THE SCHOOL VISIT

If it has not already happened during your star spangled career, you can be assured that eventually your phone will ring (making a sound akin to a swan gargling rusty coins) and at the end of the line the silken tones of Sister Mary Reversible (or similar) will warble ominously down the blower.
'I believe you are an archaeologist,' she will opine coyly, like a werewolf who has just devoured a jambalaya of newly ordained priest. 'I was wondering if you would come and visit the children at our convent school and give them a wee lectureen about how jolly things were in the good old beforeyesters and all that historical caveman mumbo jumbo.'

And oh how your heart skips a beat! Nay, it skips not - but instead leaps. You are all of a flutter. Imagine! You have been chosen to inspire the next wave of infantry to fight in the noble war of heritage! The next contingent in the firing line for a career full of low pay and high blood pressure.
And so you you arrive at the school and are placed alone before a lethargic class of children sporting blotchy, scurvaceous skin, with as much interest in your shaggy dog story as in a good beating. And who can blame them?

The Archaeologist's Opening Remarks

And so you begin your 'derrynge do' tale of mudlarking among extinguished folks filth, but unfortunately the munchkins' torpid demeanor proves invulnerable - and in an ill-judged attempt at seizing their attention you wander blithely off topic onto the subject of your lumbago and haemorrhoids . . .Then the bitterness takes hold and you're no longer steering the wagon. . .

The Main Argument is Proposed

The bitterness ends and a scirocco blows across your vocal chords, you feel slightly silly, confused - you have forgotten what it is you do for a living, so you take the last refuge of the damned and throw the floor open to questions . . .

And the questions come thick as a sack of pell-mell:
1. Do you have any cigarettes?
2. Why are you wearing fancy dress?
3. Tell me about dinosaurs.
4. How come your Mummy doesn't give you a bath?
5. You're Mummy's very lazy, is she a drinker?
6. My Daddy's not lazy, he's drives a lorry and he says your type are nothing but commies, pig-rooters and serial protestors.
7. Show us your bullwhip.

Over a cacophony of monkey-hoots you do your best to answer their queries but the situation is rapidly deteriorating so you try changing tack and ask the children a question instead. . .

Question Time

But there is no answer. The little angels are too busy soaking their desks in petrol and stacking them in the middle of the room. Every window is smashed and all electric cabling has been chewed through. (One enterprising child is even laying land mines.) You desperately attempt to intervene but someone 'blows you a kiss'. . .

Closing Remarks

The anklebiters have long departed by the time you bolt from the burning building leaving only Sister Mary Reversible waving cheerfully in the doorway.
'Do come again,' she grunts as the establishment explodes and she shoots skywards to her eternal reward.
That's a score of 1-0 to the atheists.

All in all a minor success!

Mis pantalones tienen un sombrero llamado piano!

(With gracious thanks to the cartoon stylings of George Booth.)