Me and my Black Belt

I admit it: I have been known, very, very occasionally, and certainly not more than seven or eight times a day, to bluff like mad, pretending I know more than I do about something in the hope that all will become clear. I worked out pretty quickly in our office that if someone rings and says,
“Hello. This is Cynthia Boggins,” and then STOPS, then that is because they expect you to know who they are. Nowadays I generally do, but in my early days I just continued the conversation, hoping for the best, so it went:
“Hello. This is Cynthia Boggins.” PAUSE.
“Oh, hello, Cynthia, this is Daphne. How are you?”
“I’m fine, but it’s really busy at the moment.”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
“Because there are a lot of new characters to cast in the third series of Int It Grim Up North.”
(Aha! You’re a CASTING DIRECTOR. So now I know.)

Only once did I come clean.
“Hello. This is Silas Boggins.” (It wasn’t really. It was a very very well-known theatre director.)
“Oh hello, Silas, this is Daphne.”
“Ah, you sound as though you know me. Have we met?”
“No, but you’re very very famous and I’m dead chuffed you’ve rung me.”
(He laughed, and rather liked it, I think, and gave one of our actors a job).

I've (fingers crossed) never got myself into trouble, as in that old story where someone meets Princess Margaret at a party and can’t quite place her, but remembers she had a sister.

“So - - er - - what’s your sister doing now?”
“Still Queen.”

The time my bluff worked best, though, I wasn’t even bluffing, I was just making a rather bad joke. I was teaching in a tough, rough inner-city school and was walking along the corridor with a huge, teetering pile of books.

“Oy, Miss!” said some overgrown gangly youth behind me, “I could push you in t’back and all them books would fall on t’floor.”

I certainly didn’t think he was going to: I didn’t feel threatened. So I just looked at him really seriously and said in solemn tones,

“No, please don’t ever do that to me, for your sake as well as mine. It’s just that I’m a black belt in judo and my reactions are so quick that I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.”

“What, really, Miss?”

“Oh yes, haven’t you heard? You’d be on the floor and then I’d be done for assault. So I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t ever push into me.”

I thought no more of it. But it whizzed round the school at lightning speed.

“Is it true, Miss? Are you really a black belt in Judo?”

“Ah well, that’s for me to know and you to find out, but I do hope you won’t try.”

Nobody ever did try: they all believed it. Astonishing. I think after a while even some of the teachers believed it. If I’d taught there any longer I would have started to believe it myself.

It was not a strategy I would have deliberately opted for at all, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it, but I have to say it made my life at that school a lot easier.