Students, people who know me, or indeed regular visitors will know I have a bit of a fetish for Lego …
Just to be clear, I don’t play with it, but I do collect some of the minifigures, photograph them – sometimes for classroom posters, or just because I generally like them. My Schemes of Work for school, like the one on Conan Doyle‘s The Sign of Four, is full of Lego pics. I buy plenty of minifigures.
Imagine, though, the situation …
I already own one Shakespeare (thankfully). He sits on top of my iMac at home, his raised left eyebrow sardonically questions my work when the spellchecker has done its thing. Students don’t seem to understand the value of re-reading and editing their work, but Will keeps my own writing in check – as best he can.
Blithely, on a whim, I decided to buy a second Shakespeare for school, to perch on my desk. Until I hit eBay, and then Firestar (my Lego shop du choix).
£21.95.
That’s, hmm, two Arden Thirds. Or nearly three Penguin Monarchs. Or about seven pints of beer at my local. And, given that this site is named after a tavern, that’s the deal-breaker, I’d say …
And, bear in mind that I have a Y12 form. They ARE, genuinely, lovely. (One or two might be reading, so I’d better say that!) But, like Y7 pupils turning into devils in Y8, it would only be a matter of time before Will II was kidnapped, stripped naked, and subjected to all kinds of embarrassing humiliations, as if he was a groom on his stag night. It’s happened to me in the past, when I had an Action-Man-sized replica of the God that is Eric Cantona. I still get flashbacks, about twenty years later, of him being hanged in a polaroid image … I will never, ever forgive you, Paul Hemming. You’ve done a great disservice to Spurs fans in general – I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire – still!
I – reluctantly – saved my money on this occasion … If I had to pin a label on my attitude to Literature, I’d call myself a Marxist critic. Can you imagine what the bearded wonder would have had to say, had I clicked ‘Add to basket’?
No, there’s an idea – to create a Karl Marx in Lego!
To buy or not to buy? Not to buy, sadly!
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 