Molesworth

by Geoffrey Willans

  In the end a mere empty husk grabber came back one night to st. custard’s, the scene of his brilliant triumps as a youth. He climb in through the ushual window and gaze at the darkened classrooms. Alas, the scene do not soften his callous soul. No tears glisten in those beady eyes. In the morning the skool come down and gaze open-mouthed at the Blakboard. Some words hav been rudely chalked hem-hem.

  LATIN IS SOPPY. MATHS ARE MAD. FRENCH IS FRITEFUL. ALG IS AWFUL. WOODWORK IS WET. THE FOOD COULD DO WITH IMPROVEMENT.

  This terible crime so shoked the nation that the whole resources of Scotland Yard were thrown into tackling the criminal, grabber was caught and sent to Wormwood scrubs were he met several old custardians. The governor put him straight on to rafia work ignorant that this had been the cause of his downfall. Soon the inmates were shoked by another outrage in the Health and Beauty Hall.

  WARDERS ARE WEEDS. GOVERNORS ARE GURLIES. RAFIA WORK IS ROTEN. THE CELLS ARE DISGRACEFUL AND THE FOOD COULD DO WITH IMPROVEMENT.

  The eye of the prophet molesworth

  For this grabber get another 7 years but he sa he do not care so boo there is no difrence between st. custard’s and wormwood scrubs anyway.

  The eye of the prophet molesworth next lite upon dere little fotherington-Tomas. Wot does the cristal ball reveal for this gurly? Can it be true? AIR VICE-MARSHAL SIR BASIL FOTHERINGTON-TOMAS, V.C., D.S.O. Clubs: Spaceman’s, Ovalteenies.

  Air. Vice-Marshal Sir basil fotherington-Tomas lowered himself into the cockpit of the gleaming space jet (complete with all parts £ 2 mill.)

  Is the atomic reactor set to zero, Huggins?

  Yessir.

  Anti-gravity boosters to half-cock?

  Yessir.

  Pressure reading 8½?

  Yessir.

  Radial dynaflow in parallel ?

  Yessir.

  That’s it then. Can’t afford to make a mistake. Only a fifty-fifty chance I’ll make mercury. So long, Huggins.

  SHoo-SHoo-SHoo

  oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

  ooooooooooooooSH

  OBITUARY. (By a pal.)

  All those who knew basil fotherington-Tomas will mourn the death of a very brave space pioneer. He won a V.C. for shooting down 99 spaceships off mars and this was folowed by the d.s.o. for beating up the bauxite in Betelgeuse. Sir basil was educated at st. custard’s where he is still remembered for his skipping and liteness of foot. ‘He skipped everything,’ said his headmaster, reminiscently . . . . .

  O goody sa fotherington-Tomas peeping over my shoulder

  O goody molesworth you hav put me in and made me brave.

  How can i thank you enuff? i’m brave i’m brave hurra.

  I should not count on it, i sa. It is only a flite of fancy.

  Thanks all the same. You are super molesworth I you really are. Now wot is yore future?

  Another splendid creation by NIGEL

  Who me oh i sa gosh no.

  Fearfully i put my grate nose towards the cristal ball.…

  Another splendid creation by NIGEL is this daring cocktail frock in burned orange and squashed muskrat. Note how Nigel has modelled bodice and waist in crashed chipmunk and a flaring skirt with matching beads. No wonder that Nigel’s B-line is the sensation of the season. Nigel has flair ! Nigel will be showing his spring colection. . . . .

  CURSES! I take the wretched cristal pill and punt it out of the window. It take few things to drive me back to the imperfect subjunk of avoir but this is one of them. J’eusses tu euse. . . . . But wot’s the good of any of it?

  WORKER No. 12345/c NYE MOLESWORTH

  ‘5 rats eat 6 seed cakes in 43 mins, 9 secs. They pause for twenty minutes. Then they eat 29 rock cakes in 15 secs (dead). They pause for I minute, I3 secs. Then they eat a cheese in 33 minutes.

  How long do the rats take to eat the seed cakes, the rock cakes and the cheese?”

  Wot a question, eh, to ask a boy! But that’s the sort of thing you get faced with in exams and if you don’t pass exams in this brave age you DON’T GET ON. chiz. Of corse it is quite easy to see why a weed who kno the height of Ben Nevis also that vertically oposite angles are equal is a beter bet for a bank or dog biscuit firm than me who kno o less than o cheers cheers cheers. But wot ocasionally depress me in my few leisure moments, my dear, is that you hav to go on taking exams all through your life chiz chiz chiz chiz e.g.

  THE BOSS: Ah, fotherington-Tomas, wot is the population of grater london eh ?

  F-TOMAS: 44 million and a few odd thou.

  THE BOSS: Are the oposite sides of a parallelogram equal ?

  F-TOMAS: Indeed they are, sir.

  THE BOSS: i won’t ask you about the rats.… you hav satisfied me. You are now export manager.

  F-TOMAS: O goody!

  You see wot i mean? Except for a couple of peaceful years doing national service the brave new clots hav got nothing but EXAMS EXAMS EXAMS. And it’s the same for the gurls, too.

  Aktually there is one comfort for clots like me who are not brany we can always get a job in a factory. In fact factories are glad to get anybody to judge from their notices:

  BLITHERING M’FAKTURING COY

  WANTED

  Toggle adjusters, clump press minders, tigglers, snorer hoisters, glug drillers, swarf wipers, troggers and cricks.

  SKILLED, SEMI-SKILLED, CLOTS, MENTALLY DEFICIENT. IDIOTS, NUMSKULLS.

  ALL WELCOME.

  CANTEEN, PENSION, PROFIT SHARING, SONGS AT THE PIANO. FREE SHAMPOO. SHADY TERACES. ALL WELCOME

  AND WE PAY YOU FOR IT, TOO!

  O.K. No need to wory if you canot pass your Eleven Plus or Comon Entrance to an extremely tuough public skool, all you hav to do is to wait until you are 15 and cash in at the dere old plant.

  This is wot hapen. You catch the old works bus and clock-in, put on your overalls, chaff the gurls, turn on the air conditioning, open the marshmallows and switch on the old precision tool. Any fool kno how to work a precision tool it’s pappy. You feed in a piece of steel at one end and the machine grab it, hoist it over, punch, turn it back, punch it, press it, heave it upside down make a right-hand thread, squeeze it in two and there you have a finished snibber ready to rivet into the crocks of the cramp thus marrying the prip with the creech in the finished end-product.

  But wot make work in the factory so fasscinating is the GOOD CONVERSATION in the shops. Effie on the glug driller next door tell you all that she sa to her boyfriend last nite and you tell her wot you see on the telly you’ve just bought and all the machines go –

  A puff-a grab – sizzle – grunt — screeeeeee – ow – gosh – sizzle – screeeee – ow – help – gosh – and agane – screeeeee ——

  In fact, all are hapy turning out milions of snibbers when in come the shop foreman.

  All right, he sa, switch off we’re downing tools. Send for the manager and quick. Tell him I’m waiting. Jump to it, molesworth, i just seen another nine snibbers drop off. If you’re not careful they’ll be making a profit.

  ‘Wot,’ you sa, throing an oily rag at Effie, ‘seems to be the trouble, horace?’

  ‘Felow called peason without a union card in the paint shop. Manager won’t sack him so i am calling you out.’

  So it’s no more snibbers and out with the old cards and a nice game of pontoon. Pity really becos it’s not as if you were doing much work in the first place. Anyway imagine wot it would be like if this sort of thing spreads –

  Scene 3B. Master is reading his ushual book of love and passion while form swot at fr. verbs, dab criket, NOUGHTS and crosses, pools, free verse and other trifles of the boy mind.

  Enter GILLIBRAND, foaming at the mouth.

  GILLIBRAND: All right. That’s enuff. We’re out. Down yore potts and pilcher fr. primer.

  BEAK: (reciting dreamily) She galoped across the desert hem-hem in his strong tawny arms. . . . . (he gives a start) Wot is the meaning of this?

  GILLIBRAND: a stoppage.

  BEAK: No no, not that. How ghastley! Let the produc
tion lines of avoir, etre, donner, aimer and recevoir roll on. After all, you’re a reasonable boy. (thinks: i must be polite to the twirp tho i would like to give him six).

  GILLIBRAND: a tick in 1B hav exceeded his algy quota yesterday. We can’t hav that, you kno.

  The Beak fall down on his knees.

  it is by such an example as i, like those other brave, clear-eyed workers in the documentary films that britain will win its export batle

  BEAK: Don’t go out. Stay on the jobs. i’ll do anything to put this injustice right ect. ect.

  Well, imagine that if poss. There is a grate deal of thortful work to be done on labour relations between beaks and boys though i expect it will be the same old story do wot you’re told or 6 of the best.

  Back to the factory now and 12345/c nye molesworth hav been shifted from the machine shop and is now working in asembly as a reward for his zeal promise and enthusiasm. Let us prick our grimy ears and listen. The forman speaketh.

  ‘molesworth!’

  ‘wot me? it was me the last time.’

  ‘you ’eard. get up there, lad, and give it a turn on the left-hand creep. Why you looking like that?’

  ‘Nothink. i wasn’t looking – i was thinking.’ it’s ten to twelve, that’s all. Time i get up i’ll hav to come down. don’t seem any sense in it, really.’

  ‘Any other thorts?’

  ‘it’s hot-pot today. Always hot-pot at the canteen thursdays. ho well, i’ll get on down to the stores now – ’

  ‘waffor?’

  ‘draw a monkey, i can’t look at the job without a monkey now can i and if the creep is crabbing i’ll need a blower and talking of blowers – ’

  ‘i kno. 12 o’clock and hot-pot thursdays. The trubble with you, molesworth – ‘

  Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. . . . .!

  it is by such an example as i stand there like those other brave, clear-eyed workers in the documentary films that britain will win its export batle hem-hem i do not think. But you hav to be careful. you don’t want to do too well tho or you may become a manager and hav to recieve reports from head ofice e.g.

  Be careful or you may become a manager

  PRODUCTION: very disapointing. why?

  RAW MATERIALS: very disapointing.

  See tomkins.

  LABOUR POSITION: very disapointing.

  in fact it is just like a skool report or one of mine at any rate and it would seme that you go on having reports as well as exams all yore life. Wot an outlook, fancy giving us all that free milk and orange juice just for that. still if we all work hard enuff they are promising the workers automatick nuclear atommic factories which do all the work by themselves. cheers cheers. Then the problem is LEAISURE. cheers. Well, leaisure hav never been any problem to me – and now yore rolls-royce is at the machine shop door, mr molesworth. O.K. – and hav this precision tool gold-plated by the time i return tomorrow. Exit the wealthy worker 12345/c nye molesworth and all the machines go:

  A puff – a grab – sizzle – grunt – screee – ow – gosh – sizzle – screeeeee – ect.

  Produckivity in Skool

  The molesworth production line for latin sentences

  I The raw sentence is fed into the sorter

  2 The words pass along an endless belt into the electronik dicker

  3 The dicker disgorges them as latin

  4 The assembler puts them together

  5 The boys take them to the ticking machine

  Snip! Snip! Snip!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  At speshul sacrifice!!!!

  HEADMASTER FOR SALE

  Small, part used in fare condition considering. Mustache recently trimmed and shoes soled with ruber excelent for cobbing boys, miscreants ect.

  No maintenance. Can live on seaweed and thinks boys can, too.

  Handy, adjustable, can be used for any purpose. Cantilever movement.

  together with

  SET OF KANES (part-worn and frayed)

  price one d. or offer

  or

  would exchange for jumping flea

  Back in the Jug agane

  Geoffrey willans

  & Ronald Searle

  Contents

  1 I MITE HAV KNOWN

  The Grimes Poll

  Television – Smoking – Conversation in Dorms – Rushing Down the Passage – Mob Violence

  Music the Food of Luv

  Pass the Sputnik, Man!

  A Teacher’s World

  2 HURRAH FOR EXAMMS

  The molesworth/peason electronick brane – the portable roving eye – the v.h.f. radio set

  Ko-eddukation at st. custard’s

  Tenis anebody?

  Mind my bike!

  Fr. and english

  Guide to Grown-Ups

  Molesworth takes over

  Thro’ Horridges with Gran

  3 N. MOLESWORTH, ACE REPORTER

  Aggriculture

  The Flying Molesman

  Taking Wings

  4 I AM GOING TO BE GOOD

  Here We Go Agane!

  The Grate Master Trap

  So Far So Good

  The Karackter Kup

  5 COO UR GOSH!

  I Luv Gurls

  Gurls who stare – Hockey gurls – Tough gurls

  Dansey Dansey

  A Few Rools for Xmas

  A Brite Future for Youth

  1

  I MITE HAV KNOWN

  Well i mite hav expected it. The game’s up. They got me just when i thort i was safe. So here i am back at SKOOL agane for a joly term chiz chiz chiz.

  St custard’s, i regret to report, hav not changed in my absence, though perhaps it may hav got worse. It is just the same as any other first day since i started my akademic hem-hem career there some few semesters ago. (It seme as if it were yesterday, my dere.) Same cobwebs, same smell of wet flannel, soap, carbolik ect poo gosh: inside the skool piano there is now a nest of mice, I cig. card, 3 katerpillers and pikture of marylyn monro pinched no doubt from the master’s comon room.

  As for my merry felow students, they are still here worse luck. Just look at them – grabber who arrive in a swank-pot rolls, peason my frend who hav a face like a squished tomato, gillibrand, molesworth 2 my bro. And who is this who skip weedily up to me, eh? ‘Hullo clouds, hullo sky,’ he sa. ‘Hullo birds, hullo poetry books, hullo skool sossages, hullo molesworth 1.’ You hav guessed it is dere little basil fotherington-tomas.

  Wotbrethless adventures lie before these stout little chaps? (And none stouter than fatpot peason.) Wot wizard japes and priceless pranks will they get up to? Before them lie the bright future of a new term – will they accept the chalenge?

  (Now read on.)

  On arrival all boys stand about with hands in pokets looking utterly fed up and dejected. Finally someone speke.

  ‘Did you hav a good hols, molesworth?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  (Silence.)

  ‘Did you have a good hols peason?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  The dialogue is positively scintilating, my dere. Surely they canot kepe it up? There is no chance of that for the wit of these skolars is interupted by a dread sound e.g.

  CLANG-PIP. CLANG-PIP. CLANG-PIP.

  It is the skool bell which sumon us to asemble in big skool into which enter anon GRIMES, the headmaster surounded by a posse of thugs and strong-arm men in black gowns. The beaks, of course, alias ‘my devoted staff’. You can imagine it a few minits before.

  Scene: GRIMES study. A candle is burning in a botle. A botle of GIN stand on the table. A beak is fixing an iron spike on a kane, another is fixing a knuckle-duster, a third practise with a broken botle.

  GRIMES: Are they all in, Slugsy?

  G. A. POSTLETHEWAITE, m.a. (leeds): Yep, they’re all in, boss.

  GRIMES: o.k. then we’re ready to pull the job. You kno the plan. Slugsy, you cover me from the door. Lefty, cover my rightflank. Butch, on the other side. Killer, bring up the rear. If there’s any trouble, let t
hem hav it. That clear, Butch?

  P. ST. J. NETLETON, b.a. (exeter): Wot about our cut? You still owe us for last terms jobs.

  GRIMES: How can you be so sordid?

  ect. ect. ect.

  Now GRIMES stand on the platform, smiling horibly at the pitiable colection of oiks, snekes, cads, oafs and dirty roters below.

  ‘Welcome back,’ he snarl, ‘Welcom back to st. custards for a new term. I hope you had a good hols? i did myself – spane, the s. of france, then on for a couple of weeks to the italian riviera. This term, of course, the fees will be higher to meet the mounting costs.’

  But this evidence of good humour is short-lived. Without warning, he bare his fangs.

  Before them lie the bright future of a new term – will they accept the chalenge?

  ‘Now listen, scum,’ he yell, ‘The last mum hav departed in tears. You are in my clutches agane and there is no escape. And its going to be this way this term. More work, increased production, trades unions supresed and the first boy i hear who sa poo gosh at a skool sossage will get 6. And strikes won’t help you. If you go out the shop stewards will be flogged.’

  ‘Remember this,’ he leer, ‘You never had it so good.’

  Well, this is just wot we expect. We hav it every term and our tiny harts sink to our boots. It will be nothing but lat. fr. arith. geom. algy. geog. ect. and with the winter coming on it would be warmer in Siberia in a salt mine. Oh well – we wait for wot we kno will come next.

  ‘And wot,’ sa GRIMES, ‘hav we all been reading in the hols?’

  Tremble tremble moan drone, i hav read nothing but red the redskin and Guide to the Pools, i hav also sat with my mouth open looking at lassie, wonder horse ect on t.v. How to escape? But i hav made a plan.