Back on the gravy train….
Ah, how fortune favours the brave (or indeed, the Extremely Clever)!
You will remember, dear reader, that as we left it, Bambleweeny and his chums were hard up against it in the face of sustained and malevolent stupidity from their chief rival, Dr. Quintin Thudpucker. His sneaky efforts to rid our department of ECT status were in danger of succeeding as he influenced the assessment panel’s judgement with his constant attention to irrelevancies ~ “how much did this cost?” indeed!
On day two of the panel’s visit to the Department of ECT, we were explaining the relative successes of our project on “Work-Related Time Dilation”, in which we strive to compress the normal working day into the average coffee break. It was going well, especially as we demonstrated the concept by completing the presentation well before lunch, having not started until 11.45am. As we were leaving, Thudpucker was inexplicably distracted as the lift doors opened, revealing the equally inexplicable complete absence of the lift. How the mighty fall! (actually, we now have the experimental evidence to show that gravity works just as effectively on the pompous and incredibly dim). Two floors later, his momentum was returned to it’s basal state and the paramedics were summoned.
This of course left the assessment panel short of one gnome, but I was quick to suggest a suitable replacement. Dr. Ambrose Wilberforce Bambleweeny (no relation) of St. Hubbin’s College, Cambridge was enlisted (with almost indecent haste) as a man eminently qualified to judge our group’s merits. I did not feel it necessary or appropriate to bore the rest of the panel with the information that Ambrose has owed me a favour ever since I resuscitated his armadillo on the 18th tee of the 2004 Tanning/Golf biathalon at Droitwich.
I think it is safe to assume that renewal of our status as the Warwick Extremely Clever Research Centre is assured. I am so pleased, I think I shall send a bag of walnuts to Thudpucker (currently residing in the North Warwickshire Nasty Contusions Ward).
Yours with smug content,
Edwin M. Bambleweeny (Prof.)
Pinchpenny
Congratulations – are bags of walnuts eligible expenditure on your departmental cost code?
15 Nov 2006, 08:56
Eddy Bambleweeny
Ah Pinchpenny – you don’t get to be a Prof. by falling for such easily-traceable funding traps! Of course, the merest possibility of a hinted suggestion that the bag of walnuts should be paid for out of group funds had not even contemplated crossing my (expansive) mind.
Besides, the celebratory aspect of Thudpucker’s condition warrents the personal expenditure, I feel.
Yours,
Eddy.
15 Nov 2006, 10:46
One Line Searcher
what is a gravy train
04 May 2007, 01:29
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