I suppose you can see father than we can, Gazelle. You have a greater intellectual vista. And depths. You’re probably deeper than us, too.


You never did belong in our loser’s corner, Gazelle. You were always heading for somewhere better.


You weren’t like us. You never howl at the moon like we do. You never lived on the brink.


You never got as drunk as we did. You were never quite as desperate. Your part time years weren’t as bad. You weren’t hourly paid – the lowest of the low. You had a couple of one-year contracts – comparative luxury. If you hadn’t have got this job, you would have got postdocs at least. Then a permanent lectureship, somewhere else. Some crappy university, no doubt. But you’d have worked you way to somewhere better.


Face it, you’re the head girl type, Gazelle.


What’s it like having that little bit of extra IQ headroom, Gazelle? Having that slightly enhanced ability to think?

What’s it like to actually have some semi-ideas, Gazelle? That are sort of your own?

Stop bullying!


To be lost among the midwits, Gazelle. What a fate. What a fuck up!


How many IQ points are you above us? How much more intelligent are you? What can you do that we can’t? But I suppose we can have no understanding of what you might do that we can’t.

We can’t conceive of you – all the things you must think! All the ideas you must have! Inspiration, almost constant!

Stop it, you guys.

No really, Gazelle. You have it. You have the gift. You should be our great helmswoman. But you have better things to do that to lead us. We should leave you to your research. Give you as much time as possible.

Because really, you’re going to carry us, Gazelle. You’re here to lead us upwards. To put the department on the map. You can help us up the league tables. God knows, we need a reputation. You’ll be the making of us.


Did Livia know who she was hiring? Where you might take us? I’ll bet she didn’t. Livia didn’t reckon on you. Or perhaps she did. Perhaps it’s all 5D chess, and wheels within wheels.


You’re the wild card, Gazelle. Did Livia think putting you amongst us might help us reach for the philosophical stars? It raises the average IQ, undoubtedly …


You’re on your way out, Gazelle. You’re not really here. You’re not with us. You’ll move onto better things. And when you do – when you escape to some normal department, some better department, spare a thought for us, every now and again.

Oh, we never expect to hear from you again, once you achieve your international career. This will all have been an embarrassing interlude. A period of fuckedupness. You won’t want to remember. No one need remember your Newcastle years. Like Foucault’s Upsala years. An anomaly. That no one understands.

No, you won’t remember your old thought-companions. The whole Livia imbroglio. You won’t spare a thought for us, once you’re launched on your international career.


Did Livia made a mistake in appointing you, Gazelle? Because you really weren’t a waif or a stray, were you? You weren’t like the rest of us.

Why did Livia place you amongst us? It was cruel, in a way. Was she trying to lift us up? Raise our sights? Wasn’t there a purpose to everything Livia did? Ot was it to force us lower. To lower our gaze. To understand what we would never, never be able to do. To keep us humble. To keep our gaze on the earth. With the humus.


To leap over us all, with a Gazelle-like leap.