The other day I had lunch with the CFO. I knew
something was wrong when he forwent his customary order of oysters and opted
for the lobster soup. After making small talk for a while – including a dig at
Chris Patten of all people for the current mess surrounding the run-up to the
non-election of the Chief Executive (“He wanted to embarrass China and this
incident would make him very happy” – no, I didn’t follow either) – he turned
to the matter that was occupying his mind: his son Rodney
Now, Rodney and I go back quite a long way, even
if we’ve never actually met. When Rodney was in his final year at school, it
was me to whom the CFO turned with questions about his education. Rodney, so I
was told, was dead set on going to university in the UK while his father was keen that he should
emulate him by crossing the pond and taking his degree from Brown University.
Rodney, had, it seems, in contradistinction to
Don Henley, no desire to be able to say that he “came from Providence, the one
in Rhode Island, where the old world shadows hang heavy in the air”. In fact, he
wanted to sample the old world at first hand.
So it was that Rodney embarked on a 4-year
course in Economics at St Andrews University in Scotland. What neither Rodney nor his father had
reckoned with was what Frankie Boyle affectionately calls the “alcoholic
racism” of his own people. When Boyle says that the most Scottish thing he’s
ever seen is a man pissing against a front door and then taking his keys out
and opening the door to let himself in, a foreigner should get an inkling of
what lies in store of an early Saturday morning.
National traits of this kind tend to be
exacerbated when your varsity of choice is a very traditional institute of
education in a very conservative part of Scotland; one that looks down its nose
at the type of rampant development that has scarred once pristine sites at the
likes of Lancaster, York and even Norwich.
The resulting shortage of accommodation has forced
Scotland’s oldest university to make first-year undergraduates share rooms, and
I think one can say that Rodney was a trifle unfortunate with regard to the
person who was allocated to occupy the other bed in his room, who we shall call
Jimmy.
Rodney first became aware that something was
amiss when he was woken up in the middle of the night at the end of the first
week of term by the sounds of Jimmy having it away with a second-year English
Literature major he’d met at a Greenpeace protest against the makers of Barbie.
I jest not. Apparently the demo’s got something
to do with, um, virgin, Indonesian rainforests and carries the slogan “I don't date girls that are into deforestation” –
which comes a bit too close to the bone for my liking but is an honourable
kind of position to take, not to mention perfectly hygienic so long as the girl
(and the boy – I’m no sexist) takes a
shower first.
The CFO proceeded to tell tales of Jimmy’s drunken
nights in with the lads and poor old Rodney returning from the library to be
greeted by a bottle-strewn floor and a bedroom that smelt like a lift in a Govan
public housing estate.
I knew he must be keeping the best until last
and so it turned out. Just last week, in Rodney’s weekly Skype broadcast, he
reported that he had been roused from his slumbers by what appeared to be a leak,
with water plashing around the foot of his bed. Bleary-eyed, Rodney reached for
his bedside lamp, his first thought being that Jimmy had added a fountain to
the gnome and traffic cones that already adorned the room on top of the
official decorations.
But no, his first thought had been spot on:
Jimmy was taking a leak on his bed. I was, for once, lost for words. Part of me
wanted to point out that at least Jimmy hadn’t mistaken his pillow for the
toilet bowl, while the other part of me wanted to say that at least Jimmy only
needed to evacuate his bladder.
Then, there was this other, slightly mischievous,
side of me that wanted to tell the C-Suited one that I didn’t much appreciate
being dumped on, but I wasn’t sure he’d get the joke. And, anyway, what sort of
friend would I be if I couldn’t be relied on to provide a listening ear when
urine trouble?