FRESH EGGHEADS

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30286, 12 November 1963, Page 12

FRESH EGGHEADS

(81/

WHIM WHAM]

". . . a growing appreciation that we are not all eggheads Bitting up in Ivory towera but ordinary people who are prepared to come more than half-way into what aome people call 'the concrete jungle..”—Dr. F. J. Llewellyn, chairman of the Univeraity Granta Committee, to the Auckland Creditmen'a Club I’ve never yet been called an Egghead Sir. 1 don't think I’d much like It if 1 were. This vulgar Label’s often pinned, polemically. On Persons of high Standing, academically: A contradictory, ambiguous Word. An Egghead's lofty but, somehow, absurd. Thus we express Respect and Disrespect, Either or Both, for Men of Intellect. They know so MUCH, compared with our poor Scraps: More than is Good for Them (or Us) perhaps. Nevertheless, Sir, I—or even You!— Could teach the eggiest Head a Thing or Two. Eggheads, however, truly laid and packed. Are fragile, sometimes addled, easily cracked. Eggheads are bald, inviting Fools to poke Fun, and the Mirth of other Fools provoke: Sufficient Hair, however cropped or shorn, Protects the Brain beneath from ignorant Scorn: Beards are permissible, but not long Locks; The Long-haired Egghead is a Paradox Bewildering to the Plain Man at his DeskBaldness is just bad Luck, but THAT’s grotesque! An Egghead sitting in an Ivory Tower, Like some unloved Rapunzel in her Bower, With no long Locks to make that Golden Stair Her Lover clambered up to join here There— No human Contact with the Ground whatever. Bald, barren, supernatu rally clever? Professor, there’s a Public Image for You! Wouldn’t it. if it were a true One, bore You And drive you screaming up that (ivory) Wall? Fortunately, it’s not like That at All. These Towers aren’t lonely Egghead-Incubators— Look, they’ve got Lifts, and public Escalators!