In Our Underpants

One day, our drama teacher, Mr Druff, gathered the class around him and told us, “Today, boys and girls, you are all going to pretend to be evil, disgusting trolls. I will be playing the part of a handsome prince on a quest and you will be attacking me, attempting to prevent me from crossing your bridge and carrying out my heroic task. You will surround me, snuffling and growling, whereupon I will produce this length of two by four and proceed to bash the crap out of the lot of you.

 

“And there’s no point trying to get away. I’ve locked the hall door. Scream all you want Scroggins. No one is going to hear you. Now let the slaughter commence!”

 

Clearly this is another of my tall tales, but at least the evil troll-clubbing scenario might have been a tad less humiliating than having to pretend to be trees waving in the breeze – IN OUR FRIGGING UNDERPANTS for crying out why-do-you-think-children-have-no-sense-of-modesty-or-any-dignity-to-crush loud!

 

Naturally, had I continued with this fantasy, Mr Druff would have turned out to be called Dan. I suspect, gentle reader, you would have had trouble coping with more sophisticated, cerebral humour and would have only been too grateful that I’d slipped in an obvious gag sufficiently intellectually undemanding for you to “get it”. Bet you didn’t spot the foregoing split infinitive, either. Special school didn’t work for you, did it.

 

Don’t worry, though, being as thick as pig effluent doesn’t make you a bad person. Painfully tedious and rather irritating company, perhaps, but that’s another story. One that would necessitate ending with “piddle off, you brain dead mollusc”.

 

Good day sir!

 

By the way, the split infinitive came in: “would have only been too grateful”. “Have been” is the infinitive and placing “only” in the middle is the split. It should be either “only have been” or “have been only”. As for the crew of the Enteprise, “to boldly go” is another split infinitive. Boldly to go, or to go boldly, is correct usage. And if you have the wrong colour shirt on and no speaking lines, to boldly go down to the planet, is also really dumb because you will certainly die and be looking for a cereal advert next day to try and pay your rent.

 

Well, who would have thought reading this trash would end up teaching you something about English grammar. Not that I’m a pedant, peasants