This is wot it is like when we go back on the school trane. There are lots of new bugs and all there maters blub they hav every reason if they know what they were going to. For us old lags however it is just another stretch same as any other and no remision for good conduc. We kno what it with be like at the other end Headmaster beaming skool bus ratle off leaving trail of tuck boxes peason smugling in a box of flat 50 cigs fotherington-tomas left in the lugage rack and new bugs stand as if amazed…
Who knows what adventures in work and pla the next term will bring forth? And who cares, eh?
And now for something completely different, as the Pythons used to say.
After finishing a couple of Ann Lamott books, and in the middle of reading Antony Storr’s Feet of Clay: A Study of Gurus which is both fascinating and very disturbing, I needed some cheering bedtime reading.
How To Be Topp had me still reading after midnight, and laughing out loud. As it always has. I picked up this 1954 hardback first edition for $1 at the library book sale, but I’ve had my older brother’s paperback in my bookshelf since I was a kid. In the 1960’s, jokes and lines from How To Be Topp entered the Green family private language. I haven’t read it for years; I’d forgotten how familiar and how funny it is.
Nigel Molesworth, the narrator of this guide, is a boarder at St Custard’s, a minor English prep school. In his introduction, written whilst in hiding (‘all the headmasters in britain are after me with their GATS and COSHES etc’), he explains that he wants ‘to give my felow suferers the fruits of my xperience.’
As you would expect, there are chapters on How to be Topp in Latin, English, French, Spanish, Rusian, Advanced Maths, Music and Games, including the Molesworth Self-Educator and Molesworth Bogus Report. He also includes advice on How to Cope with Grown-Ups, as well as a description of the standard public school types; Cads, Oiks, Goody-Goodies, Bullies and Snekes. To finish, there’s an essential guide to Christmas with bonus Molesworth Self-Adjusting Thank-You Letter
The illustrations by Ronald Searle (of St Trinian’s fame) are perfect. Nostalgic bliss.