Eric Leaver's Monday

"NISUS was the guardian of the gate and, with him, Aeneas strong in arms"...a phrase from classic literature.

To be precise, from the Aeneid by Virgil, the ancient Roman cobbler of hexameter verse who, though he did not know it when he was scratching away with his stylus circa 42 BC, was out to make life a misery for me some 2,000 years later through him having penned the set book for the GCE O-level Latin examination of 1960 AD.

However, with that torture being now ancient history, too, but with the line about these Nisus and Aeneas blokes being about the only bit the only of the book I could remember, not just now, but also back then when the dreaded exam came to be sat, it comes as something of a satisfaction after all these years that some success may at last accrue from my failure at Latin.

For the disclosure last week that thicko former pupils may sue their old schools for damages for having had a poor education suggests that there may be a quid or three to be had as compensation for my not knowing the Aeneid back to front and not being able to translate it into and out of Latin and English standing on my head.

I mean, there's a case for redress, surely, when you can firmly assert that a lucrative and enjoyable career as a sifter and sorter of old Roman poems has been snatched from you because what you were actually taught was only the first line of just one of these epic odes when there's of the whole bunch of them out there needing expert seeing to. Not that I wholly blame my dear old Latin master, Mr Bell, for this state of affairs. It might have all sunk in a bit more easily if he been somewhat less strict about the sort of English you were allowed to turn Virgil's words into, but the trouble was that the argot of the Horrors, as he called the exam-year Class 5X, was Double Dutch to him.

Thus, the freer translation of, say: "This Nisus guy was a bouncer, like, and his mate, Aeneas, was dead hard an' all..." would not pass muster with him, nor, I imagine, with the examiners of the old Northern Universities Joint Matriculation Board

So, as a result, despite being subject to a great deal of teaching, some of us went untaught because the teaching did not overcome our disinclination to learn, translate and scan long, boring Latin poems when the time could be usefully spent instead day-dreaming about the homework you would like to do with some of those in the exam-year up at the girls' grammar school. With this background in mind, let us then fast forward to the hearing of the resultant civil action of the dunce E. Leaver v E. Bell (deceased) and others...

Counsel for the respondents: "I am to understand, Mr Leaver, that, as plaintiff you are, as you put it, seeking damages of 'one million pounds (sorry, no offers; building society cheques only)' a whole 36 years and more after you failed the Latin GCE exam by 15 percentage marks? May one inquire why such an interval was allowed to elapsed before you commenced this action?"

Plaintiff (self): "Post traumatic shock, yer honner."

Judge: "Of an extremely delayed-action sort, it seems."

Me: "Precisely, it came on when I read the other day about those two 17-year-olds suing for loadsamoney over their poor schooling and it struck and upset me, apropos the inadequate Latin lessons I'd had, that I had been denied a career as an eminent academic."

Counsel: "To the tune of £1million? That is a very large sum, even supposing that you might, straight from leaving school, have become a classics don."

Me: "The amount includes my reckoning in the long holidays, fees for going on such as Question Time and the free college dinners that I have missed by not being an academic." Counsel: "Which, you say, stems from you only knowing one line of Virgil when it came to the GCE examination? But, surely, if, as you submit, your old school had a duty to teach you more, you also had a duty to learn more, too - a point which, I submit, Your Honour, allows you to reject this ridiculous and avaricious suit forthwith."

Me: "Objection! If we went to school to get clever, we'd be pretty dim to let them make you clever as it's only through being dozy and uneducated that you can get a load of dosh without working because you're too thick to have made a lot of money by getting a good job in the first place with good qualifications. Ipso facto, you have a right not to learn anything no matter how hard they try to teach you."

Counsel: "Ipso facto?

Me: "Same as 'ergo' and a bit like 'quod erat demonstrandum.' Which, I think you'll find, is sufficiently demonstrandummed by my reasoning on the individual's right to remain thick - to the extent that I am due the old 'quid pro quo' from the old 'alma mater' as recompense for my remaining so Latin-wise and career-disappointment-wise these past 36 years, though, in this case, we are talking about a million quid pro quo. Which in Roman numerals, yer honner, is..."

Judge: "Too clever by half. Case dismissed!"

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.