Marvin The Pig's Schooldays

Before we start, please join me in a song.

The Marvin Song

Marvin the pig, Marvin the pig,
He's not too small and he's not too big,
Although he's bald he never wears a wig,
Oh, what a truly remarkable pig!

When I have my own children's TV program, that will be my theme song. I have ambitions, you see. It's a fine thing to tell you about my life here on ABC but a pig has to look to his future. I could teach counting, for example. There's ONE apple. Eat it. Oh, and there's ONE apple. Eat it. And there's ONE and ONE and ONE apple. Eat it, eat it, eat it. ONE and ONE and ONE and ONE and ONE makes LOTS and LOTS equals SNACK to tide me over until DINNER, which has LOTS and LOTS of SNACKSES in it, and then LOTS and LOTS more. Once you've counted up to DINNER you can't really go much higher, you need a sleep after that. DINNER plus SLEEP equals HAPPY MARVIN.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I had just broken out of my sty, and what happened next was potatoes! I trotted out of my sty following the delicious scent, rearranged a fence so it had a Marvin-sized hole in it, and there in front of me were potatoes as far as the snout could smell. Praise Farmer, for he had answered my prayers without putting me to the inconvenience of praying them. The potatoes were under the ground, but that's a minor inconvenience for a pig and I soon had a DINNER of them up. I ate and squealed and grunted and burped until Wife came to see what all the noise was about.

Wife seemed a bit upset, although she didn't eat any of the potatoes so she couldn't have wanted them for herself. I told her I'd scented a truffle and, as soon as I'd eaten through the field of potatoes, I'd be better placed to determine its exact location. She said it was about time I went to school. I said sleeping was more what I had in mind, so she led me back to my sty and I settled down for a nap.

By next morning I'd forgotten all about it but, after I'd munched through a healthy breakfast of organic swill, Wife gave me a modest packed lunch in a wheelbarrow and sent me off to school. On the way I began to suspect that I might be being used as a metaphor, but I couldn't for the life of me think what for. Maybe it was all just an innocent story, which was fine by me as long as it didn't have wolves in it.

At school there wasn't a chair big enough for me, so I sat on the floor and rested my front legs on the desk. The first lesson was history, which is easy for a pig. We've always been pretty much the same and done very similar things since we were first invented. The same is true of people, I discovered, although they seemed to think the details were important. Humans are always fighting with each other and always have. All that changed was the reasons they gave for doing it and the weapons they used. History, for humans, involved memorising the excuses.

In the playground at break time I witnessed history in action. Two boys were fighting and I strolled up to find out why. One said the other wasn't in his gang. The other said the first had a big nose. I memorised it in case it came up in next week's lesson.

After break we did art. The teacher spread a sheet of paper on the ground for me, put some paints in shallow containers so I could tread in them, and told me to paint the most important thing in my life. I walked the paints over the paper and soon made a remarkably lifelike picture of some swill I had fond memories of. It was so good that I began to feel very hungry indeed. I started to salivate and got so carried away that I ate my picture and had to start all over again.

At last it was lunch time. I was hopping from one leg to another in my anxiety to get to my wheelbarrow and the delicious rotten apples Wife had packed for me. Then, all of a sudden, nothing much happened.

If you want to know more, and I'm sure you do, please send your donations of potato peelings care of Wife, The Farm, The Only Place in the World. Thank you. Now I'm off for a nap.

Marvin The Pig