The Exam

The Exam

The invigilator told us to begin and I turned over the question paper. I hadn't taken an exam since school. You had to answer questions, I knew that much. I took a look at the first one. It said:

Q1 Make up a sentence with the word 'protein' in it.

Make up a sentence? What the hell was a sentence? Something the magistrates gave you, wasn't it? But in exams it was something different, something to do with English, only I couldn't remember what. And what the hell was protein? I'd heard the word and knew it had to do with food. What if I wrote 'protein has to do with food'? Was that a sentence? Rich in protein! I'd heard that somewhere, but where? On the telly, probably. Or in one of those shiny, big books the missus liked with stuff about fashions and celebrity rehab. I liked the bra ads, I've always been a tit man. Protein shampoo! That was it! It was a proper thing, I was sure I'd seen it. I wrote it down in the box:

Protein shampoo

It didn't seem to take up much space but maybe that was because I had little writing. Or maybe there were longer things with protein in. Then I remembered something else. Dairy products are rich in protein. Or was it eggs? Were eggs dairy products? I tried it out. "Eggs, fresh from our dairy." A few people turned round to look at me and I hoped I hadn't given away the answer. I wondered whether to cross out the shampoo, but left it in case it was right and added:

Protein shampoo and dairy eggs

That took up a bit more space and one of them had to be the sentence. I'd spent about fifteen minutes on that one and there seemed an awful lot of questions left. I tried to read the second one:

Q2 Make up a sentence with the word carbo...

What was that word? It sounded like a chemical. Maybe it was carbon something greenhouse gas. What the hell was greenhouse gas, anyway? I would have heated mine with electric if I'd got one. I had to be quicker or I'd never get it all done, so I wrote:

Global warning

The next question was rubbish:

Q3 What is a vitamin?

It didn't even make sense. A vitamin is a vitamin, otherwise they'd have called it something else. Then I remembered vitamin C, so I put down:

C

That was a vitamin, I was sure of it. I was still worrying about whether eggs were dairy products. No, they weren't, they were free range, that's what eggs were. So something else must be the dairy one. It couldn't be milk, milk was organic or skimmed. So what was dairy? Yoghurt. I whispered it this time. "Dairy yoghurt." It sounded alright. Just to be sure I tried out, "dairy bacon." That sounded okay too, better than dairy yoghurt. Then I remembered: give us this day our dairy bread. If it said it in religion it must be right. Bread must be the dairy one. But maybe things were different in religious times? They had fishes big enough to feed thousands in those days. I put it out of my mind and looked at the next question.

Q4 Why do you want to be a nutritionist?

I didn't want to look at people's poo, not even on the telly, but telling them not to be so fat and making them cry was okay. Anyway, it was better money than on jobseekers.

***

I passed the exam and, for just £50, got my certificate to say I was a nutritionist. John said I'd wasted my money because anybody can call themselves a nutritionist, but I asked him how much it would cost to make such a nice certificate and he saw my point.

I've got my own range of pills now. I had the idea that if you took a pill that looked like the thing you were trying to cure, it would make you better. You have to hit the pills a hundred times while you're making them because of some science I made up, but we've got a machine for that.

They have just asked me to head the department of holistic medicine at Liverpool University. It doesn't pay much but I'd like to pass my knowledge on.