RON HORSEFIELD OIKUS
Oik Irony
Ratty Bert
Useless Gobshite
Books Do Furnish a Room
Bernard left Harrow and did engineering at Cambridge. He liked its logic, precision and the satisfaction of solving problems in the real world. But there were also oiks who were less transpicuous. When he said “This meeting seems to have reached a state of hiatus” Scraggs rejoined “Is that in the Atlantic or the Pacific Mr Fortescue?” Next day he sported a red bow tie with white polka dots like his old prof wore. Scraggs found a matching cloth in the rag box and when Bernard returned they were all whistling at their benches wearing replicas of his natty accessory.
Bert Plant, foreman of the Instrument workshop, got ratty easily. Each baggin break the lads would drag a bench into the middle of the amenties area and eat their sarnies off it. Afterwards Bert would savagely drag it back against the wall cursing loudly. One day they glued it to the floor with quick-setting epoxy. Bert grabbed it, failed to suspect its novel immobility and persisted, blood pressure rising, until finally a large chunk of floor tiling got ripped up. Engineer Fortescue gave Bert a good nobbin. Tiles weren’t cheap. “Some glue must’ve accidentally spilled on the feet” said Scraggs.
Charlie Scraggs and Bernard Fortescue tinkered all morning with an expensive 12 point Honeywell strip chart recorder, the Rolls Royce of instruments. Finally Bernard condemned it as beyond economic repair. Scraggs humping the object to the scrap skip, sees Bert coming into the shop. He staggers, groans, and as Bert approaches, drops the prize with a loud crash. Bert goes off like a bottle of pop. “Useless gobshite! Clumsy arsehole! Stupid pieceashit!” Scraggs apologises abjectly. Bert rushes into the office wanting Scraggy’s guts for garters. Bernard suspects some kind of elaborate wind-up. “Leave it with me Bert” he says guardedly.
Books can be boring and a wall full of the fuckers could do your head in. Frog King Francois 1 had a great idea for brightening up the library at his chateau at Fontainebleau – an elephant. Can you get these at John Lewis? My own humble dwelling could not, of course, accommodate such a treasure but surely a similar decorative trope is not entirely beyond my more modest means. In line with my own oik origins and much smaller library I think, mutatis mutandis, a shithouse rat hanging down from the ceiling would be just the ticket in my gaff.