Thursday 14 February 2008

Milk messages

A bottle of milk has appeared in the staff room (for want of a better name for it) fridge. On it, a post it note reads "Drink Me". Well, given that we are an English Literature Department, I'd have thought we all would know what happens when we drink liquids marked in such a fashion...

"Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head though the doorway; `and even if my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, `it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know how to begin.' For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible. There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, `which certainly was not here before,' said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words `DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well
to say `Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. `No, I'll look first,' she said, `and see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if your hold it too long; and that if you cut your
finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was NOT marked `poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding
it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.


`What a curious feeling!' said Alice; `I must be shutting up like a telescope.' And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going though the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; `for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, `in my going out altogether, like a
candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing. "

(Text taken from here)


So perhaps I, like 'wise little Alice', may not be doing THAT in a hurry. (Well, unless someone also leaves very small cakes marked 'EAT ME' too...)

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