Pythagoras

ACROPOLIS BOYS’ SCHOOL

Name of Pupil: PYTHAGORAS

Age: 15

Dear Mr and Mrs Pythagoras,

Please find enclosed a refund of all monies paid in respect of the school mountaineering expedition which we were forced to abandon yesterday.

Things had started so well, too.

Three guides were with us. Mr Potts, a very smartly dressed man in a natty pair of tartan trews with matching tie, was our leader. He was already halfway up the side of a sheer slab of rock. His two fellow guides, whose names I never did learn, were standing next to me and explaining the finer points of climbing technique to the boys. That was when things started to go wrong.

Mr Potts was climbing so beautifully that I decided to get my telescope out for a closer look at his technique. Unfortunately however, in extricating said instrument from the depths of my haversack, I inadvertently poked its little end into the right eye of guide number 2.

He screamed in agony. That made me jump, as a consequence of which I then stuck the telescope’s fat end into the left eye of guide number 3. He also began to scream and shout.

At that moment Mr Potts, no doubt wondering what all the hullabaloo was about, ignored his own advice and looked down. He promptly lost his footing and would have plummeted to certain death had his tie not become entangled in a thorn bush jutting out from a crack in the rock face.

By the time the ambulance had rushed guides 2 and 3 to hospital and the rescue services brought Mr Potts safely down to earth, there was no alternative but to abandon the expedition.

Yours sincerely

Cliff Face,
Head of 5th Year

P. S. I have to say that Pythagoras I attitude during this episode was very disappointing.

Guides 2 and 3 were distinctly unhappy, of course, both having received a severe poke in one eye. Mr. Potts was in no laughing mood either, as he made perfectly plain even while hanging on to the rock face for all he was worth. It was a moment of considerable tension, with all three guides looking at me with what I can only describe as undisguised hatred.

All the more upsetting, therefore that your son Pythagoras should choose that moment to announce in a very loud voice, ‘The glare on the high Potts in trews as the guide dangles tie tangled is equal to the sum of the glares on the other two guides.’