2005-10-14 - 11:59 a.m.

I�m barbarically grateful for the kind thoughts and sympathetic e-squirms re: my eyes. The plugs don�t seem to be doing to much, so I�m figuring Doogie was just putting them in there for his own personal amusement. I wonder if could get him to fix up some kind of microscopic sprinkler system next time he�s in there?

It�s medical conditions like this that can get you embarrassing nicknames if you happen to be a teacher � I was reminded of this last weekend when my dad was telling me about various members of staff at my old school.

�I saw Mr Walsh��

�Oh, you mean �Lippy� Walsh?�

�What?�

�You know�because of his, er, (suddenly it seemed so childish) mildly deformed, er�lip��

Suddenly confronted with a list of old teachers, it seemed we gave them ALL cruel nicknames based on small physical imperfections. Apart from Lippy Walsh there was, for example, Fat Chammy (Mr Chamberlain, slightly overweight), Mr Cole (a crude but effective name for Miss Cole, who was vaguely unfeminine), Legs Up Lucy (Mrs Walsh wore lipstick = obvious prostitute), Queer Greer (grown up man/no wife/unfortunate name combo) and Shitely Whitely (a more contrived rhyme for Mrs Whitely. Her name was at a later date sensitively amended by the people who amend this type of thing to �Shitely Whitely the One-Titted Wonder� � this just a few days after her emergency mastectomy. The rule of the playground is harsh,)

Hardly any of my teachers are still at the school, having moved on through retirement, promotion or, in one particularly inspiring case, a hasty sacking for sexual molestation (it WAS a catholic school after all).

Anyway, I forget my point, but mostly I think it�s that I could never become a teacher as besides being blatantly unqualified, I couldn�t live with my faults being reduced to a badly-constructed half-rhyming nickname that lays bare your very essence in the cruellest terms available. Well, that, plus I�m not very bright.