Sausage and Mash

In the pub, we wait for our plates of sausage and mash with our kidnapped plenary speaker. — 'You know they hate you', W. says to kidnapped speaker. 'They hate us, God knows, and they hate you, too'. — 'Who hates me?, the speaker says. — 'Everyone. Everyone here', W. says. — 'I don't think they hate me', the speaker says. — 'They do! They hate us, and they really hate you'.

‘They hate thought!, W. insists. ‘Don’t you see? They hate thought, and want to drive all thought away!’ – ‘Why did they invite me, then?’, our kidnapped plenary speaker wonders. It's a mystery, we agree. Perhaps there's still some instinct among the Reading philosophers concerning what they lack, W. speculates. Perhaps they feel some residual shame about their inability to think.

We feel shame, W. tells our speaker, setting down his cutlery. Well, he does (W.) at any rate. He’s been trying to teach me the meaning of shame, W. says. How can you teach a grown man shame?, W. says. If only he’d known me as a child, he says to our speaker; what I might have been! Give me a child till the age of seven, and he’s mine for life, say the Jesuits. Give me a full grown adult idiot, and he’ll never be yours, W. says. – ‘In fact, you’ll be his. You’ll be his for the rest of your life!’

Our sausages and mash arrive on big oval plates. It looks disgusting, we agree, but what can you expect for £3.95? Eat, man, eat!, we urge our speaker. He needs to keep up his strength! After all, very soon he'll have to go back to the conference! We'll protect him, we tell our kidnapped speaker. We'll flank him like the president's secret service bodyguards. We'll keep our sunglasses on and speak into earpieces. — 'The package is in the building', we'll say. 'The package is about to give his speech'.