ABSTRACT
The descriptions and analyses of this chapter have been strung along the thread provided by the word 'unexpected'. It begins with a miscellany of ethnography, not all of it connected, other than in an allegorical way, with life in universities. The first piece of ethnography is the political sagacity to be found in young roosters. The second piece of ethnography is about one of those heroes of our time, a vice-chancellor in the age of student unrest. The third piece of ethnography is a small remembrance of what happened one hot summer's day in the headmaster's study, where the five members of the upper division of the classical sixth form had assembled to continue their discussion of the Apologia. The chapter considers some dimensions which run across these three pieces of ethnography. It illustrates a story that concerns first the situations which determine what masks are appropriate and, secondly, the complementary and contradictory relationships between different kinds of mask.
