Giant JPs, artworks & JB is innocent, OK?

John Boden reminded me (as if I could ever have forgotten) of the chant of Parryisms that was used to maintain morale, distress grockles and embarrass our dear Director when he was showing visiting local dignitaries around the site. A 'giant JP' chant was to have been part of the adaptation of 'Captain Lash' that was to be directed and produced by Dr Phillpotts, as JB reminded us here. I have been trying to reconstruct the words of the Parry-inspired chant, although I am not entirely certain that it can be published in full.

Mr Boden writes on this, and other matters:

"Now, the 'Giant JP' - that quoted snippet was the only reference in my Capt. Lash copy (which I now realise after only spotting 'Phillpotts on Lash' in your blog today, that the mystery hand of scripting was obviously Kris P. himself, and not such a rarity as I had supposed), but so well-known at the time that further explanation not needed! My dim recollection is that the Giant JP tended to evolve, on an annual basis perhaps, depending on whatever new bons mots fell from the maestro's lips. It did, however, always start with the same Leitmotiv - "Bastard, Swine, Long-handled bugger...." [Surely no comma between "Bastard" and "Swine"? Ed.] If I had to make a guess at the originator/moderator/MC of the 'Giant JP', that would be Biggles. For example, I vaguely recall in 1980, JP was incensed by someone in our dormitory scraping his boots with a trowel at his bedside, rather too close to breakfast time and JP himself, and he shouted out the gem: "Damn you for that scratchin'" followed by "Damn your eyes for that scratchin'" when the scratchin' didn't immediately cease. That was incorporated into the 'Giant JP' for that season, or maybe it wasn't, as False Memory Syndrome kicks in yet again!!

.. glad you thought the artwork I gleaned from Cyberspace worthy of 'running up the flagpole', and despite the fact that you personally didn't salute it - after a couple of glasses of the Lincolnshire Co-Operative Society's finest industrial-quality S. African Cab/Shiraz, I thought I could almost detect nuances of 2m x 2m planning grids, Limestone, Long Mounds and Leisuredromes.......

Finally, on a slightly different tack, which needs squaring up, the recently-posted incident of myself falling drunkenly into a bed of nettles (urtica dioica) - I categorically don't see me in the frame for that one! I'm sure I would have remembered the after-effects, if not the incident itself....

There was an occasion when one of our party appeared to have become detached on a walk back from the Air Balloon, and a head-count in the dining room late-pm led us on a search party down Greenway Lane, where our missing member was discovered having been botanically sidetracked (urtica dioica, again). Iain...help, you were there - unless another attack of FMS."