Re: OT. Freedom Of Speech

Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

snip

<Chuckle> We used to scrape our studs on the coarse concrete ramp down
from the changing-rooms onto the pitch. Doubtless it was my generation
who grew up and legislated against what had given some of us such
interesting scars.

<grin> While *WE* had a half-mile tramp along the streets to get to our
playing fields...

Our playing field was a 4-mile bus ride away.

Blimey.

I got permission to cycle
instead of take the bus; I'm certain that the ride there and back did far
more for my health and fitness than anything that happened on the field -
and certainly did more for my self-esteem.

While my school had bicycle sheds, no-one was allowed to cycle to
school, which I for one found rather annoying.

(and the bicycle sheds was, yes, where the 4th year lads went to smoke -
they actually had semi-official dispensation to do so, just so long as
it was *only* the 4th years smoking. It worked, as far as I could see)

But many of the rule changes - affecting scrummaging, for example - that
they've introduced to rugby (union) for safety's sake did need
introducing. Collapsing scrums has long been outlawed, but they had to
get deadly serious because too many teams were deliberately pulling
scrums down anyway. For those who don't know why this is a problem: it
tends to break necks.

Mid-'60s third 15 lock forward speaking. The third 15 lacked the
commitment to actually try to cripple the opposition on purpose. I had
the height to be a prop, but not the eyesight - wouldn't know which way to
run with the ball without following a blob of the correct hue. No good
for conversions, either. Scored a few good tries though.

The best prop I had in a school match (I was hooker) was in the year
below me at the time, and had *terrible* eyesight. Marvellously solid
in the scrum. Dreadful eyesight. At one point in the match, he got a
bit disoriented (as happens from time to time if you've been knocked
flat or somesuch), but sorted himself out on rising from the mud,
located the opposition ball carrier, and tackled him. Except he was
more confused than he thought - what with one thing and another, that
was a goal post he tackled. Thump! Bump! I was there... They were
padding the goal posts by then, so it wasn't too bad, but even so.

We didn't have padded goal posts, so they were too thin for me to see one
from far enough away to make that mistake. I can quite see how it might
happen.

I got up from doing a tackle once, and couldn't figure out which team
was mine. It looked like everyone was wearing red and blue hooped
shirts despite the fact that I was sure my team were in black and white,
with the opposition wearing something hooped not in those colours
either.

That was the bang on the head that made me give the game up. It was a
blinding tackle, mind - the second time I'd tackled that particular
player in the space of about 15 seconds. He went down very hard the
second time, I'm told - the silly sod ran straight at me. Well, maybe
not so silly: running in my direction only involved trying to get past
*me* rather than `everyone else' who were elsewhere on the pitch (come
on, chaps, give us a hand!, I was thinking), but I had just put him down
and then put his mate down immediately afterwards (he fumbled the catch
of the pass, so I had the time to get up and flatten him), and I was
about to put him down a second time. 3rd XV again ;-)

snip

<chuckle> We never had deaths amongst the staff - just madness (at
least two of 'em ended up in the looney bin, from what I heard).

I always though that madness in some degree was a pre-requisite to working
as a teacher.

Well, yes, but there's looney and there's looney. The drama teacher
kept having nervous breakdowns - he was only there for about half the
four years I was at the school, for example. Ratcliffe used to do some
very odd things at times. And some of the teachers who weren't loopy
were just really, really strange - the head of biology was bald and
appeared to have a crater in his skull, for example. Cowburne the
English teacher was an alkie - one of my friends actually had to pick
him up off the floor and help him up the stairs to his classroom because
he fell rather than walked out of the staff room one day. The
headmaster chainsmoked and drank whisky during schools hours (the joke
was that while you couldn't see him in his office due to the smoke, all
you had to do was follow the smell of whisky if you wanted to find him.
He had a PC on his desk - a Sharp MZ80K (or was it MZ380K?) - which had
tar stained keys in the early 1980s) - but only took one day off the
entire time I was there, due to having been punched in the jaw the
previous evening by Miss Z, the Spanish teacher, whose bottom he had
apparently explored with his hand while drunk (they had staff meetings
which turned into `let's have a beer and wind down').

The aforementioned Ratcliffe was the star, though. What do you do with
a man who covers a class for a missing teacher, walks into the classroom
without saying a word to the class (all of whom know about Rafcliffe,
and watch silently and expectantly), sits down at the teacher's desk,
pulls out a telephone (unconnected to anything), picks up the receiver,
and starts talking to someone in the staff room. He gets on to slagging
off a bunch of teachers in the most absurd fashion - accusing Mrs B (the
German teacher) of drinking gin with her feet on the table while smoking
a pipe, for example. Mrs B's turn at the Christmas entertainment one
year was pretending to be a seal by rolling around on the floor,
barking, and flapping her `flippers'.

Horace Pig
Danced a jig
No he didn't
Yes he did.

A poem from Ratcliffe - for the Christmas entertainment. The
introduction to that poem lasted about 3 minutes, from what I recall.

Mees, the crippled and ancient relic from darkest Gloucestershire, once
saw a lad shove another one down a staircase, and gave the standard
bollocking. Mees considered the response to his points to be
inadequate, so in order to emphasise the points he was trying to make
regarding risking someone's life by pushing them down a stone staircase,
lifting the kid off his feet by picking him up by his ears, and bellowed
at him from a range of about 6 inches. *That* worked - the kid looked
seriously traumatised when lowered to the floor. It was only his hips
that were out of whack...

One of the tech. teachers had a Lee-Enfield .303 and set off gunpower in
an after-school lecture - *not* normal for the 1980s, I can tell you.
Waller, the old Latin teacher who played the school organ for
assemblies, always wore one of his degree gowns (he had quite a few),
even on the day when the *rest* of his clothing was a Batman outfit.
That was the day the school walked in to assembly to the sound of the
Batman TV theme, played on a pipe organ. They liked to have fun, did
the teachers back then. That seems to have gone.

One year, the head of maths went to the USA on an exchange, and we got
an American maths teacher to replace him, who had only ever taught
algebra. One day, me and Dewsbury were ignoring the lesson (sat right
at the front of the class), and comparing digital watch functions (look,
this was about 1982, okay? We were perhaps 14). The poor chap flipped
after a bit, screamed a bit along the lines of `Hey, you want to see a
watch? See? Here's my watch' (takes watch off, slams it on desk in
front of us) `See what it can do?' (picks watch up again, raves a bit
more, walks out of the class and slams the door behind him, and
apparently wasn't seen at all in the school that day). God knows - it
wasn't like me and D. didn't both get `A's in our maths O levels (which
yes, we did take a year early).

btw, one day, a kid in the science lesson (1st year combined science)
complained about the strictness of the discipline. The crumbly old
teacher took this on board, and next lesson, gave us a taste of the lab
discipline *he* grew up with at school, way back when he was young,
which was probably the 1930s. No actual belting of the hands or
anything (he explained he'd spare us that), but plenty of rude
awakenings with a 3 foot retort stand upright being used to belt the
bench next to anyone not paying attention. Makes a hell of a bang.

btw, re: weapons in school and whatnot. My littlest brother nearly got
expelled for taking an axe into school one day - just for the hell of
it. Only a little thing for splitting firewood. I wonder why similarly
straighttforward approaches aren't used these days.

You can't confiscate what you can't find. A hatchet is tricky to conceal,
but a bread-knife isn't.

Oh, I dunno about that. Bread knives are quite long - I reckon it
wouldn't be hard to spot one in a bag.

Nor is a sharpened steel comb, which was the
thing in my day

Oh yes. I recall my dad mentioning that as one of the improvised
weapons that were around, by way of warning. *He* had grown up in the
50s with Teddy Boy razor gangs and whatnot. Razor blades sewn into your
cap brim, that sort of thing. (White City, London - just over the road
from the White City Stadium, now replaced by the BBC and it was a shock
when I first went past and saw the gap where the big white thing had
been)

- beware of anyone with tousled hair and a comb ...

There were knives available in most class-rooms, as I recall, for
sharpening pencils and dividing up large sheets of paper and so on
(although a well-worn steel ruler is just as effective).

Yes, and pretty nasty if you get hit by the edge, too.

It was the school calculating machine that we weren't allowed to touch.
Only the maths dept teachers were allowed near it.

Blimey. btw, my dad got one of the most advanced mechanical hand
calculators ever built - bought by the firm just before the electronic
sort took over, and - well, he snaffled it when they got rid of it.
*All* the interesting technology thrown away by his place got snaffled
by someone. They actually had a list as to who was going to get what,
come the day the `what' was available, including things like the old
punched paper tape machines and whatnot. Don't laugh: the chap who
wanted that gear did his backups onto paper tape, and kept the lot in a
filing cabinet. And one day the basement lab got flooded. *He* just
ironed the tape flat when it had dried and re-loaded all his bits. The
folks who'd been relying on floppy discs stored in the same location as
everything else probably wanted to strangle him due to his smugness.

snip

There were glass
jars (with glass stoppers) containing lovely stuff like 'conc Nitric' on
the racks above each bench in the Chem Lab.

That kind of thing was on the racks on the walls in the chemi labs at my
school, rather than abvoe every bench. Why not have huge glass jars
full of deadly chemicals lying around? You learn this: `The contents of
jars are often deadly, so don't mess unless you know all about it.' Not
a bad lesson (actually, my dad had a shed which was even more deadly in
contents - I'd learnt that lesson at a *very* early age).

Creosote, arsenic, quick-lime, turps, benzine, nicotine bombs, camphor,
DDT, ... no garden shed was complete without a good selection of dangerous
chemicals.

DDT and arsenic were well out by my day and is creosote really that bad?
We had mercury in a Coleman's mustard jar - salvaged from mercury
switches out of old equipment, stored to be sold for scrap when he had
enough, and all manner of volatile chemicals. I think there was some
cyanide compound there for a while - used it for gold-plating, IIRC. I
was going to say that I was pretty sure that benzine was out too, 'cos
that was an identified carcinogen, but I do recall there being various
jars and bottles of organic solvents around that dad said of `Don't use
that stuff, it gives people cancer'. And there were others that I found
out were carcinogenic in school chemistry lessons.

I once worked in a radioimmunnoassay lab (I might have put one `n' too
many in that; student job). Radioactivity and biohazards *everywhere*,
not to mention Otto the Dutchman's anti-personnel tobacco mixture for
his pipe (his horrible pipe and toasted Edam cheese sandwiches - they
smelt vile - meant that he could spent his entire lunch hour utterly
unmolested by any other form of life).

One day, someone dropped a 1 litre jar of reagent. Once dropped, the
writing on the glass could not be read. What was in it? Erm... I
can't remember if this was the radioactive one or not, said the clumsy
researcher concerned. Geiger counters do have a use :-) (turned out to
be okay, but... well, I kept plenty clear until the `all clear' was
given. Not that it was very risky - all the radioactivity was from
short half-life sources present in - by the time I got near 'em - very
small amounts. On the other hand, any `wax with carbon in it' was
likely to be a bit radioactive and rather bad to consume, and `wax with
carbon in it' was the standard muck that you found - oh, all over that
side of the lab where the assays were actually done).

Safety, eh?

[snip]

Like the hard hats that everyone on horseback
is meant to wear now, and the crash-helmets for pedal-cyclcists that
propaganda would have us believe to be a good idea.

Yers... I've not looked at cycling helmet effectiveness. But note
this: I *have* read studies of motorcycling accidents. The injuries
that kill motorcyclists were (when the study was done) head, neck, and
chest injuries. A helmet can improve yer chances of snuffing it from a
head injury - but it'll also improve the chances of yer neck snapping,
and does nothing for your chest area at all, one way or the other.

Yes. The best thing a motor-cycle helmet does is keep the cold or the sun
off, mostly.

Hmm... Rain and insects is what I like my lid keeping off, not to
mention grit (etc) headed eye-wards.

But there probably are several people still able to talk, if
not walk, who wouldn't be talking if they'd had no helmet.

Me, for one. I've got a lid in the loft that's entirely stoved in on
one side. I recall the moment of impact clearly: I don't have any doubt
that my skull would have broken quite badly if the lid hadn't been on my
bonce. As it was, there was a lovely `crunch', and absolutely no
bounce-back from the road - the helmet did its job nigh-on perfectly,
I'd say.

The trouble with a pedal-cycle helmet is that your head overheats and you
get a stiff neck. The ventilated helmets are worse; you get alternate hot
and cold patches all over your head. Not good at all. I found a 'Tilley
Hat' best, with a fleece cap as an alternative in the coldest part of
winter.

Righto. I've only ever been bothered by cold ears when cycling - I've
heard all the stuff about hats, and - well, if I were a hat and do some
exercise, my head'll get hot unless the exercise involves cold water (I
used to do a lot of canoeing), in which case I'll take all the warming
clothing I can find, thanks.

One big problem with helmets is that they give you a sense of security,
which means you're likely to act in a more reckless fashion. When I
cycled everywhere as a child, I felt terribly vulnerable on the road and
took great care to ride sensibly as a result (after the usual mistakes
made at a tender age, one of which took most of the skin off my chest
and stuck my head underneath a moving car).

Yes - but how many kids these days get the chance to learn early and at
low speed? Around here they seem to go straight to 'BMX' or 'Mountain Bike'
and ride at breakneck speed on the pavement 'because it's dangerous on the
road'.

Ungh. Mind you, I rode on the pavement until I was about 10 - but I had
been taught to ride considerately.

The only kiddy-bikes or trikes seem to have a control-stick with a
parent at the other end, or 'training wheels' to make it as hard as
possible to learn how to ride properly.

I recall the day I learnt to ride a bicycle (I *think* I'd probably
started school, but I'm not sure. I was certainly swimming well before
I started school - but with a swimming teacher for a mother, I didn't
have any choice at all about that one). Lots of falling off onto the
grass verge, and then I `got it'. I'd had stabilisers up until then,
which possibly made it harder for me to learn 'cos steering works
completely differently when you get to lean.

Do the kids on mopeds in your area habitually ride with one or both feet
almost scraping the road, at anything less than 'full speed'?

Umm. I don't actually know. I, erm, don't see very many of them for
long enough, 'cos I overtake 'em and erm, yes, er, I don't actually get
much time to take a look for some reason (Who? Me, officer? Travel at
80mph in a 30 zone? Certainly not! Actually, it's more the potential
to do 0-60mph in about 3 seconds that's the issue here[1]). But I know
the sort of riding you mean.

One thing to bear in mind is that an automatic transmission on a
motorcycle makes it harder to control a bike at low speed, as does
putting the rear brake control under a hand rather than a foot. On the
other hand, having one trailing foot just buggers up your balance and
you can't control a motorcycle properly unless you've got both feet
planted on whatever's available for planting. I got taught slow riding
by some deadly experts.

Rowland.

[1] For those who might be horrified, I'd like to point out that I'm
one of those people who uses the road with extreme caution in
residential areas - I've been known to collect a queue of cars behind me
when travelling past schools, for example. I'm extremely cautious on
main roads, too[2], but the fact is <ahem> significantly less apparent.

[2] How do you think I've lived this long? Good training, caution,
paranoia, riding so defensively it's nearly psychotic, never *ever*
thinking that I'm a good enough rider (I'm always trying to learn how to
ride properly, 'cos I don't yet), good maintenance of the bike, paying
*very* careful attention to road conditions and other road users, and so
on and so forth. Good clothing, too - mostly to keep me warm, dry, and
not troubled by wasps in the eye and suchlike. The times that it's
saved me from impact or abrasion damage are embarrassing. Here's a
thing: I actually find it quite hard to ride without gloves on. I can
ride without a jacket or a helmet without any bother - but no gloves?
Scary and awkward. I did once try riding in bare feet when I was very
much younger (I could explain, but...). That did not work - the back
brake was painful to operate, and the gear change was completely beyond
me. I have a picture in a magazine somewhere of a silly game at the
annual Farmyard Party motorcycle rally, featuring a bloke and a woman on
a motorcycle. He's riding, she's pillion, riding underneath a
horizontally suspended rope with apples dangling from it, and she's
standing up trying to take a bite out of the apple. They're both stark
naked (we are told that this is normal for the Farmyard), except for
boots. It was published in AWOL back in the Plan Z days when the rag
was worth reading.
--
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