But when you capture the starry-eyed attention of a hippy Professor even for the splittest, spliffest second you preserve it better than George W Bush and an O-level certificate.
Long words being lost on both.
But with the hippy Professor you get more dribbling for your buck. And more rotating of the eyeballs. And a higher class of frothing at the lips. For you stand a better chance of spotting a highbrow president on the White House lawn than a hippy Professor in a lecture theatre.
The scholar Benjamin harrowed with fright and wonder, shaking off a Hamlet colour: ‘This master’s student, er Alfred Russel Wallace, wants the full grant to go into the Borneo jungle to look up the bottom of the Bombardier beetle where he says he can prove God exists.’
A lash of pecuniary panic loosens long silk lashes of the laid-back lost-at-sea Professor. ‘Wallace is hardly the first student to take an interest in beetles’ bottoms —’
‘So this the height of modern academia,’ revolts Benjamin. ‘You’re training master’s students to look up beetles’ bottoms?’
‘Remind me, Wallace — private student or public scrounger?’
‘Er … public scrounger.’
‘Two ten-minute online tutorials max. C-minus.’
‘Wallace’s main thrust er — “The Bombardier beetle shoots a cocktail of chemicals from a rear-end tailpipe to ward off advancing predators”,’ fires Benjamin in the face of academic indifference. ‘“And sports a combustion chamber and a precision set of high-speed valves revealing engineering in miniature that should not have evolved” …’
‘Comes in handy against invading television naturalists,’ explains Professor Knees puffing. The burbling backcloth of black breaks with violence of a billion volts to stir-crazy flashes of violet and bullets of nuclear rain. ‘And did the militant creationist Wallace cover both sides?’
‘Er … no.’
‘A whole paragraph?’
‘What’s a creationist?’
Crazy-cat curls cascade a pillow of fluff and with one eye half-cocked the Professor a rare burst, ‘See, your creationist believes the world was created before the first episode of I Love Lucy by a fascist mass-murdering empire-building psychopath who now denies creating planet Earth on grounds of diminished responsibility.’
‘That might account for the Spice Girls,’ laments Benjamin and launching a blue smoke missile. ‘What grade you giving Wallace?’
Soft falls fairy-dust to belie silk-black locks and baby-blue peepers.
‘Well I’m giving Wallace an A-plus,’ rules Benjamin and scribbling the submission with the single house pencil stub.
The Meaning of Life no longer taboo. Food for the chosen few. And God will not abandon him alone without a five-star life-raft. Split-sail to a brave new world. With ballast of Culture. Reason. Logic. Like champagne shafts of moonlight on a fluted blue sea.
Vine-thick dreadlocks strangle the throat. The cold sting of concrete suckers the soles of your feet. Steel pan sizzles dead spliff. Victoria Falls the pool of murky London water. Drip-dry the last drop. Benjamin slumps stone-like the portside bed and stares stir-free the speckly blue night-light.
Bats, moths, locusts-in-battledress boogie-woogie the bars of the window.
Benjamin keels the black box.
Hello, Darkness. My old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.
The brain balmed by a sunken Logic.
The bewitching spell of honeysuckle and orchids heavy-hang the lids of the outlandish offshore Professor.
Shadows scatter like seaside memories the dreamcatcher of white bricks.
Cold-tripping to a land of teddy bears and toy soldiers.
And Jennifer.
Just Jennifer.
*****