Desperately Seeking George

When I studied for my anatomy and physiology qualification I had to learn all the names of the skeletal and muscle structures in the human body which was a fairly mammoth task. And in order to help me get the names and positions into my head, I enlisted the help of George.

George was a strange creature; half bone, half muscle, he hung on the back of my dining room door in all his five feet ten 3-D cardboard glory, and every time I passed him by I would prod him, shouting things like 'Trapezius!' or 'Phalanges' or 'Sterno-cleido mastoid!' at him, which, bless him, he took no offence to and never punched me back once.

If I shut my eyes I can still see his rictus grin, and the way his right femur dangled awkwardly after a particularly nasty altercation with my then cat, Moose. And there came a time when George could stand the prodding and poking, the flexing and stretching no longer. His cardboard started to thin and shred, his rigid 3-D structure to droop and sag, and his general posture clung to the door in an ever-desperate attempt to stay upright. Like most blokes do with age, I suppose.

And so I passed my exam and poor George was consigned to the great rubbish bin in the sky.

But now I have a career purpose (not a porpoise, that would be silly), and I need to brush up on my anatomy, can I find a George II? Can I heck! I've trawled the interwebbly, Amazon and E-bay in search of a George II. And you have to be VERY careful what you type into search engines in order to track down a half-skeleton, half-muscle 3-D cardboard anatomy model, believe me. One can find oneself heading towards some very suspect websites if one isn't very, very conscientious of one's vocabulary.

I can find full-sized skeletons (mostly from Germany which is rather odd), bitsof skeleton, small skeletons, toy skeletons, skeletons in the form of fabric suits which you wear on Hallowe'en and jump out of cupboards and scare people with. I can find models of hearts, eyes, knees, feet and, very alarmingly, willies. I can find books and posters by the score. But I've got loads of anatomy books, and pictures galore.

It's a George I want.

Will I ever find one? I wish I could remember where I found George I. I know he came flat-packed and I had to put him together which was a challenge in itself, because some of those tabs were very tricky to manipulate. Perhaps he came from IKEA? Oh stop it, Denise, you idiot. You see, that's what happens when you spend all day standing in a classroom with no ventilation feeling resentful at having to teach children who are all using the excuse at the moment that 'it's too hot to work.'

Ha! They never needed excessive heat to stop 'em working before!

I could make my own George II, I suppose. Cut up some posters, stick them to cardboard and then assemble into a a 3-D marvel of all that is beautiful in the human body. And up in the loft I have a set of Victorian anatomy books. They are very detailed AND have pop-up sections which I understand was quite risque in Victoria's day. I'm sure I read somewhere she frowned on all things pop-up unless they popped up in private, of course.

Right, I'm off to rest my poor over-heated brain before I do any more damage to my blog. We're nearly at post 500! Don't want to spoil things before we get there, do we??