That's the Badger!

Have you ever heard of this phrase? No, me neither. Apparently, it's what you say when you suddenly get the answer to something you've been trying to remember for a while, like a name or a place or where you left your paper copy of Nearly King Jimbo because you were stupid enough not to keep a copy on a memory stick just in case your laptop dies.

So, for example, whilst waiting for a train t'other day, I bumped into an old student.
'Hello Miss!' he said.
'Hello....er....Sam,' I hazarded. 'How are you? What are you up to now?'
And as he didn't give me any funny looks, I thought, well I got his name right, that's a good start, and he stood and told me all about what he was up to now, and I stood and thought, blimey, isn't he tall???

But for the rest of the day my brian, or brain even, because Brian has nothing to do with this, went into frantic overload trying to remember this lad's surname. I could remember I taught him both English and Drama and that he was a very entertaining performer after the style of Kenneth Williams. I could remember teaching his older sister, Zoe, two years before him. I could even remember he'd got a 'C' for English and a 'B' for Drama. But could I remember his surname? Could I pumpkin pie.

I kept telling myself it didn't matter, but you know how it is. These little things are the kind of irrational irritations that bug you into lunacy. Like I need any encouragement. The kind of things that play on you mind until 3 in the morning, when you suddenly sit up and shout out the answer that has been dragged kicking and screaming from the dark, spidery corners of your memory cupboard and given a jolly good brush down with a stiff scrubber. Or in this case, 4 hours later when perched on a bar stool in the John Lewis restaurant at Bluewater whilst eating an egg mayonnaise baguette.

And at this point, according to Heather, I should have preceded my answer with the phrase, 'That's the badger!'

I'm never sure whether Heather is having me on with these ideas, but apparently 'tis common parlance amongst her generation.

'Why a badger?' I said, when this conversation arose over the dinner table the other evening. (Don't even begin to ask how we got onto the subject of badgers).
Heather shrugged. So did Andy, mostly because he'd never heard of it either.
'We always used to say 'Eureka!' ' he said, but then he did do Latin at school.

It doesn't really matter, of course, that it's a badger. It's a bit like Fate and Luck and the Mysteries of the Universe. Sometimes you don't have to understand them to accept them. There are some things that will never, ever be explained, no matter how hard Professor Stephen Hawking tries. If the phrase is badger based, and it works for people, then it's good enough for me.

I mean, what are the chances of me ever being able to put the words 'badger' and 'Stephen Hawking' together as labels for a blog post ever again?