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baroque_mongooseI was going to tell this story yesterday, but decided that some of you might think it was an April fool. No. It is 100% true; I was there, and I can recall all the significant details as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.
When I was president of the students' union, my vice-president was a young man called Mark; I don't mind giving him his name, since for one thing it's a common one and for another thing he's now dead. On the whole I got on pretty well with him, though he did put the "vice" in "vice-president" - he had a habit of spending his lunchtimes cottaging in the gents' on the secondary site, and then walking into the union office and boasting about his conquests. To be honest I found that more amusing than anything else, though with a shade of eyeroll. I have no problem with anyone being gay, but... well, you know, he was a bit of a tart.
What did concern me about him was that he messed about with the occult. That can be very dangerous. He'd tell the rest of the executive committee that he could give people dreams, and they'd all go "yeah, right," and I'd think "actually, he probably can". And one day, he decided to prove he wasn't joking.
One of the other members of the exec wrote a poem. I didn't personally think it was a very good poem, but it did at any rate have feeling; she'd been talking to a very old lady, who had said to her, "I hate them Germans. They bombed our chip shop." So she'd used that as the first line of this poem. I don't recall any of the rest. The morning after she'd written it, she read it out in the union office, Mark not being present at the time.
Later that morning, our poet's still in the office, as are a couple of other people. Mark walks in. He grins from ear to ear, and he says: "I hate them Germans. They bombed our chip shop."
Well, you can imagine. The poet went white. While she was still recovering the power of speech, someone else asked Mark how he'd known about that, and he just grinned and said something to the effect that he knew things. I thought, "oh, right, so this is how it is, is it? We'll see about that!"
After lunch everyone clears off to lectures, leaving me doing whatever it was I was doing, and I had a mild headache all afternoon. I very rarely get headaches; it normally means it's about to thunder, but I knew very well it didn't in this case, and I wanted a word with Mark about it. I eventually got one when he wandered in again towards the end of the afternoon.
"Ah," I said. "Mark. I want to talk to you. Stop trying to read my mind. All you're doing is giving me a headache, and I'd appreciate not having one."
"Oh," he said, sheepishly. "I can't read it anyway."
"No, of course you can't. And you know why, don't you?"
He nodded.
"Good. Now please don't do it again. It scares people."
And he didn't. Or, at least if he did, he didn't shout about it; but I'm pretty sure he stopped doing anything like that anywhere near me.
The whole occult thing is powerful, which is why it's dangerous to mess around with it. I wasn't in the least surprised to find that Mark could read minds. Nonetheless, "he that is in us is greater than he that is in the world"... and that's why all I got was a headache (just to let me know he was trying it). And I didn't have to spell that one out to Mark.
In unrelated news, I'm 62 today... and I remembered to get myself some birthday cupcakes. Because why not?
When I was president of the students' union, my vice-president was a young man called Mark; I don't mind giving him his name, since for one thing it's a common one and for another thing he's now dead. On the whole I got on pretty well with him, though he did put the "vice" in "vice-president" - he had a habit of spending his lunchtimes cottaging in the gents' on the secondary site, and then walking into the union office and boasting about his conquests. To be honest I found that more amusing than anything else, though with a shade of eyeroll. I have no problem with anyone being gay, but... well, you know, he was a bit of a tart.
What did concern me about him was that he messed about with the occult. That can be very dangerous. He'd tell the rest of the executive committee that he could give people dreams, and they'd all go "yeah, right," and I'd think "actually, he probably can". And one day, he decided to prove he wasn't joking.
One of the other members of the exec wrote a poem. I didn't personally think it was a very good poem, but it did at any rate have feeling; she'd been talking to a very old lady, who had said to her, "I hate them Germans. They bombed our chip shop." So she'd used that as the first line of this poem. I don't recall any of the rest. The morning after she'd written it, she read it out in the union office, Mark not being present at the time.
Later that morning, our poet's still in the office, as are a couple of other people. Mark walks in. He grins from ear to ear, and he says: "I hate them Germans. They bombed our chip shop."
Well, you can imagine. The poet went white. While she was still recovering the power of speech, someone else asked Mark how he'd known about that, and he just grinned and said something to the effect that he knew things. I thought, "oh, right, so this is how it is, is it? We'll see about that!"
After lunch everyone clears off to lectures, leaving me doing whatever it was I was doing, and I had a mild headache all afternoon. I very rarely get headaches; it normally means it's about to thunder, but I knew very well it didn't in this case, and I wanted a word with Mark about it. I eventually got one when he wandered in again towards the end of the afternoon.
"Ah," I said. "Mark. I want to talk to you. Stop trying to read my mind. All you're doing is giving me a headache, and I'd appreciate not having one."
"Oh," he said, sheepishly. "I can't read it anyway."
"No, of course you can't. And you know why, don't you?"
He nodded.
"Good. Now please don't do it again. It scares people."
And he didn't. Or, at least if he did, he didn't shout about it; but I'm pretty sure he stopped doing anything like that anywhere near me.
The whole occult thing is powerful, which is why it's dangerous to mess around with it. I wasn't in the least surprised to find that Mark could read minds. Nonetheless, "he that is in us is greater than he that is in the world"... and that's why all I got was a headache (just to let me know he was trying it). And I didn't have to spell that one out to Mark.
In unrelated news, I'm 62 today... and I remembered to get myself some birthday cupcakes. Because why not?
