Aggressive teachers patrol the grandstand confiscating books, cards, and radios. We are here to enjoy ourselves and to support those hard-working competitors!
Even here there is a vast array of loudspeakers. Who needs 1984-style two-way complete communication? One-way is enough. Pump enough garbage at the population and you don’t need to look or listen to know they’re stuffed full of it, quite incapable of thinking clearly, for the thoughts of most people speak with such soft and uncertain voices that they are easily shouted down.
Enthusiastic English teacher inevitably explodes with 1000 watts (RMS) of ecstasy at every record-rending result.
—J. Millar, of Hackett, has broken the fifty parsec dog-paddle record of 2.041 microseconds by a phenomenal 54, yes, 54 millimicroseconds, setting a brand new record for the fifty parsec dog-paddle event at 1.987 microseconds! Well done, J. Millar of Hackett! Let’s hear some applause from the Hackett stand for J. Millar! That’s so feeble I could hardly hear it, surely you can do better than that! Now that’s more like it! Have you heard the one about the vacuum-cleaner salesman?
Among the worst discomforts is the unquenchable thirst.
The lower part of each grandstand is filled with the faction’s cheering-squad, consisting mainly of girls. The cheer leader puts them all under hypnosis a week before the carnival, then implants a post-hypnotic suggestion that on the day of the carnival they will think they are attending a rock concert by a popular overseas group. They thus behave accordingly. A rather ingenious approach is used to achieve the right chant: the girls are made to forget the name of the sexiest member of the group and to instead associate the name of their faction with that gorgeous body and that explosive voice. A wonderfully effective combination of screaming, hysterical crying, and fainting results. Cheer leaders also occasionally spur on their mesmerised slave-victims by waving large stuffed pandas in front of them. The appearance of the pandas is generally close enough to the appearance of their singing idols to bring on sudden, intensified bouts of frenzied activity.
Hypnotism is, of course, out of the question for the competitors. Their performance may only be augmented by the use of drugs and/or threats of physical violence. Such tricks as the positioning of large masses so as to increase the path lengths of the other factions’ lanes, and the creation of spatially limited back currents isolated to specific lanes by invisible monomolecular viscosity barriers, are common practice. I am one of the few who notice such activities, but they don’t worry me at all, as the outcomes of the senseless races mean nothing to me. I cannot understand why so many people scream so passionately for such insubstantial victories.
Clowns wander about the poolside, now and then leaping into the water and riding along on competitors’ backs. Odd beasts, deformed humans, even the famous Elephant Man, are paraded past the grandstands in cages, between races, to the mocking jeers of the cheering-squad members and spectators, to be spat on by competitors in various stages of undress. Witches and other more frightening creatures who generally hide from civilisation come out brazenly to exhibit their deformed souls, like insolent distorting mirrors. From this I shield myself with the greatest possible care, for the dangers are terrifying, unlimited. I don’t know why they have to go and open such doors at all.
—Mythic this
Mythic that
You’re just a scaredy-cat!
chants the rabbit, but he doesn’t linger, oh, no!
I whistle Beethoven, sound-safe in the noise.
Three or four male staff members avoid normal supervisory duties by prowling around the pool with very expensive German cameras fitted with very long telephoto lenses (very odd, for the whole point of the telephoto design is to give a long focal length from a short barrel), clearly all hoping to catch an interesting cleavage. Supposedly they are serving in some semi-official capacity, but I peer through their lenses and ascertain that none of the shots they take would be of any interest from a sporting point of view, and certainly none could be published in the school magazine.
In the untouchabl