Breaktime [antikvár]

CHALLENGE Coffeetalk 'I tell you no lie,' said Morgan, slopping his coin-machine coffee on to the scuffed woodblock floor of the sixth-form common-room. 'Maureen Pinfold is a dream.' Ditto stared at him in what he hoped was an enigmatic fashion. Since term began he had been perfecting this cool exterior manner, an attitude of unshakable intellectual poise. Morgan licked dribbling coffee from the side of his plastic mug. 'She's ripe for dissection,' he said, affecting his medical style. 'I plan to operate as soon as the patient is prepared. And a theatre found, of course.' He laughed. 'It might have to be a field trip.' 'God, the mixed metaphors,' said Ditto. 'I do not believe in purity.' Morgan laughed again. He always preferred his own witticisms to anyone else's. His laughter shook another expectoration of coffee on to the abused floor. Siu^eying the moming-break crowd that filled the room, he said, 'You know the trouble with half this lot?' 'Tell me,' said Ditto indulgently. 'And with you too, I might add.' 'Say on.' 'They talk a lot. . .' 'So do you.' ' but they've done nothing. They talk very knowledgeably about Life and Sex and Politics and Religion and all that guff. But they've got it out of books.' He lobbed his empty mug like a shuttlecock half across the room, into the metal wastebin by the coffee machine. A group