2008 - The Bearded Tit by Prefers to remain anonymous, Rory McGrath Page B

I wasn’t in the mood for any interaction with these two. I felt my absence was urgently required.
    ‘Er, listen, I’ve got to go.’ I left Critchley and headed down the back stairs to the basement, to modern languages, where I belonged. I picked up the biggest book I could find, opened it in front of my face and scrutinized it. As the maps showing the migration of Latin began to blur, I sensed that the danger had passed. I put the book back on the shelf and I became aware of the smell of gentleman’s cologne. The tap on my shoulder made me jump.
    ‘You get around, don’t you? Modern languages now!’ Neil winked again and left with a cocky, ‘I’ll give JJ your love.’

CHICKEN
    K ramer burst anxiously into the bar. He paced up and down, glancing around nervously.
    He looked troubled. Twitchy and uncertain. Nothing out of the ordinary there, then, I thought. He came up to me at the pinball machine and interrupted a classic studenty discussion about rock music.
    Adrian ‘Headbanger’ Brown was putting forward the theory that the Moody Blues song ‘Nights in White Satin’ was, in fact, ‘Knights in White Satin’, on the flimsy argument that ‘Nights in white satin never reaching an end’ didn’t mean anything.
    ‘What sort of knights would wear white satin, then?’ I asked. ‘I mean, you couldn’t go into battle wearing white satin, could you?’
    There was a murmur of agreement from my fellow drinkers.
    ‘I mean, what would the king say if you turned up to fight for him in a bloody war against the Saxons wearing white satin?’
    A few sniggering nods.
    ‘ Sire, here I am, Sir Nigel de Lingerie, come to give myself for your cause, o my liege .’
    ‘ No suit of armour then, Sir Nigel? ’
    ‘ I find it makes me perspire so, your highness, and restricts my use of the sword and lance. Besides, chain-mail is just so passe! ’
    ‘It’s metaphorical, you twat.’ Headbanger was unshaken in his opinion.
    Kramer tapped me on the shoulder.
    ‘Bad news,’ he said.
    ‘Yes, you are,’ I replied.
    He took a swig of my lager.
    ‘I need to talk to you urgently in my room.’
    ‘Can it wait?’
    ‘No, and I need some chicken soup. Urgently.’
    Kramer sounded serious and I quite fancied some chicken soup.
    ‘So what’s the bad news?’ I asked as Kramer passed me a bowl of soup and a lump of bread that was well past its incinerate-by date.
    ‘Eat your soup, I’ll tell you.’
    It was midnight by now, and eating late-night chicken soup in Kramer’s room had become quite a common occurrence. His aunt Sadie was visiting at the end of term and all four gallons had to be finished.
    ‘Just throw it away,’ I had recommended. ‘Chuck it down the toilet.’
    ‘She’d have a heart attack. You don’t know my aunt Sadie.’
    ‘She’d never guess.’
    ‘You’re kidding; as I said, you don’t know my aunt Sadie.’
    ‘Answer me this,’ I asked. ‘Which is the commonest bird in the world?’
    ‘Do I get a mark for ‘don’t give a shit’?’
    ‘No’.
    ‘It must be a pigeon.’
    ‘No, closer to home.’
    ‘A homing pigeon?’
    ‘No. A chicken. The domesticated hen. There are about twenty-four billion of them worldwide.’
    Kramer shook his head. ‘There wouldn’t be if my aunt Sadie had anything to do with it.’
    ‘They’re descended from the red-jungle fowl, Callus gallus , ’ I said, proud of some new titbits of bird information; chicken nuggets, we’d probably call them now.
    ‘I can’t believe the domesticated hen is of any interest to ornithologists.’
    ‘Well, in fact, ornithology was originally the study of chickens.’
    ‘Now you are talking cock,’ said Kramer. ‘The trouble with chickens,’ he went on portentously, ‘is you never know what they’re thinking. Whenever I’ve looked a chicken in the eye I’ve always thought: what the hell is that bird thinking? It never looks at you back, for a start. Especially if you’re about to wring its neck till it