Team White Coat

Can anyone put on a White Coat? Asked the Sphinx, as they made their return to the city of AAzzz.

No, replied Vivainne, you must qualify with letters after your name, mostly B’s, M’s ,A’s and D’s. These can costa brava.

Oh, said the Sphinx, letters, like letters of the alphabet?

Maybe, said Vivainne, I think that they must be in a specific order, but I’m not one hundred per cent sure.

They approached the City from the north or south, but not the east.

A fire had been laid in the great hall. There were no marsh mallows. Why are marsh mallows anyway?

Constance, My foot is better and I shall quest to round up the White Coats required to make the White Coat team. I shall go alone with the Blue Woman Knight who did sciences at Uni and will recognise the Coats by name and make.

Constance and The Blue Woman Knight (hereafter referred to as the BWK) left AzzAzz accompanied a caravan of camels on a silk road that might take them in safe. The BWK traveled armed with sharp things as per.

They were planning to visit all the universals where education might be taught by the good professional White Coats of knowledge. First up they came to the University of Open, situated in a fine terraced gardens and halls of residue. Students walked about all over the quads and rangles, brandishing spread sheets and litmus tests. They got to know each other far too well, then spent a lifetime trying to forget.

Excuse me, began Constance in her best studentish patois, where may it be possible to interact with the Proffs in their starched Whites and their inimitable White attired assistants?

We keep them all locked away in an ivory tower, replied the Students, they cannot look after themselves and need constant attention in the form of written essays and presentations to calm their nerves and take their minds off.

Surely it is not a good idea to make a tower from the essential toothy tusks of an endangered species?

It is just a saying, replied the students, thinking, duh, the tower is built from simple stone but it contains the ideas and knowledge of a culture. The ivory description denotes value, would you care to visit them?

In actual, we would like to buy some, said the BWK, we need to assemble a team of White Coats, sometimes known as a Laboratory, which is the collective noun, to change the angle of direction that we have inherit concern future planets.

They are very expensive to keep, say the students, and we are busy plotting a revolution. You will find that they only eat the choicest cuts of courgette and require that they be sauteed in butter with saffron. Their clothes are of finest silky pyjamas (under their coats) and for pudding they eat only sweet meats brought from the far east via Paris, where they are packed in little boxes with curly ribbons.

We will need enough stuff to fund our revolution, what can you offer? Said the tallest student, a young woman called Nora.

Firstly, we must know what is your revolution revolting? Asked the BWK

Our revolution is against the design and manufacture of all uncomfortable footwear, said Nora, our organisation is in three parts. The Comfortable Footwear Union or CFU who believe in sitting still and waiting for improvements. Then there is the Comfortable Footwear Brigade or CFB who believe in peaceful protest, gluing themselves to shoe delivery lorries etc. Lastly there is the Militant Front for the Improvement in Availability of Comfortable Footwear, or the MFIACF, who believe in violent overthrow of current footwear norms.

Seems reasonable, say Constance, we can offer in pay a pantechnicon of comfy slippers and a barrel of used wine skins (recycled) which are excellent for shoe repair. Is there a manual for the care and maintenance of the average White Coat? We would keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed. Warts and all.

They are mostly unblemished, but we can provide a manual for the care of the Whitecoats and also sleeping arrangements and clipboards. They do seem to be lost without a clipboard. With pencils and paper off course. They do come, however, with their own chemistry kit in a cardboard box, with a picture of a boy supporting a neat parting in his hair, holding a test tube of blue liquid over a Bunsen burner flame.

How many Whites can you spare? Asked the BWK

Well, said Nora, you have arrived at a cogent moment as we have a glut at this time which has led to some overcrowding in the tower, not of ivory but of stone. We can provide one hundred White Coats and their unwashed children.

We will have them all washed, say BWK, we will wash them, feed them and send them to bed.

Will you tell them a story before lights out? Asked Nora, they do like a story.

We will.

Deal done then, shake on?

They shook and Constance and the BKW went with premium 100 White Coats delivered to Central Station where they might work to divine a new direction that might divert the problems of climate change.