Tales Of The Gurrier

I met my first wizard when I was seven years old. He was short and pudgy and stood ahead of me in the queue for sandwiches at school. I didn’t like him.

It was because of the sandwiches. The sandwiches were revolting. Pale grey slabs of meat encased in a gelatinous covering of margarine and stale bread. They lay there in the corner of the classroom through the long hot day sweating gently. I never ate them you understand. They were vile, unclean things. I stood in line for the little cartons of milk. Milk was different of course. Acceptable, not hideous and nauseating like those septic tumor sandwiches they tried to feed us. I brought my own sandwiches made from real things. But the wizard, he loved them. Munching away with blithe indifference his cape draped around his shoulders oblivious to the nauseating spectacle he portrayed to the world. It made me sick, and I despised him for his sandwich eating ways.

The cape? Well of course we all had capes back then, no schoolboy would be without his cape. Not a real cape. The schoolboy cape is fashioned from a jumper tied about the neck. Alternatively the average, unimaginative boy would simply hang his jacket on his head by the hood thus creating a passable impression of a superhero who has flown into a windsock. I disdained the latter approach preferring the jumper around the neck solution. It was closer to the spirit of the superhero oeuvre. The Wizard had a specialty cape. It was jacket based but lacking a hood his jacket had a button at the neck allowing the creation of a plausible heroic cloak of invincibility. Up and down the schoolyard he would charge cape flying out behind him, feet barely touching the ground as he fought off radioactive baddies and mighty super villains from all sides. It was most impressive, but I still didn’t like him.

One day as we kicked our heels in the schoolyard he spoke to me. I was astonished (as children often are) to find he was in fact quite a nice person. The consumption of the filthy bad-meat had not rotted his constitution or mental faculties. My initial impressions vanished and in time we became firm friends. But this was long before he became a wizard proper you understand. Perhaps a wizard needs be made of sterner stuff than the mere mortal. Looking back I see now it was a brave man or a fool who dined out on those sandwiches without pause for his own safety. I like to think my friend was the former.

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