Why I am so very tweed-jacketed

My working assumption all during adolescence and early adulthood (bar the period when I toyed at being a painter) was that I would follow an academic path. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself in the trade of advising swine rather than casting pearls before them. On the whole, I think this was for the best. When I am honest with myself I admit that the aspects of academic life I thought most appealing were the least important. Still, there's a part of me that loves a captive audience, and where better to find one than in the lecture hall. So, in a very tiny way, I am becoming an academic at last.

I have just received a Lehrauftrag from the dean of the law faculty at the local university -- in essence, I have become an adjunct. Beginning in a few weeks I will usher eager little students into the mysteries of the common law. The best part of the dean's letter, I have to say, is the sentence informing me that I am now a 'person belonging to the university'  within the meaning of the Hessian University Act, and hence entitled to make use of the uni's facilities. Splendid; I shall order up a bottle of founder's port straightaway.

Apologies to his holy Roman imperial majesty for nipping one of his post-title patterns, by the way. But whenever I think of academic things I think, for some reason, of him. And anyway, he is off shopping at a mall in America and, if I'm lucky, won't notice.