Gentleman's Pants

Yesterday afternoon was Official Surmount An Ever Increasing Pile of Work Day. In an age of short attention spans and microwaveable tandoori tofu, official days cannot be expected to last a whole twenty-four hours. This is why my Day devoted to Pile-of-Work Surmountation (as opposed to Sermon-on-the-Mount-ation) consisted only of the hours between 3 pm and 8 pm. Minus, that is, the time spent gazing out the window, which I considered a necessary Occupational Health and Safety measure to avoid optical deterioration.

Marking my Victorian literature exam papers in Victoria proved somewhat less exhilarating than I had hoped. Indeed, so unexhilarating, that I almost cheered when a pair of navy blue gentleman's knickers sailed down from the balcony above and landed in my new potted gardenia (such are the joys of strata living). I decided that decorum required their owner to fish them out for himself. Who knows, knocking on the door of apartment number 7 with a pair of pantaloons in paw might breach some chapter of Thornburian etiquette. We New South Welshpersons are utterly unsqueamish about undergarmentry, but I daily hear tales of Melburnean gentility, and it is still too early, methinks, to rock that particular boat (i.e., the Good Ship Frank Discussion of Pants). I pulled down my blind, to allow the underpant salvager a private retrieval, and when I raised it again, an hour later, my potted gardenia was unfestooned.

Lesser highlights of Official Surmount An Ever Increasing Pile of Work Day include reading the following: "rediculouse", as in "a rediculouse waste of time" (one suspects the author of anti-communist sentiments); "I would like to point out that the wicked process of industrialisation was the main reason women turned into prostitution" (should this scholar get a job in public policy, I take no responsibility for resultant legislation); "sigma", as in "Ladislaw faced social sigma because of his parentage" (better than social omicron, that's for sure); and in parentheses after the word "Plummle", used to describe the Dickens character more orthodoxly known as "Drummle", the words, "Sorry if this is the wrong name, my mind is B-L-A-N-K" (a confession I found so charming that I was at risk of throwing in Official Surmount An Ever Increasing Pile of Work Day altogether).

But now that particular sub-hillock of my mountain of tasks is defeated, and I say, with a tear in my eye, and a nostalgia in my left temple, "Farewell, oh Sydney Varsity! I knew thee well!" To work.