I was listening to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Pippa’s covering all the Harry Potter books in the run-up to Saturday’s book release) when I smiled to hear McGonagall’s remark, “If it were not for the fact that I never speak ill of my colleagues. . . .” I can imagine that if I were a colleague of Trelawney’s, I too might be hard-pressed not to breach the collegiality about which I care deeply.
>> “If it were not for the fact that I never speak ill of my colleagues. . . .”
Haha. I love it. My father was once asked for a letter of recommendation from a physics graduate student of his who wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
It ended with, “When you know Mr. Smith the way I know Mr. Smith, you will esteem him the way I esteem him.”