Author's Note: I do NOT own anything of the original story or characters, and any characters I've invented, such as the Singh family, are not based on any real person living or dead. The story is based more on the book than the movie, though I'm taking a couple of things from the film. Assume Alex's last name is DeLarge and he has the same general looks (tall, blue eyes, brown hair) for instance. Setting is vaguely in the present day, two years after the book ends… I'm Canadian, not British, so feel free to catch me on any North Americanisms… Okay, enough blabbing. Please R & R (read and review, though resting and relaxing is also fun)

A Bit of Education

1. Bloody Harmony

I woke up at oh eight oh five on a Saturday morning to the adverts on Classical One. Being shagged and fagged (meaning tired, O little brothers, though for some reason Harmony Singh smecks hu hu hu when I use those slovos), I hadn't awoken to my malenky radio alarm at oh seven three oh. I'd kind of slooshied Handel's "Comfort Ye" in my dream, in which I'd been hit by an auto on the highroad and lay there dying in a pool of krovvy, and a very horrorshow devotchka with like floating black hair was holding me in her rookers and comforting me. What a load of cal. Better that scene with Puccini, not Handel. But anyway, an advert was what woke me. Geoffrey Plautus Music Conservatory, 1985 Avenue Winterson, London. We offer degrees in Instrumental Studies, Vocal Studies, Music History, Jazz, Electroacoustics and Composition.

This gave me like a reminder. I jumped out of bed with my glazzies still half-closed, ticker-tocker beating triple-time. "Compose thyself, Alex," I ordered. Today was the day I'd be moving out of old Flatblock 18A. At the old age of nineteen and ten days, it was time for thy droog and brother to itty off on his oddy knocky, so to speak.

I chose my platties with care, as I had to work a bolshy Saturday shift at the National Gramodisc Archives first. I had one droog there, not a droog to do the old crasting and dratsing with, no, but a smartish law-abiding veck, that being old Harmony Singh. It was our rabbit, or job, to digitally transfer music from vinyls to computers and modern shiny discs. Harmony was good at that, him being a tekky sort. Also, brothers, it may behooveth you to know I was moving into his domy, Flatblock 19S, right after today's rabbit. Harm was looking for a roommate, as he called it, and there little Alex was.

Anyway, I put on shiny black pantaloons and a lily-white shirt, complete with a red cravat that was the heighth of fashion for poor rabbiting malchicks like myself. Then I gave Harmy Singh a ring.

"'Ello?" he said, not very skorry with the telephone—he'd picked it up on the fourth ring.

"My sincerest appy polly loggies, as the day is still molodoy and nothing of muchness is sloochatting so far, but I'd had a choodnessy messel I should converse with thou, O malenky Harmony Singh, before ittying off to the Gramodisc mesto," I said, all dobby and polite.

A pause while he made grumbling and chumbling shooms. Finally, and not so dobby or polite: "Alex? It's eight fifteen in the morning. Speak English. And don't call me bloody Harmony neither."

"My sincerest appleologies, Bloody Harmony," I repeated, though growing a little razdraz inside at his dimness.

"My name is Harmeet," he said peevishly. "Not Harmony."

"Fear not, Harmony, let it not bother thee. I merely presumed to inquire whether I could bring my new shiny electronic piano to thy humble abode when I arrive. Worry not, I'll bring ooko—er, ear phones."

I could barely pony him through all his yawning, but I think I slooshied, "Yeah, mate, whatever," before the phone beeped brzip and went dead.

Not to get all weepy boo-hoo with you, little brothers and sisters, but sometimes I am afraid I cannot keep what gloopy people call friendships. Little Alex has his natural charisma, yes, but as of late, other lewdies seem not to viddy it. They treat your humble narrator like any other gloopy veck and not the horrorshow malchick that was.

My old droogs are all gone, or changed. Old Georgie was dealt the off, for good, by some starry rich veck in a mansion; traitor Dim is a vonny stinking millicent with vonny fatboy Billyboy; and my second batch of droogs Len, Rick, and Bully are now tolchocking lewdies and crasting pretty polly without me. I'd grown like weary of the old ultraviolence, except for wanting to tolchock certain vecks (such as old Harmony) when they acted particularly dim (such as today). But civilized lewdies, as my old papa says, solve their problems with their goloss not their fists. Still, I viddy I could razrez traitor Dim in a fight...

Oh yes, and there's old Pete. Old Pete is settled and married to a nice dobby devotchka called Georgina. I viddy him, now and again, herewise and therewise. That's another veshch, finding a devotchka. Some ptitsas might flirt with your humble narrator, even consent to a bit of pol, but when it comes to what gloopy people call relationships, I'm still on my oddy knocky.

But one veshsch in my jeezny at a time, because less than a week after I move into Harmy Singh's Flatblock 19B domy, I become a bolshy big intellectual university sort of veck. Righty right. Your Alex has been accepted to Geoffrey Plautus' Conservatory, Major in Music Composition.