1066 and all that

This year is the 900^th anniversary of Harold getting one in the eye from those pesky Normans. The end of last month saw the 50^th anniversary of one of this countries better days when we put one over ‘the other Becks’ in beating Franz Beckenbauer’s German team to win the 1966 Soccer World Cup. 

 

By a strange quirk of fate memories of the Battle of Hastings are most commonly depicted in colour through the Bayeux tapestry while most of us who were around for the world cup will probably have watched the match on a grainy black and white television set. The colour footage that is trotted out at every opportunity to relive our former glories was captured on film. Colour broadcasts did not emerge in the UK until 1967 and even then initially it was only on BBC2.

I was 8 at the time of England’s greatest footballing success and remember the occasion well. The family had been planning their annual break for several months – on this occasion it was to be a fortnight at a bungalow in Dymchurch. It was only at the last moment that my father learned that there was no television on the site so, having meticulously packed and secured everything in place ‘Myrtle’ the family car was unceremoniously stripped to make way for the TV set. (more on Myrtle later). For those who never experienced the pleasure of watching the white dot disappear from the screen when the set was turned off I should perhaps explain that television sets in the mid-60s were typically around the size of a modern dish washer with a screen area the equivalent of the door on a small washing machine. Packed full of diodes and valves the sets were both bulky and heavy.

I should also explain that in addition to mum, dad and yours truly the other passengers were my 5 year old brother and 2 year old sister. Allowing for cumbersome buggy, baby necessities, food for at least 3 days and clothes for every permutation of British Summer to describe conditions inside my father’s trusty Wolseley 1500 saloon were extremely cramped.

For the first half of the 70 mile journey mum occupied the front passenger seat together with my sister and her ‘tardis’ handbag of baby stuff. I can’t recall exactly where we were when we were forced to stop as my brother took the opportunity to demonstrate his prowess with projectile vomit, pebble-dashing both inside and outside of the rear of the car and securing him a place in the front passenger seat for the remainder of the journey in the process. 

 

In hindsight you could argue that my parents’ should have anticipated the situation since my brother did have previous form for travel sickness. Undaunted by the delay we managed to make it to the site shortly after lunch. Cases were quickly despatched to the bedrooms and the next hour was spent finding a suitable position for the TV set, which if I recall correctly was balanced between 2 chairs. There were no extension leads in the 60s, or if there were we certainly did not have one, which restricted our options in placement of the bulky set. The remaining time prior to kick up was spent trying to find the optimum positioning of the aerial. Personally I was happy with the picture when my brother was standing on the chair by the bay window holding the twin pronged device above his head. Unfortunately, standing still for longer that 10 seconds has never been my brother’s strongest suits so we were forced to accept the next best option and dangle it from the curtain rail using a coat hanger and elastic strapping.

Memories of Myrtle are fairly mixed, thankfully she had red leather seats, it sounds plush but they were not very comfortable, especially once your brother had puked on them! I remember there being a lot of chrome on the car and wood panelling on the dashboard; the radio was functional but the sound quality from the solitary speaker was usually drowned out by the noise of the engine. It seems to be a generational thing that so many cars look alike. My knowledge of cars is not good but there are certain shapes of cars that to the untrained eye could have been manufactured by any one of 30 different companies. In the 50s cars were influenced by curves while in the 70s angularity was the vogue. In the 60s the overwhelming trend seemed to be the ‘bubble’. The Austin A30, Rover P4, Morris Minor, Ford Popular, Humber Hawk, Sunbeam Rapier, Hillman Minx and Wolseley 1500 all had a pronounced ‘bubble’ to their cabin – hence ‘Myrtle, the turtle’ - a noble beast but not renowned for their speed, or elegance. (A bit like the driver actually).

What a shower!

So, a group of boneheads have deduced from their research that over half of school children do not take a shower after PE lessons. How many hours and countless pounds of taxpayers money has gone into that wonderful piece of science? You do not have to be a parent to know that most kids have a natural aversion to soap and water. Maybe their time would have been better spent assessing the eyesight and maths skills of the PE instructors. My old teacher was the doggie's doodahs with a stopwatch but the doggie's doodoos when it came to reading the time. Consequently most classes were only ever allotted 3 to 5 minutes to shower, change and get to the next class. Even if there had been time to shower we would still have needed to run the length of the building plus 4 flights of stairs just to reach the next classroom, where we would collapse in a pool of sweat. Usually our class numbered 24 (less 3 or 4 on sick notes or who had forgotten their gym kit), a shower area that could accommodate 8 pupils – you do the maths. Even allowing for the fact that none of us would be lingering in a freezing cold shower there was never enough time to remove the grime from bodies.

I don't think it was that the school boiler was rubbish I just don't believe that the school had thought about connecting it to the gymnasium, though given the close proximity of the gym to the plant room this may have been a conscious decision by the school governors.

It wasn't the stale sweat that irritated it was the particles of dust that were kicked up by our exercise which glued themselves to our scrawny bodies like sandpaper. For a group of testosterone filled kids we were quite tolerant of the collective stench as we sat scratching throughout the next 40 minutes of the lesson. Many of the teachers had served in the trenches so they were pretty much immune to our discomfort.

Ours was not the modern high tech equipment that schools have these days, the mats were usually damp, the ropes worn smooth and greasy, the pommel horse threadbear and the medicine balls may have once been used by Hippocrates. The principle aim was to make us all fitter, not sure that running around filling our lungs with copious amounts of rancid dust really achieved anything.

I can't remember any of us being ordered to 'do' gym in our underpants though there were occasions when the loan of kit between friends threw up some interesting spectacles.

I really wish that someone would explain to me the necessity of participating in gym in just a pair of skimpy shorts in deepest winter is obligatory when from April onwards singlets or t-shirts are required.

As you may have already discerned I attended a single sex private school at a time when shower gel had not been invented and soap, like the showers, came in blocks. No warm cubicles, hairdriers, aloe vera scented soaps, lockers or mirrors. Combs were simply sticks of pliable plastic to be used for flicking the unsuspecting behind the ear or grinding the teeth into blackboards.

Being a private school we also had playing fields which gave the staff an excuse to force us to make use of them by participating in a variety of sports. The Winter sport was rugby, a game on which I was keen though hampered by a diminutive stature and lack of any propensity to violence. Consequently I found myself assigned to the group of misfits who got to play on the worst pitch, which was invariably little more than a lake of mud. One of my school reports made mention of me possessing 'a cultured left foot', a plaudit I happily accept on the basis that no other part of my body or persona has ever been described as 'cultured'. Sadly, the pitch was not designed for the kicking game. No matter how hard or well I punted the ball it would simply plop meekly into the mud and stay there, usually to be followed by 20 or more guys who would similarly plop into the mud and stay there until one of them managed to drag or kick it out.

My mum was convinced that the school kit was selected for maximum absorption, I would come off the pitch a stone and a half heavier than I had walked on, weighed down by the extra mud. It is no laughing matter when you are only 7^1/₂ stone and you have to carry your sodden kit and your schoolbag back on a crowded train.

The only good thing to be said for the grading based on ability was that the worst group were normally the first to be allowed to leave which meant we were the first to get to the shower block, a distinct advantage given the shortage of space and the temperamental water supply.

Usually by the time I reached the showers I was too caked in mud to care about what other people were up to. Generally there was at least one teacher hovering around though they were usually too sensible to come anywhere near the great unwashed. Who knows what was going on in their tiny minds, cloaked behind their perceived mask of indifference. Occasionally there would be a bellow that someone had chosen to depart the scene before fully removing the mud from their body and they would be ordered to return (by now we were thinking 'Home Time' and one needed to take train times into consideration). Maybe the masters were sizing up a suitable buttock for a future caning or maybe they were checking for any incriminating scarring that might be picked up by an alert parent but I would like to think that most of the time the teachers were there simply to umpire the numerous wet towel fights that invariably broke out as pupils waited their turn to use the showers.

One game I recall, which never really appealed to me, stemmed from the fact that the floor of the shower block was flat, smooth and very wet – ideal for skimming along on your backside. It has to be said that those who seemed to throw themselves fully into this extra-curricular activity were usually the same boys who would slide down the studded bannisters. For me, the risks of injury to my nether region outweighed any possible gratification but each to their own.

Invariably I would pick up several cuts during the game where people had tried to kick lumps out of me (a favour I would generally return). It always seemed to take forever to wash the mud out of the cuts and usually hurt a lot. You also needed to be wary of where you got changed in the first instance. Being a creature of habit I had my favourite place to sit, something I have tried to maintain throughout my sporting career. Partly this is down to superstition but equally important is the routine of psyching myself up before whatever game it is I am playing. At school though there are were other concerns to be addressed. Too close to one end of the hall and you would get the full benefit of the draft of icy cold air whenever anyone entered or exited the room, at the other end you would be soaked as people trudged back from the shower. The hall relied a lot on skylight so there were certain parts of the room that were quite dark come late afternoon. In most of the places the wooden benches had seen better days and were to be avoided at all costs. You learned very quickly where and where not to sit. I wouldn't ask my mum to remove a splinter from my backside let alone one of my schoolmates so it was quite normal for boys to stand on the benches, away from the mass of muddy clothing that littered the floor and hope they got no more than a splinter in their foot while dressing.

Judging from the actions of many of the exhibitionists at the school I don't think there were too many of them with body image issues. I may have been one of the quiet ones, and yes it would have been nice to be a few inches taller at that age but I never felt that my childhood suffered for not having danced naked on top of the changing racks with my pants on my head.

I feel fortunate that I grew up in an era before the powers that be decided that it would be a good idea to sell off school playing fields; It would have been nice to have had time to wash and dress properly after PE lessons but I don't think I would have been any more inclined to do so had there been free shower gel provided and hot water. It is sad to see that despite all the technological innovations at gyms the school curriculum still makes no provision for logistics. Lessons are of a preset length and no account is taken of the specific needs of individual lessons or the distance between classrooms.