Scene: Atop a stone wall of small historic interest. Arrive two students from opposing sides.
D: Hullo, Chuffers!
C: Oh, hullo, Duffers! What are you sneaking in for?
D: I’ve just been at Buffers’ party, over at All Voles.
C: Couldn’t get leave to go?
D: No, I suppose I could have if I wanted to, but I made a bet with old Juffers that I wouldn’t touch anything with hinges for the rest of term, so I have to get in and out of college this way.
C: Ah, I see! That does sound a jolly good wheeze, though, and it’ll be worth it when you collect your winnings.
D: The rottenest part is that he worked out that the buckles on my pumps count as little hinges, so I had to wear my bedroom slippers to the dashed party!
C: Poor form on Juffers, there – I mean, rags in classes are all right, but stopping you from dancing?
D: You said it. But what are you sneaking out for? Meetin’ anybody?
C: No I thought I’d go look up the midnight mass over at New Pangolins, you know. The new prof’s taking it – Father Partridge, the Arts Parson. Wouldn’t have to go over the wall, but I’m gated, worst luck.
D: I didn’t know that! What happened – get caught sneaking goslings into the buttery again?
C: Those were cygnets, and I really don’t see why they objected to them. I made sure they were all subfusc.
D: They did look smart in those little neckties.
C: No, this time it was for putting a chamberpot on a chimneystack.
D: They gated you for that? But that’s a classic rag!
C: It went a bit pear-shaped this time. You remember that pudding my Aunt Chlamydia gave me last Christmas?
D: Didn’t you donate that to the college raffle?
C: That’s right – but old Puffers won it, and he put it up as a prize at his father’s sports carnival.
D: His father, the Temperance teacher?
C: That’s the chap. I didn’t know school lunches could be irrational until he started campaigning to rationalise them, but we all go along to show support. Anyhow, Nuffers won the pudding in the punting triathlon, and he put it up as forfeit for the grown-up conkers tournament.
D: Trousers-on or -off grown-up conkers?
C: Off. And, well, I came out Grand Fighting Cock this year, so I ended up winning it back again.
D: You’d think that a pudding that’s been got rid of would have the decency to stay got rid of.
C: Hear hear. Well, I was batting the ghastly thing about my room, and I noticed, hallo, it’s almost exactly the size and shape of the chamber-pot. Probably been baked in one! So I picked it up and dropped it in… and then I couldn’t get it out.
D: Bally awkward.
C: Uncomfortable, I’ll tell you. So when Ruffers put a shilling on me topping a chimney, I thought “two birds with one stone” and all that.
D: So what went wrong?
C: Well, I got it up there, nice as you like, and there was a jolly to-do in the morning, because it turns out it was the Dean’s chimney, and he was having the Mayoress or somebody to tea. So the junior porter decided that the quickest way to get it down would be to shoot it off with his old hunting rifle. He loads his gun, lifts it up, there’s a fearsome crack, the pot shatters into a hundred pieces and the pudding falls right down the chimney.
D: You don’t say!
C: Would have been alright, but it hit a coal in the fireplace and the brandy caught alight. Apparently it shot out through the room just like a cannonball, and knocked somebody’s secretary into the window-box. They were looking extra-hard for the culprit after that, and Muffers mentioned I’d been trying to get rid of a pudding, and they gated me on the strength of it. Hardly fair, too – Muffers was talking about months ago, before the raffle and the carnival and the tournament – so it really shouldn’t have counted as evidence at all.
D: Dreadful luck! Well, don’t let me persuade you, but if you wanted to give the midnight mass a miss, Guffers, Quffers, Wensleydale and I are going to sneak into the library and check out some of the voluptuesques. You can come along, only you’ll have to find me a window without hinges.
C: Oh, right-o!
Exit both, pursued by bulldog.

I had the very good fortune to be treated to an advance preview of the Melbourne Museum’s next exhibition, The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. By good fortune, shortly before the exhibition was announced, I had been studying Mesopotamia – the cradle of civilisation; birthplace of writing, of cities, of government, of so much that makes society society.

The exhibition itself is both informative and charming, and, I was tickled to note, is thoroughly child-friendly – presentations for children in such environments are a mixed bag as a whole, but TWoAM provides a series of panels featuring a cartoon Gilgamesh, presenting solid historical insights simply and accessibly – thoroughly impressive! The artefacts and texts presented are divided up by the three prominent cultures featured – Sumer, Assyria and Babylon – whose relative sections are marked by reproductions of their own famous art and architecture.

It was particularly interesting to note which artefacts survived from each civilisation. Sumer, for instance, displays a number of small clay tablets and other personal items (including a stunning collection of jewellery,) while Assyria is marked by its massive stone carvings detailing the achievements of its kings and conquerors. I’m far from an expert, but pondering the environmental and social factors that led to such an archaeological haul is fascinating stuff – was stone easier to quarry or import in the north? I know the abundance of clay in the south has given us an insight into Sumerian bureaucratic practices not so apparent in, say, Egypt, where so many papyrus records have not survived…

In any case, you don’t need to hear me rabbit on. In short, this exhibition is unmissable for anyone with even the faintest interest in world history, ancient aesthetics, or any one of a hundred fields which had their origins in this period (constitutional law, division of labour, taxation, communications technology…) It opens on Friday the 4th and runs until the 7th of October. Absolutely check it out.

The following is an entry to a competition, run by the ABC, challenging contestants to write the opening paragraph of an original mystery novel. It is presented here as a literary curiosity, being a piece by Sir Frederick containing a curiously low proportion of puns.

What a strange and wonderful creature a city is. There, it is said, no man knows his neighbour, and this may be true. It is no less true, though, that each man is bound up with myriad others, as different to himself and each other as can be found. City dwellers are not united by land or labour, but by business, newspapers, wireless, literary societies, clubs, parties, and matinees. To understand the mysteries of modern man, one had to understand city life. Today, a small but boisterous crowd of Londoners were being unified by a public lecture, given by the representative of the Society for Farsical Research, on “Rationality, Morality, and the Benthamic Method.” They filed into the Museum’s forecourt, where a number of folding chairs had been set up beneath the high, angular ceiling. Like Bentham, whose portrait fronted a stack of books by the lectern, senior researcher Donald Marigolds did not know where his head was. He wandered into the commissionary half an hour early for lunch, his mind distracted and purposeless. He had problems to work at; the pre-clearance layout of the alleys of Spitalfields, and a sizeable bequest by a museum-minded veteran of the Crimea. Still, he longed for something immediate, something vital, something recherche. The voice of the lecturer floated in through the doorway – “if A is happy and B is not, but B is worthy of more prosperity than A…” – and broke his reverie.