have you heard the one about ... ?

There are so many people who are clever it’s sickening. Sickening, obviously, because they’re cleverer than me. And there’re just so many of them.  Most people I know in fact. 

Just yesterday, three quarters of the way through an average bottle of fizzy with the Sensational Susie and her visiting friend from London (and without any pre-warning whatsoever) she announced that her friend (the Remarkable Rhona) had annoyed her by talking in the past pluperfect third person subjunctive, or some such bollocks. I had no idea what she was talking about. It’s not that I didn’t have an education once, indeed I even did a term of Latin before being thrown out.

It’s just that if I did ever know what she meant, I don’t now.

In fact the more I think I know, the more I know how much I don’t know, and furthermore anything I might once theoretically have known, and been able to expound on with some authority (in the past pluperfect subjunctive if necessary), has seeped through the gaps between my synapses and is no more. I wonder what it was?

Suddenly I realise that for quite some time I have not been holding up my end of the conversation with any great alacrity. Furthermore, it has come to light, just moments before the punchline, that the jokes I once relied upon to disguise the fact that I had no real intellect or knowledge deeper than Mr Google can provide, have deserted me en masse. 

I sit bewildered, bemused and quite clueless. 

In part I blame my children who have turned out to by far more intelligent than me (this is all their father’s fault) and with whom I can no longer hold a conversation unless it revolves around what the dogs have chewed up today or what’s on special offer in the shop.

In a moment of introspection and angst I mentioned this to them this weekend after reporting the SS/RR conversation which I didn’t understand. I said I thought it might be caused by the ‘year’ I’ve had, but I am relieved and absolutely delighted to report that they say, and with some authority for they have known me all their lives, that I have never known what I’m talking about, and have seldom been able to deliver the correct punchline to the jokes I tell.  In fact I’m no different, intellectually-wise to how I have ever been! 
I just have different hair.

But just so you know ...

A pleasant fellow driving down a quiet Wiltshire lane was just passing a farm yard when without warning a cockerel ran into the road in front of him. Whack, the cockerel disappeared under the wheels of the car in a flurry of feathers. The man being a careful driver and a kind man to boot, was much shaken by this experience and devastated to discover the cockerel was quite dead. So being an honourable sort of chap, he pulled into the farm yard and rang the doorbell of the farm house. When the farmer appeared he said, somewhat nervously, “I think I have killed your cockerel, please allow me to replace him”.  The farmer looked him up and down, but this being Wiltshire wasn’t going to argue with a generous stranger, so replied, “Suit yourself chum, you’ll find the hens round the back.”

mwah ha ha ha ha ha