The Origins of the English Literature Society

By the western sea there is an old pub and in this pub sit three old men.  There was the old man with a cat, the old man with the walking stick & the old man with the red nose.  The old man with the red nose is laughing.  The old man with the walking stick is reading.  The old man with the cat was petting the feline while it drank milk from a shallow bowl.  If you ask them they will tell you about the beginning of the English Literature & Creative Writing Society.  If you believe them they will buy you a drink. They have told me their story once and I will now tell it to you.

In the time when words were birds & paper grew from the ground, when the University was a circus and the sea mewed the music of strings, there was a hamster and a monkey.  The hamster had a loud laugh and it laughed where-ever it went.  The monkey had a quick laugh and it laughed where-ever it went.  The two were brought together by their laughter.  As they were brought together their laughter crept away because they were jealous.  The hamster was jealous of the monkey’s tail and it would say to itself, “I wish I had a tail to flick and curl with.  My tail is so short that I cannot make it do anything.  The monkey does aerobatics & that is almost like flying”.  The monkey was jealous of the hamster’s size, “That hamster is so small I bet it can go anywhere it wishes, in pipes, wheels, the bars through cages, I wish I was as small as it.”

Neither animal told their jealousies to any of their friends, but all of their friends could see that something was wrong when the hamster & the monkey were brought together.  After a long time the monkey was fed up with not laughing.  The hamster could see that the monkey was unhappy & plucked up the courage to ask what was wrong. 

“Why can’t I be as small as you?  I am so long & tall & ungainly that I would only get stuck in the places you reach,” said the monkey.  The hamster was surprise said, “Being so small is not so great.  Nobody notices me and I am always in fear of being treaded on.  You’re not afraid of people’s feet, being so high up & everyone looks to you.  If only we could change bodies or swap places.”  The two animals were sad together for that day. 

The monkey now tries to teach the hamster how to jump & the hamster tries to teach the monkey how to crawl.  The two animals had children who were small furry creatures who could run over rooftops and hide under floorboards.  The birds fell into the flowers; the sea roared the sound of drums and the circus clowns, performers, aerial artists & magicians turned into Creative Writing Students who picked the ground of the worded paper. 

And that, say the old drunken men, is how the English Literature Society began.