The Reader of Books

  It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting listtle blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.

  Some parents go further. They become so blinded by adoration they manage to convince themselves their child has qualities of genius.

Well, there is nothing very wrong with all this. It's the way of the world. It is only when the parents begin telling us about the brilliance of their own revolting off-spring, that we start shouting, 'Bring us a basin! We're going to be sick!'

  School teachers suffer a good deal from having to listen to this sort of twaddle from proud parents, but they usually get their own back when the time comes to write the end-of-term reports. If I were a teacher I would cook up some real scorchers for the children of doting parents. 'Your son Maximilian,' I whould write, 'is a total wash-out. I hope you have a family business you can push him into when he leaves school because he suere as heck won't get a job anywhere else.' Or if I were felling lyrical that day, I might write, 'It is a curious truth that grasshoppers have their hearing-organs in the sides of the abdomen. Your daughter Vanessa, judging by what she's learnt this term, has no hearing organs at all.'

  I might even deleve depper into natural history and say, 'The periodical cicada spends six years as a grub underground, and no more than six days as a free creature of sunlight and air. Your son Wilfred has spent six years as a grub in this school and we are still waiting for him to emerge from chrysalis.' A particularly poisonous little girl might sting me into saying, 'Fiona has the same glacial beauty as an iceberg, but unlike the iceberg she has absolutely nothing below the surface.' I think I might enjoy writing end-of-term reports for the stingers in my class.

  But enough of that. We have to get on.