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Friday 31 March 2017

Semtex in the tea



My wife Jennifer enjoys reading all kinds of books. One of her favourite series is by Gervase Phinn, The Little Village School novels. She has just finished reading the fifth, Secrets at the Little Village School (2016). Over the years, I’ve been apprised of several hilarious snippets so I hope at some point to read them too. They appear to be acute observations of the life and loves of teachers, parents, children, and village people in Barton-in-the-Dale.

To give you a flavour, here’s an extract from the start of Chapter 6:

Mrs Sloughthwaite was a mistress of the malapropism and the amazingly inventive non sequitur. She managed to mangle the English language like a mincer minced meat, often to the amusement of her customers. She would comment on the colourful enemas that flowered in the tubs by the village green, the Mongolian tree with the beautiful blossoms, the chameleon bush in the churchyard and the creeping hysteria that grew up the wall on the rectory. She would bemoan the fact that the lovely buddleia bush in her back garden was full of atheists. She would enquire of her clientele if they favoured semtex in their tea instead of sugar, if they wanted evacuated milk or the semi-skilled variety and if they preferred orgasmic vegetables instead of the ordinary sort.


 See his books on Amazon UK here

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