The Bird

Sixty years ago today, I penned this entry in my then-diary:

Since yesterday I've been writing short poems - pretty good ones - if I do say so myself. It's usually about a person. One I especially like is:

Brother Adrian

When the boys go out to play,
Brother Adrian stayed away.
"Have to study," he just said,
"By tonight I will have read
Books of every type and kind,
For I simply have to find
How in French to write the words,
'Reading books is for the birds!'"

A little context: I was at the time in grade ten at De La Salle College "Oaklands" which was run by Christian Brothers, a Catholic teaching order. Brother Adrian would have been my French teacher, guessed (I have no actual memory of it) from the above. Anyways, when I read this doggerel a couple of days ago I experienced a strong sense that one of our teachers had been nicknamed "the bird" by his students, based supposedly, as suggested by my friend Alfy who also went to De La Salle back then, on "his behaviour". Now, neither Alfy nor I have a direct recollection (sixty years can do that) of the bird's identity but it makes sense to me that it might have been Brother Adrian because that would have made the poem especially clever.