INVIGILATOR

INVIGILATOR

Enter an empty room,
put out all the papers
on the desks arranged in rows
write words on a whiteboard
and invite the exam candidates in
cheerily greet them by saying,
“Put your bags at the back,
And turn off your mobile phones.”
Start the exam
And stare And stare And stare
For three hours
I am the eye of authority
For a pittance
I have hired my gaze out
To enforce exam regulations
Exercising petty power
As bureaucratically stipulated
Only allowing one person at a time
To go to the lavatory
After they have put their hand
to request this privilege first
Thus bladders are subjected
To principles of academic freedom
And proper rigour.
And part of this important authority
Is the power to end the exam
Which I do promptly
And collect the papers,
Wipe the whiteboard
and leave the room
Empty again.

Mary the Mare and Billy the Beaver

Mary the Mare lived in a cottage with flowers round the door,
Or she did, until she ate all the flowers.
She asked her friend Billy the Beaver round for tea,
but she had no tea to give him.
So he ate the door
All the way from the ceiling to the floor.
Well he would wouldn’t he?
Because it was wood wasn’t it?
“I hope there’s not too much varnish.” Mary said.
“Nah” (chomp,chomp), said Billy
Then he spat out the hinges and the handles,
And went off leaving a trail of sawdust turds behind him,
Ready to be made into MDF kitchen units.
Mary stared at the world through the empty space where the door had been,
She didn’t even have half a door left to look over,
Thanks to that greedy beaver,
So she felt all unstable,
Suffered from a sudden loss of confidence
And fell over.

The moral of this story is
That we must all pull together and use good British commonsense
Because that’s all we’ll have left soon
Apart from sawdust turds.