- by Owen Morton
Well, boys and girls, once again, it’s been a long time since any updates have occurred here at Heath the Rat’s Silly Page. I can defend myself by pointing out that it’s finals time here at York, a subject that leads us nicely into the subject of today’s article.
On Monday was my exam on Late Saxon England. Know anything about Æthelred the Unready? No. Neither did I, and it’s a much bigger problem for me than it is for you, I suspect. Despite frantically revising for two weeks (or rather, frantically learning, considering the fact that I did little to no work while the course itself was actually running), I found that I couldn’t get anything about Edgar or Æthelred or any of their numerous contemporaries with names beginning with Æ to actually stick in my memory. So, my exam being at 2.15 pm on Monday, I finally gave up at 1 pm and sloped off into the sitting room to contemplate my imminent failure.
My friend Steve – who was also preparing to sit an exam, though one on the infinitely less interesting subject of Cities As Traffic Machines – was in there too, revising in possibly the most fruitful way I have yet come across. The television was on, and he was engrossed in a programme featuring some particularly poor animation and even worse fake Spanish accents. It was patently nothing to do with cities as traffic machines, for which I was very thankful, though somewhat confused as to why he was watching it. I decided, considering the fact that Æthelred and his cronies were about as far into my head as they’d ever be, to join him in watching it.
And goodness me, but was I grateful I did! Well, all things considered, I’d have been more grateful by the appearance of God bearing a small device which would plug into my brain and tell me instantly everything I’d ever need to know about Æthelred, but in the absence of such an unlikely event, this programme would have to do. It’s called something like ‘Numbertime’, which is odd given the fact that it had not a lot to do with numbers, and is on at 1 pm every Monday on BBC1. Cunningly positioned directly after ‘Working Lunch’, it purports to teach people how to recognise and draw various shapes.
Now, I know it’s children, and I know that therefore it can’t offer quite such an intellectual standpoint as you might expect from an educational programme such as, oh, I don’t know, Buffy, but all the same, were I presented with Numbertime when I was two, my intelligence would have been insulted. And not just because I was a precocious child. This particular episode was concerned with recognising and drawing squares. The bit which Steve was watching when I came in was a cartoon about some American Midwest town where everyone was a dog of some fashion, and talked – or, at least, attempted to talk – with a Spanish accent, for indiscernible reasons. The hero was some nitwit of a child, who must have been about ten, who didn’t know what a square looked like, and was sitting down crying about it. Lo and behold, a dog dressed in a long black cape swung in on a rope from nowhere and comforted the boy, explaining to him ad nauseum that a square has FOUR sides, FOUR corners, and all FOUR sides are the SAME length. “Eet’s as easy as zat!” he exclaimed, in a momentary fit of Frenchness.
Okay, thought I, it’s patronising, but little different from many other programmes I have in my time been unfortunate to cross paths with. But I was wrong. This cartoon finished – after the boy sang a stupid song – and the programme suddenly experienced a rapid change of format, cutting to four grown men and women standing on a beach. Or rather, a studio with some sand on the floor and a very bad picture of the sea behind them. Some narrator announced that it was time for “Name That Shape!” and out of a beach hut bounded a man with a seriously demented expression on his face. Steve and I quickly grasped this change in direction. To hammer in the message given in the cartoon, the programme was now becoming a quiz show where the presenter showed the four contestants a picture of a square and asked them to identify it.
This little sequence doubtless ended the careers of everybody involved. The presenter said, “So, what’s this shape?” and showed them the square. There was an immediate buzz from the guy on the left, and the presenter said, “Yes?” or some very close equivalent. The guy deliberated for a good fifteen seconds before finally giving in. The presenter consoled him on his bad luck and his sadly underdeveloped brain, then asked the question again. A Scottish lady buzzed this time, who was given only five seconds to mutter to herself, “It’s got four sides, four corners …” before being told, “I’m going to have to hurry you,” and she panicked and also gave in. Finally, they were all told, “It’s a SQUARE, because it’s got FOUR sides, FOUR corners, and all FOUR of the sides are the SAME length!” and they started merrily chirping this to themselves while the presenter leapt back onto the steps of his stupid hut and told the audience that there’d be more of ‘Name That Shape’ next week. I can personally hardly wait.
We were then ‘treated’ to another animated sequence about the fake Spanish lunatics. On this occasion, the boy was crying because he couldn’t draw a square. Jesus, this kid wants the whole world, doesn’t he? Anyway, the black caped dog returns, tells him that it’s easy to draw a square because it’s got FOUR sides, FOUR CORNERS and all FOUR sides are the SAME length. Having been given this advice – which is, I might add, the precise same advice he was given in the earlier cartoon – the boy is perfectly capable of drawing a square. He happily announces that now all his troubles are over, whereupon many of the other residents of his town threateningly close in on him for no apparent reason. (I’m not making that bit up: they really do, though maybe I missed something. Or maybe they just got fed up with him being so annoying.)
Next up, we see a news desk, at which it is claimed that there has been trouble at Old King Cole’s court. It soon emerges that the King’s bowl is missing. Or rather, the usual bowl isn’t, but the King’s being a fussy old soul, and is demanding his square bowl. His courtiers are completely useless and can’t tell which of the bowls is the square one. Odd, this, considering that none of the bowls on display are square. The one eventually identified as square is, in fact, cuboid. But this is an unnecessary complication. At any rate, the bowl that would have been square if it were two-dimensional is described as having … all together now: FOUR sides, FOUR corners, and all FOUR sides are the SAME length. The problem at Old King Cole’s court is solved, and after a spot of brief animation that inspires people to smack their dogs, the programme ends with a nitwit of a woman who sings a song about lots of things that rhyme with ‘square’.
You see what I mean? It really is an insult to the intelligence, isn’t it?