house in South Kensington. For some reason he was always at his grandfather's house on Tuesday - he wasn't entirely sure why. Perhaps, he postulated in private, the rest of the world ceased to exist on Tuesdays and therefore his mother brought him here, to South Kensington, in order to conceal the fact from him. He was fairly sure that his mother was inclined to practise deceptions of this kind. His suspicions had first been aroused when, in order to explain the appearance of an egg-shaped chocolate at his bedside one morning, she had spun him a yarn about a rabbit who went about distributing egg-shaped chocolates to all and sundry, though particularly to well-behaved children. Bob had later discovered that the egg-shaped chocolates came from supermarkets and whilst he had never seen a rabbit in a supermarket he had reason to believe that his mother was a regular shopper at such places; he therefore concluded that it must have been his mother who had purchased the chocolate in question and placed it at his bedside. Why she should want some fictitious rabbit to get the credit for her own generosity he couldn't understand. On this particular Tuesday, Bob was in his grandfather's study, attempting to finish his Latin homework which had to be handed in on the following morning and which was causing him untold grief and stress. The sentence which was giving him an acute sense of vertigo and destroying his calmness was one which read: "Listen boy, for I wish to curry favour with Caesar". Bob wasn't sure what the reference to curries was doing in a Latin sentence and therefore couldn't work out what the English meant, let alone translate it into Latin. His grandfather, who had come into the study to get his pipe, noticed that the boy was looking wildly disconcerted. "What ails you, grandchild?" said the ancient one. Bob explained that he was having difficulty with his Latin homework, whereupon the old man suggested that he should consult the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Bob pointed out that since the Roman Empire had been destroyed a long time previously, the Emperor in question was unlikely to still be alive, thereby making it slightly tricky for Bob to consult him. "A little learning," intoned the aged one, "is a dangerous thing - drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring. There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain and drinking largely sobers us again." Bob asked his grandfather to explain the meaning and, if applicable, relevance of what he had just said. © 2001 Shams Pirani
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