Garry Potter And The Same Old Nonsense, David Backhim [the mitten read aloud txt] 📗

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author, KJ Rolling, a former male prostitute for the Conservative Parliamentary Party, was a twice winner of the Netherlands downhill skiing championships in the 1990s and is one of the world’s great air guitarists. His rendition of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Black Dog’ being a firm bedroom favourite. His debut album, released in 1994, peaked at 840 in the Norwegian charts, after which he has never looked back ( owing largely to a suspect neck). Born on September 31st 1969, having originally been conceived on the night of the 29th of February 1947, the author is 432nd in line of succession to the throne of Belgium . He is also reportedly one of Osama Bin Laden’s favourite writers, and he has recently earned the coveted accolade of ‘most promising newcomer’ from the Wolverhampton Deep Sea Diving Association for the eighth year in succession. KJ Rolling, a reluctant sex symbol and earmarked to be one of the faces for future radio, lives alone with 35 lions and a dwindling herd of gazelles.

GENESIS
“Born under a bad sign
I’ve been down since I began to crawl
If it wasn’t for bad luck
I would have no luck at all” (Booker T.Jones/William Bell)
In the beginning, God created man and, to cut a long story short, I was born ( under a wand’rin star) many many years ago in a maternity hospital far away ( while shepherds watched their flocks by night), because there was no room at the inn.
I was the product of what sociologists might describe as a ‘mixed marriage’: my mother was a woman, and my father was a man, so I had a very difficult upbringing. In fact, my family were so impoverished that we were the only household in our housing estate who didn’t own a gun. My parents, bless their cotton socks and pink pajamas, always wanted me to go far – preferably as far as possible. The furthest however that I could manage was Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight . I would have went further, but I couldn’t get over the wall.
Sorry Mum and Dad, but I was a fucking accident – literally. I was the product of a night of pre-marriage passion that had more consequences than the loving couple had anticipated. Yes folks, I wasn’t exactly planned. It was an inglorious debut for me, and I have striven hard to maintain my habit of ensuring that things don’t go according to plan ever since. Mind you, when you plan anything involving humans, then you are almost certainly doomed to failure.
My long-suffering parents were thus obliged to marry a little sooner than might otherwise have been the case, and to be fair to them, their marriage proved durable, and I cannot complain about parental abuse or neglect, which leads to the obvious question of what has prompted me to become an alienated, angry young(?) man? The answer is circumstances, pure and simple… or put another way – people! I am increasingly coming round to the opinion that the world would be a happier, more peaceful planet if there were no people on it. Retreating further from the well-intentioned but mindless morons who violate my lebensraum, I feel that I no longer belong in this world where my peers get their thrills from copious amounts of liquor and from watching violent movies at the cinema.
Most annoying of all, I am surrounded by self-important types in their big cars, big houses, dressed in their shirt and tie, who have not got a fraction of my numerous talents. The sentiments of ‘The Philosopher’ in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes that, inter alia, ‘life is useless’ are readily endorsed by this writer. Before you drool over my miscellany of ramblings, rants, and really ridiculous ‘rubbish’ which are the very epicentre of my alienation, let us first embark on our Magical Mystery Tour via ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’, so come with me into a land where the eyes of man have never set foot.

TOM BROWN’S SCHOOLDAYS
“When I was at school, education could go hang, so long as a boy could hit a six, sing the school song very loud, and take a hot crumpet from behind without blubbing” ( extract from Blackadder Goes Forth).
When I was a little nipper, Norn Iron had the two-tier, antiquated education system in which eleven year olds were shunted, usually without their consent, into either grammar schools for cleverdicks or secondary schools for ‘thickos’, depending on their performance at the eleven-plus selection tests. Only at the behest of one-time education supremo, Martin McGuinness no less, is this system being earmarked to follow its’ English cousin to the knacker’s yard to be replaced by something vaguely related to comprehensive schools.
It was quite amusing watching the stink that Mr.McGuinness created as ‘his’ reform stirred the otherwise dormant Northern Irish middle-classes to an activity alien to them – protest. Yes folks, while the working classes of both communities tore each other’s hair out and plenty more besides, during ‘the Troubles’, the I’m Alright Jack Nimbys of the Northern Irish middle-class sat idly by, tut-tutting the sectarian bloodbath. It took a threat to their own self-interest to arouse the blue rinse bourgeoisie from their conservatories.
Norn Iron, you see, has been ‘blessed’ by an education system where the intelligent Davids and Sarahs at eleven go on to highly-reputable academies of learning to be taught to become captains of industry, while the stupid Jimmys and Sharons at the same tender age brace themselves for schools notorious for producing, perhaps through no fault of their own, many under-achievers. A welter of education statistics has confirmed the disparity in achievement between the high-flying grammar schools and the considerably less academically successful secondary schools. The absolute need to take my pew at a decent seat of learning was therefore seen as a life-changing crossroads moment in which I simply had to fulfil my early promise at primary school, during probably the best years of my life, and ensure success at the 11-plus.
So it came to pass that this young infant prodigy with ‘brains to burn’ (although I have yet to fulfil my potential and incinerate them, despite a couple of flirtations with hallucinogenics) managed to pass the Eleven-plus. I seemed destined for academic success and a wonderful career, going to work each day armed with a briefcase, shirt and tie (oh yes and trousers too) to do my stint at the office, throwing my weight around and then driving home in my big car to my big expensive, suburban house. Somehow, this high-flier has successfully managed to avoid realising this pseudo-American dream which has permeated many burghers on our side of the big pond.
Where did this young smart Alec go so horribly wrong – or even right? Well, I was actually encouraged by my father to consider a possible venture into the crazy world of an architect. Fortunately, this young man had other ideas. I mean, have you ever seen the sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus about the accountant, Mr.Anchovy, who visits the vocational guidance counsellor whereupon the accountant (might as well be an architect or office worker or whatever paper shuffler) confesses to the career adviser his desire to become a lion-tamer? The counsellor (played by John Cleese) helpfully suggests that the accountant (played by Michael Palin) should not attempt to get to the position of lion-tamer in one drastic career re-shuffle, but instead via stages, starting peculiarly with banking. Quite how banking is a step away from accountancy towards lion-taming is open to question, but this young genius at least managed to swerve these dreadfully dull but eminently respectable white-collar positions – much to my parents’ disappointment.
Personally, I blame my school for my development/deterioration, but then who doesn’t? You see, my academic factory is one of those Norn Iron pompous grammar schools that takes itself too seriously. This pseudo-public school is more interested in winning the apparently coveted rugby union Schools’ Cup to achieve bragging rights than in the academic progress of its’ students which is taken for granted, given that many of the pupils’ mummies and daddies are teachers and dare I say it, accountants and bankers. Whether any of them progressed towards the exalted position of lion-tamer, I am blissfully unaware.
Oh yes, I excelled at O Levels and A Levels, earning a passport to university, a truly pioneering step for someone from my family circle. The nearest any of my relatives got to university was driving past a local campus. Despite my academic ‘success’, I felt like a second-class citizen at a school where it was my misfortune not to be a rugger bugger. I had a very good attendance record at school and there was no bullying or disciplinary issues of note. I was just an anonymity at secondary school, an apprentice loner, largely keeping my large head down in apparent practice for the system that lay ahead. Mind you, although never ‘picked on’, I did still float from one clique to another, without belonging in any particular circle – a trait that I have long since perfected. I don’t have any particularly fond memories of attending an all-boys school. Like George Mallory, the Everest explorer, I simply climbed the mountain of school because it was there.
I was especially interested in such ‘useless’ subjects as history and politics, but a remedial no-hoper at the sciences. In fact, I was a spectacular failure at physics, which was like a foreign language to me. In the school Christmas exam, I earned the flattering mark of 17 per cent which was airbrushed up to 20% in my school report, on account of a school policy that dictated that minimum marks of 20% had to be recorded on one’s report. My ‘folks’ were horrified at the disgraceful 20%. Little did they know that the powers that be had generously improved my marks. I managed to fluke my way to a staggeringly impressive 28% in the summer physics exam, whereupon physics and I went our separate ways, very much by mutual consent. Had it not been for the multiple-choice format of the physics tests, I honestly would not have merited a double-figure percentage score. Some of my guesses in those physics tests must have been spectacularly