The School for Henchmen

I'm still not sleeping well; I haven't done since I got back here a fortnight ago. One of the few plus sides to this is that I have been having some wild half-waking dreams. This morning's was particularly amusing.

Igor, the well-known hunchback sidekick (bearing an inevitable resemblance to the classic Marty Feldman incarnation of him in 'Young Frankenstein'), was going into business for himself, setting up a 'School for Henchmen' (although I suppose he should more properly have called it the 'School for Laboratory Assistants'; but perhaps he was trying to broaden his appeal to the market).

Items on the promised program included:

Angry Mobs and How To Deal With Them

The 7 Key Principles of Subservience

Grave-Robbing and Body-Snatching Compared

Your Pension Plan - filching gold from the Master IS an option

How Mad Is My Scientist? (When "Fools - I'll destroy them all" Includes YOU...)

and...
Exit Strategies - Staying One Step Ahead of the Pitch-Forks

On enrolment day at the start of a new semester, Igor was assessing his eager prospective students, a motley rabble of slack-jawed yokels (many of whom appeared to be rejects from the 'Academy of Village Idiots' down the road) who were all - unaccountably! - called Stacy.

His opening address focused mainly on the necessity of having a hump - "No deranged genius worth his salt is going to take you on if you look normal," he berated them scornfully. It transpired that he had an ulterior motive for this: there was a large additional fee for the optional 'body realignment therapy' on offer in the castle dungeon. Most of the yokels were making do with the much cheaper 'prosthetic humps' being touted. A few were trying to fool the watchful Igor by stuffing armfuls of hay up the back of their smocks.

One game young Stacy was trying to make do without any of these props. "Where's your hump?" demanded Igor testily. "I've got a mole," offered Stacy, hopefully. "It's not a hump, though, is it?" reasoned Igor. "It's a very big mole," ventured Stacy, with admirable persistence. Whereupon Igor squashed the proffered mole flat with a vicious slap on the boy's bare shoulder-blade.

Honestly, I swear this was all in the dream. Worrying.