162. In primis diebus

I came across a website that has copies of my old school’s annual magazine.  The school was Lowestoft Grammar School, and the magazine was The Lowestoftian.

The grammar school ceased to exist in 1971 when Lowestoft’s schools became comprehensive and the last edition of The Lowestoftian appears to have been published in 1969.  Even though that was more than 50 years ago, its style and content would not be unusual if it were written today.  However, those magazines from before the Second World War have a certain quality that shows they are certainly from a time gone by.  

The first edition of The Lowestoftian was published in 1918 but the first edition archived is from December 1924 and it describes itself as, The MAGAZINE of the PAST AND PRESENT SCHOLARS of the LOWESTOFT SECONDARY SCHOOL.

On page one, the Editor’s notes begin thus:  

Again, we wish to thank all those who have thoughtfully contributed to this issue.  The field of literary adventure is not narrowly circumscribed and there are many topics of general interest which would be generally welcomed.

On Friday November 7th, 1924, the Debating Society met to discuss the proposition “That civilisation tends to deterioration.”  It was contended by the proposer that everybody nowadays seemed to expect everything, especially money, to turn up without any effort on their part.  Seem familiar?  

A speaker looked forward to the day when (because of rapid innovation and invention) boys would not have to leave home to go to school.  We are almost there, mate.

The motion was defeated 57 - 5.

This is an advertisement in the magazine from Jeeves the Chemist.  I find it interesting that Mr Jeeves decided that he would get the greatest return from promoting his dog mixture than he would from identifying any treatment for people.

JEEVES'    DOG    MIXTURE

An excellent alternative Mixture for improving the

condition.   Lessens the risk of Distemper.

Per  1/6   bottle

G. C.  Jeeves, Chemist

1 TONNING STREET, LOWESTOFT

I find this advertisement particularly interesting because I was at school with Mr Jeeves’ granddaughter and I am still friends with her today.

They certainly knew how to have fun in the ’20s.  On Tuesday October 28th, 1924, there was a Paper Chase.  The hares were Brittain in class IIIB and Austrin in IVB.  The hound pack was made up of 15 “energetic” members of the fourth and fifth forms “which was a very poor number”.  

Some confusion was caused by meeting a trail of paper that had been used by a running club some days earlier but all turned out well and the hares arrived home three minutes before the first of the hounds.

But, if that were fun, it was as nothing when set against the joy and delight that was evident at the end of term, School Games’ Social.  

“The lasting impression of that Social was of informal and spontaneous Jollity,” says The Lowestoftian.

The highlight of the Social seems to have been the Match-Box race between the girls of the hockey and the boys of the football teams.  

I have spent some hours researching the match-box race and I now think that I have a complete understanding of its rules and nuances.  I also believe that I have the perfect nose for the event.

It is a relay race for teams of six, each of which is split into two groups of three with one group at either end of the track.  The drawer is removed from a matchbox and the empty sleeve is put on a table in front of the first runner.

On the command “GO!” the runner puts his/her nose into the match-box sleeve, wedges it on to his/her nose and carries it some ten or fifteen yards to competitor number two where it is transferred, nose-to-nose.  Any use of the hands leads to instant disqualification.  Runner 2 relays it to runner 3 and so on until runner number 6 crosses the finishing line.

The Lowestoftian informs us that “balancing skills and a perfectly proportioned nose are essentials`’ (maybe that's not me) and decisively refutes the suggestion that games are only ever won by brute force.  Here, where skill was everything, the boys’ victory was overwhelming.

It would seem that just as much fun and excitement was gained from the Hobble and Poodle race but despite extensive research, I can find nothing about it other than it was an outdoor activity.

I wrote at the beginning that the early editions have a certain quality that shows they are certainly from a time gone by.  How about this, the first line of a report on the production of The Mikado: 

A more enjoyed “Mikado” never was in this school produced.

This was the final passage in the editor’s message to leavers:

Pro qua incurisse non piget labores, exilium; quia laborando profui, exulando didici.  Quia inveni in brevi labore diuturnam requiem, in levi dolore immensum gaudium, in angusto exilio patriam amplissimam.

The editor then wrote: 

“This is the language of a great mediaeval philosopher who in 1600 was burned at the stake. It makes a good note on which I can say good-bye - and good luck.”

I think it was Giordano Bruno he was quoting but if it were, a more apposite quote of his would be, 

“With luck on your side, you can do without brains.”

I don’t know what the level of learning in the classical languages was at my school 90 years ago but that is way beyond my ‘O’ level Latin grade 6.  There are words there that I don’t think are Latin at all: incurisse, exulando, amplissimam.  They seem to me to be straight out of Harry Potter.

If you can translate it so that it makes sense, please let me know.  I think it says something like, the harder you work the more contented you will be.

My name first appears in the 1961 edition of The Lowestoftian in an Under 15 cricket match report.

v Sir John Leman School (A) - Won by 54 runs.  

School 81 (Wilton 31); Sir John Leman 27. (Cassidy 5 - 11).

I find it rather sobering as I read the pre-1930 editions of The Lowestoftian to realise that every teacher and student mentioned is now dead.  Nigel Cassidy (above), mentioned in 1961, died in 2008.

As a port, Lowestoft was heavily bombed during the war and In 1941, the school and many of the staff were evacuated to Worksop in Nottinghamshire.  In the 1943 edition of The Lowestoftian, you can see the Evacuation song.  This is the first verse and the chorus:

We come from Lowestoft by the sea where the weather’s always fine.

It never rains, it’s never cold and the sun will always shine.

You never work, you play all day or lie upon the sand.

You go to sleep or wiggle your toes and listen to the band.

We’ve come to Worksop, Worksop tra la la;

All stuck in Worksop tra la la la.

They mash the tea and wash the pots when we come home from school.

They say we’re mardy when we cry and mucky as a rule.

In the 1947 edition are the names of the 52 Old Boys of the school who were killed on active service during the war.

Incidentally, the lyrics of the song are factually correct in saying that in Lowestoft, the weather’s always fine.  

It is the perpetual, constant absence of wind in Lowestoft that almost led to chaos in the Paper Chase of 1924.

 

56. Location, Location, Location

I’ve loaded an app that allows me to see not only how many hits the site has but where in the world they are coming from.  Some locations, particularly London, have provided many hits.  67% of all visits have been from the UK and 64% of those have been from London.

You may be interested to know that I am becoming big in Wisconsin and in Moscow and that’s surprising as I have never been to either place nor ever known anyone who lived there or has even visited them.

The only facts that I know about Wisconsin are that during the last Ice Age most of it was ice-free and that Barefoot Man, a very popular Caymanian singer/songwriter and Cayman’s second biggest export after Rum Cakes mentions it in a catchy song he wrote called, “Three Widows from Wisconsin”.  He mentions the city of Appleton and, that place, with Milwaukee, are the only cities that I knew of in the state until now. 

In Britain, a city may be defined as a settlement that has a cathedral.  St Davids (no apostrophe and my computer spellchecker hates that) in Pembrokeshire, Wales, is Britain’s smallest city with a population of fewer than 2,000 people.  The City of London (The Square Mile) only has a population of around 8,000.

St Davids is the location of the only act of wilful desecration I have ever witnessed.  On a geography field trip, q.v. Life’s Ironies in January, we were taken to visit St Davids cathedral.  While wandering around and fairly bored, I heard the unmistakable sound of a geological hammer hitting rock.  I investigated and found that it was Kenny Gardner, the geology teacher, hammering away a gravestone.  He picked up the chip of rock he had dislodged, studied it and turned to me with a look of deep contentment and satisfaction and said,

“Yes.  Thought so.  Sussex marble.”

A town in the UK is granted city status by the monarch on advice given by the part of the British government known as the Department for Constitutional Affairs.  City status is granted by the sovereign and conferred by Letters Patent.  It is granted by personal command of the monarch, on the advice her Ministers.  There is sometimes a discrepancy between the common meaning of the word “city” and the 'official' meaning.

In 1969 Swansea was designated a city and the name of the football team changed from Swansea Town to Swansea City. 

In the USA, the definition of a city varies from state to state.  Usually any settlement with more than about 10,000 inhabitants is called a city. This is not a hard and fast rule but it is rampant titular and classification inflation. There are some very small settlements in the US that are called cities such as Woodland Mills in Tennessee with a population of only 296.  Before it was dissolved in 2002, Maza, North Dakota with only 5 inhabitants was a city.  In California, the terms "town" and "city" are virtually synonymous.

A large number of those visitors listed above only came once.  There were a lot of first time visits a couple of weeks ago to read, “Name Dropping.”  I listed a long string of famous names in the labels section and so anyone subsequently putting one of those names into Google was directed to my blog.

One referral was interesting and quite touching in a way.  The visitor was from Dubai and he had entered, “KISSING” into Google.  Much to his great disappointment I imagine, he had found his way to my posting entitled “Hugging and Kissing”.  I suppose that if you’re searching for porn in Dubai, then “KISSING” is about as far as you dare go.

I get more visits from Wisconsin than I do from York in the UK, which may not surprise you, but it irritates me because my two daughters live close to York and so I know that they never read these essays and this is a shame because it was with them in mind that I started posting my memories and thoughts back in January.  They were really offended and upset to read something that I posted in January when I alluded to the fact that I have feelings and even (whisper it very quietly), urges.

“I don’t want to read about that sort of thing from my Dad!” protested one of them, while the other just refuses to talk to me about it.  They are both in their thirties and should know better!

I wonder if DH Lawrence’s biographers ever paused to consider that it was because of the possible reaction of his children, that he never had any of his own?  Frieda, his wife, had three from a previous marriage but he wouldn’t have cared so much about their sensitivities.  If I ever write anything remotely similar to the themes in Lady Chatterley’s Lover (and believe me I’m tempted) and my daughters are on the jury at the subsequent obscenity trial, I shall plead guilty immediately and burn every copy I can find.

A few months ago, I had a visitor from Carmel, California and we all know who lives there, don’t we?   Clint Eastwood!   He was Carmel’s mayor a few years ago.  It’s obvious to me what’s going on: 

I have had several hits from other places in California and one of those must have been Steven Spielberg.  He will have read the post featuring Sir Alan and Huck (Knight and Day at Prospect Reef) and wants to make that episode the basis of a huge multi million-dollar movie and he’s already thinking ahead and casting Clint as Sir Alan.   At 80, Clint Eastwood is a bit too old and I worry that he might not find the English accent too easy but he’ll certainly look the part.

Don’t write all that off as impossible and a ridiculous fantasy because that’s the kind of thinking that makes Steven Spielberg the success that he is.   He sees things that people like you and I don’t.   Obviously, Clint has checked it out to see why Spielberg is so excited.

OK, he’ll cast Clint as Sir Alan, that little white kid from “The Blind Side” as Huck, probably Brad Pitt as me and Angelina Jolie as Caroline.  You’d go and see it, wouldn’t you?

In that supportive way that she has, Caroline has just picked herself up from the floor where she collapsed in fits of rather unkind, uncontrollable and I’m sorry to say, unpleasant laughter, and has managed to suggest that Mickey Rooney would be more convincing playing me and if he’s not available, then Bob Hoskins but he’d have to put on about fifty pounds first.

It’s a pity Hattie Jaques isn’t around any more.  She’d be perfect as Caroline.

Clint, Steven and those of you in Wisconsin and Moscow, look her up in Google!

43. Dialogue and Interrogation

On Tuesday, Caroline had an interview.  Actually, it was more of a meeting than an interview but at the end of it she has at last (and about time too), got a job. Caroline has had quite a few interviews during her career and she has never been unsuccessful.  I, on the other hand, had several during my working life and was only successful at three.

I was an appalling interviewee. I have absolutely no idea why. The last one was nearly twenty years ago when feedback afterwards was never given and so I never found out. I have some ideas though.

The first interview I ever had was when I was seventeen. It wasn’t for a job but for a scholarship. The Birds Eye frozen foods factory was one of the largest employers in Lowestoft when I was at school. Every year they granted an award of £120. This went to a male student in his final year in the sixth form at Lowestoft Grammar School. Very 1960s that wasn’t it? No girls were expected to follow a career in industry. That person would be looked on favourably if he were ever to pursue a career after university with Unilever, the parent company.

I applied but all I wanted was the cash. I didn’t want to work in a factory and I’m afraid that this became all too clear at the interview. The only question I can remember being asked was, “On a wet Friday afternoon would you rather be in a classroom studying history, or out on the sports field playing rugby?”

What an absolutely stupid question - and I told him that it was too. That was my first failed interview.

I acquired my first ever teaching position without having an interview. In the summer of 1969 after completing a teaching qualification course at the Institute of Education in London, I was working on Quality Control at Birds Eye. I had no intention of ever becoming a teacher.

I had applied for a place on the teaching course in order to have a year in London at the taxpayers’ expense – no student loans in those days!  The plan after that was: work at Birds Eye throughout June, July, August and September; pay off my £125 overdraft; save as much money as I could; go to New Zealand for the winter and play cricket; come back to the UK in the spring of 1970 and then think about getting a job.

But my plans were thwarted. The sequence of produce to be harvested and then frozen at Birds Eye during the summer was:

1 - Peas (June/July).

2 - Runner Beans (July/August).

3 - Strawberries (August/September).

At the beginning of September, tragedy struck.  The strawberry harvest failed and I was laid off.  There I was on Thursday September 4th with no job and no prospects.

“You could teach,” my dad said, clearly alarmed at the prospect of having to support his unemployed son. “Go down to the Education Office. They’re always desperate for qualified teachers.”

So that’s what I did. “Be at Roman Hill Secondary Modern School on Monday morning,” I was told.

Just think! If late summer 1969 had been a little warmer or maybe cooler, wetter or drier, windier or calmer, my whole life would have turned out differently.

Eighteen months later, I applied for a job at Creighton School in Muswell Hill, North London.  Also there for interview was a young Scottish woman.  We sat together in a small room chatting awkwardly, waiting to be called and I suddenly realised that she had absolutely no idea where she was.  She knew that she was in London but when she told me that if she got the job, she intended to rent a room from her sister in Reigate, which is a town nearly 30 miles and more than two hours away and on the other side of London, I knew that for a potential geography teacher, geography was not her strong point.

I had one tricky moment during my interview.

“Tell us about the pastoral system you have at your present school,” I was asked.

“Just because we’re in Suffolk doesn’t mean we all keep sheep!” I retorted indignantly but the Scottish girl must have been even more stupid than me.

Three years after that, married and with a baby daughter, I had an interview for the Head of Department job at a school in Harlesden. There was a shortlist of six and after a tour of the school, the interviews were held in the education offices of the borough council.  Of course, being a ‘W’, I was the last to be seen.  

The six of us sat in a small, bare office and left one by one to be interviewed by a panel made up of governors, education officers and senior teachers, in a large room at the end of the corridor next to the toilet.

After the second person had been interviewed and returned to the room, someone said that they’d both been gone for exactly 5 minutes and thirty seconds. When the third person also returned in five and a half minutes, we all sniggered a little. Eventually it was my turn.

I sat through and responded to some mind boggling, unimaginative, dull questions. I noticed that one of the seven interviewers had not only failed to acknowledge me when I introduced myself but that he spent the entire time with his back to me, gazing out of the window watching the traffic and pedestrians outside.  When I stood up to leave, thinking that I had acquitted myself very well, he continued to ignore me, staring out of the window.

Once in the corridor, I looked at my watch. 5 minutes 20 seconds. That was amazing. I would be gone for exactly five and a half minutes too.  Then I had a brainwave. In those days it was the custom for the candidates to wait while the panel discussed things and came to a decision.  Sometimes you could sit and wait for an hour or more waiting for a resolution.  My ruse wouldn’t improve my chances of getting the job but it would give the competition something to think about. I went to the toilet.

I sat in a cubicle looking at the second hand of my watch moving slowly around the face. After five minutes I was bored and decided that I had delayed things long enough to earn some respect.

As I turned the handle of the waiting room door I couldn’t help grinning. Eleven minutes since I’d left. Tee hee! But the room was empty!

I was confused. It was now about six fifteen on a dark November evening and as I walked out, I could see that the offices I passed were empty but then, through the big window of one of them, I saw a face I recognised from the interviewing panel.

“Oh, there you are,” he said as I walked in. “We thought that you’d gone home.”

“So, I didn’t get the job then?” I said.

“No, but it was close,” he lied. “It wasn’t easy.”

“Wasn’t easy?” I asked incredulously. “You came to a decision in less than five minutes. It must have been the easiest decision you’ve ever had to make – or a complete stitch up,” I added darkly.

“Now, now,” he said. Things are always fair and above board here.”

“Come off it,” I said. “It takes about five minutes to say the internal candidate’s name and I suppose that she got the job?”

“Mrs Azikiwie Gbadamosi-Olanrewaju was appointed, yes. But I assure you that no decision had been made in advance. We are very strong on equal opportunities here in Brent.”

“Yes, obviously,” I muttered.

For the next few years, I didn’t apply for any promotions. I was never ambitious. Then one day I was asked to see the Headteacher in her office.

“Oh God! What have you done now?” one of my colleagues asked.

“Nothing that I can think of,” I said but that was hardly reassuring. The last time I had been summoned to see the Head, I could tell as soon as I walked in that she was furious.

On that occasion, “I will not have racists on my staff,” were her first words.

“Good,” I responded, thinking that was the right thing to say.

“I’ve received a report from a parent that yesterday you made a racist comment to his daughter in the new first year class.”

“Did I? I don’t think so.”

“You referred to her racial origin.”

“Oh no,” I thought, “She could be right.” It was early September and I’d spent all summer playing cricket with and against loads of Australians. I call Australians, ‘Aussies’. Did I call a Pakistani girl a ‘Paki’?

“What did I say?” I asked with some trepidation.

“You called her a Jew.”

Suddenly I felt relieved and a lot happier. “I certainly did not,” I said emphatically. “I wouldn’t know if a kid is Jewish. I can’t recognise Jews and even if I did, I would never refer to it.”

“She says that you did. Her friends say you did, and her parents are making a complaint.”

I felt dreadful again. How can you prove that you didn’t say anything? And there were witnesses too. I seemed to be in big trouble.

“What shall I do?” I asked.

“Well, you could start by apologising and see what happens then. The girl’s outside.  Would you like to speak to her?”

Into the office came an eleven-year-old girl who sat down and gave me the sort of look of utter contempt that only Muswell Hill kids can produce.

“What did I say?” I asked her.

“You called me a Jew,” she said.

“No, I didn’t. Are you sure that you’ve got the right teacher? I don’t recognise you.  What did I say?”

“In geography yesterday you said, “Turn round Jew.”

Suddenly it made sense. “Yesterday was the first lesson you’ve had with me, wasn’t it?  And as we’d never met before, I didn’t know any names.  You misheard me. What I said was, “Turn round you.”

This time though, I wasn’t in trouble. I had been called in to be offered a job. I became Head of Careers at Creighton School by default. The post holder had resigned and nobody had applied for the vacancy. In desperation (as she told me later) the Head asked me if I’d take it on. I wasn’t at all interested but as it would mean an extra £2500 a year on my salary, I said yes.

When Creighton School closed a year later, amalgamating with another school to re-form as Fortismere, we all had to apply for our old jobs but neither I nor the Head of Careers at the other school, who was leaving the area, applied for that Careers position.

Four external candidates were interviewed and as I knew the layout of the school and the department, I was asked to show them around during the afternoon before the interview in the evening.

The next day I found that I was not very popular with the newly appointed Headteacher.

“What did you say?” he spluttered.

He told me that the interview panel hadn’t met as all four of the candidates had withdrawn within half an hour of the end of my tour. They had asked me a lot of questions and I must have been too honest in response I suppose.

There was one job that I expected to get but didn’t. In the first year of Fortismere School’s existence there were 190 teachers but only enough teaching for 155 of us. We all had a lot of non-contact time and I was sent on a one-day-a-week course on Pre Vocational Education at Roehampton College, twelve miles away in West London.  Every Monday morning for nine months, I would leave the house at 6:30 in the morning and crawl slowly around the packed and crowded North Circular Road.  I would get home at about seven o’clock in the evening.

It was tough and an intense course but I stuck it out because, as the Head had told me when he persuaded me to follow it, “You’ll be the school’s expert on the subject when you complete it.”

Consequently, I was a little surprised and more than a little pissed off to see a paragraph in the Staff Newsletter in May informing us all that someone else had been appointed to the post of Head of CPVE.

“Isn’t that the job you promised me?” I asked the Head. “Shouldn’t you at least have advertised it?”

He wasn’t even slightly embarrassed.

I was once offered a position after being successful at interview but declined it. I was interviewed for a senior position at a neighbouring school. After my interview - I was the fourth of four shortlisted - I sat and chatted with the other candidates while we waited for the decision. After about half an hour, I was called back in and offered the job.  I turned it down.

During the wait, I had found out that one of my competitors was applying for her own job. She had resigned two months earlier, intending to go with her partner to North Wales where he was relocating for a new position.  Then he had dumped her and as she no longer had any reason or desire to leave London, she had tried to withdraw her resignation. The Head, however, told her that she was too late and she would have to apply along with anyone else who was interested.

As soon as I informed the panel of my decision the Headteacher went into a mini tantrum and accused me of wasting everyone’s time.  I was immediately certain that I had done the right thing, as I would never have got on with her.

I was appointed to the very last post that I ever held at Fortismere after an interview but in reality, it was virtually by default.

The post of Co-Ordinator of Examinations and Assessments came up and the day before the deadline for the receipt of applications, I was told by a very senior member of staff that there was only one applicant and that I should, “Please, for God’s sake, apply for it. We can’t have him.”

I did apply, mumbled my way through the interview and that became my job for the last fifteen years that I worked.

Interviews are a load of bollocks anyway.  I was on the interviewing panel for jobs at Fortismere a couple of times. During one interview, assessing only internal candidates, we had to keep score surreptitiously on the responses.

After the last candidate had been seen we sat in an embarrassed, awkward silence. At the end of the procedure one candidate stood out way ahead of the others according to all our score sheets. “We can’t appoint her,” someone said. “Could you work with her, Terry?”

“No,” I said. 

The post was as my assistant and the person who had starred at the interview was a deeply unpleasant and universally unpopular woman both with the staff and the students. Some people excel at interviews and in the teaching profession at least, they use that ability to make rapid career advances and continue to do so until they reach their level of total incompetence.  Unfortunately, by the time they get to that level, some of them - but not all and Caroline is an obvious exception - have caused and continue to cause, huge damage.

Knowing that I will never experience that rejection dejection ever again, is deeply satisfying.

2. Life's Ironies

Have you realised, as I have, that one of life’s cruellest ironies is that good things happen to you, or you learn something new, too late in life for it to have any real, long-term benefit? 

When I was seventeen, I would have given anything to have been able to fart at will.  I had mastered the art of swallowing enough air to let out a really good resounding belch but the fruity fart eluded me.  My school friends could all seem to do it, but I couldn’t. 

While in the sixth form at school, I went with thirteen other students on a geology field trip to the Isle of Arran off the west coast of Scotland.  There were two male members of staff who led nine boys and five girls, and we stayed in Youth Hostels.  That wouldn’t be allowed today as a female teacher would have to be present.

The boys and the two teachers shared a dormitory with bunk beds.  The five girls had a room to themselves. I’ve no idea what they got up to in there.  

We spent all day walking up and down high hills. (When does a high hill become a low mountain?) and admiring and sketching sills, dykes and memorably, Hutton’s Unconformity.  I’ll tell you what that is later.

The evenings were spent with lectures and background reading.  It was certainly not a holiday and we were all in bed by ten o’clock, tired and exhausted.  There was no light pollution on Arran and so the nights were pitch black and the darkness in our dormitory was so impenetrable as to be solid.  

One night, ten minutes after we had all gone to bed, somebody farted.  Someone else giggled.  A minute later came another fart from a different part of the room and this one was of Olympic qualifying standard.  It came ripping and roaring around the dorm and I swear that it echoed.  We all giggled.  

From then on, the farts came thick and fast.  It was impossible to tell who was doing what but the only thing that I knew for certain was that none of them was mine.

Eventually, the trip leader, Kenny Gardner, the teacher of Advanced Level geology, said, “OK, that’s enough. Will you stop now please?” and they all did, just like that.  

“Right,” I thought, “Here’s my chance.  They’ve all stopped but I’ll start.”  

I tried and tried but it was completely beyond me.  I finally gave up when I realised that I was much more likely to crap myself than ever produce a fart.

Nowadays, I can fart whenever I want to but at my age, the opportunities for ‘show farting’ are non-existent.  Involuntarily farting is a different matter.  

Anyway, Hutton’s Unconformity is a classic, world-famous geological feature.  People who care, come from all over the world to see it, study it, sketch and photograph it.  Even after all these years, I can still remember it vividly.  We had heard all about it the night before and it lived up to all our expectations.  

We walked everywhere on Arran and by the time we got to the site, it was lunchtime.  Mr Gardner gave us a very brief introduction and then we sat on the surrounding rocks to eat our Youth Hostel-provided, packed lunch.  Lunch was brief as we still had a lot to see and of course, a lot of walking to do. 

“Five minutes,” shouted Kenny, as he walked off somewhere.  "Be ready in five minutes."

We got out our sketchbooks, notebooks, pens and pencils, and sat in a group in front of Hutton’s Unconformity ready to take notes.  

We already knew that it marked a division between rocks of two different geological eras hundreds of millions of years apart. The older rocks dip at an angle of about 50°.  Above them are rocks that are almost horizontal.  The two rock groups contain completely different fossils and the feature proves that the lower rocks are older and experienced aeons of earth movement before the other rocks were deposited on top and must therefore be younger.  

Hutton, for the first time, cited it as evidence that the age of the Earth could be based on scientific data and not upon evidence from the Bible.  Study of the Bible, by Archbishop Ussher, put the date of the creation of the Earth on October 23, 4004 BC, so that now in 2010, it is 6014 years old.  

The exposure stretches for about 400 yards along the coastline.

When Kenny came back it was obvious that he was seething with anger. He was almost shaking with fury.

“Who did it?” he screamed. “Who did it?  We aren’t leaving here until someone owns up.  I mean it.  We’ll stay the night out here in the open if necessary.  Who was it?  Who did it?  Who has vandalised this site?”

I was certain that he thought that it was me because he kept looking my way.  However, as I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, I couldn’t really own up to anything.  I really would have confessed to absolutely anything because after sitting on a bleak beach in northwest Scotland for an hour and a half in March, we were all getting very cold.

There was an impasse.  After another half an hour of sitting in silence on jagged rocks, giving each other questioning looks, we were all shivering and very uncomfortable.  One of the girls was whimpering.  Then, the other teacher, David Thurgur, went over to Kenny and whispered something in his ear. 

“Let’s go,” said Kenny immediately and off we went.  Off to look at another bloody dyke and believe me, when you’ve seen one dyke on Arran, you’ve seen all the dykes on Arran.  

Later, as we walked between sites, my mate Nick Cherry, told me that he knew what had happened:  

During lunch, he had needed a poo and had gone about 80 yards away to some bushes.  While there, he saw Mr Thurgur approach the rock face with his geological hammer and carefully and painstakingly carve “LCGS  1964” into the exposure.  (Lowestoft County Grammar School 1964).  

Nick said it was a really nice job and looked great.  I wonder if it is still there.  It should be.  

The matter of the desecration of the historic site was never mentioned to us again but I wonder if the two teachers ever spoke to each other again.

Another thing I learnt to do much too late for it to have any lasting benefit, was to play an on-drive along the ground.  I could always clout or slog the ball over midwicket but it is a shot fraught with risk and often ends up as a catch and therefore the end of your innings.  

Suddenly, during the cricket season of 1995 when I was 48, I found that I could hit the ball just as hard, in the same direction but along the ground and therefore with absolutely no risk of getting out.  I have no idea what I was doing differently but whatever it was , it worked.  If I had discovered how to do that 35 years earlier, I would have certainly been a better player than I ever was.

Last week, when I had to go into a bank in George Town, Grand Cayman, something else happened that never happened to me when I was 20.  I went to customer services and was greeted by a really beautiful young Caymanian woman in her mid-twenties who wore a name badge - Sandra.  She was delightful and I was captivated.  

I sat opposite her in a booth and ogled.   I'd had to go to the bank because a standing order that I had set up a few weeks ago was not being paid and I had to sort it out.   
A minute into proceedings Sandra looked over my shoulder, waved and said, “Hiya girl, like the shirt.”  I turned around to see another beautiful girl walking past wearing a bright red blouse.

“Do you like my shirt?” I asked. 

She stared at my grey, drab T-shirt.  “It’s a bit dull but I suppose that it suits someone of your age.”

What a fantastic put-down.  “Thanks,” I said.

She needed to know my account number at the other organisation that was to receive my monthly payments but I didn’t have it.  I sat in front of Sandra and rang them on my cell but they refused to give out any details over the phone.  I was told that I would have to go in.

“Walk there.  It’s good for you,” said Sandra. “Exercise is good for you.  You’ll lose weight too.”

“Do I look fat?  I’m not walking.  It’s half a mile away and it’s 95 out there and I’ve got a bad knee.  Besides all that, I’ve got an exercise bike at home and I use that every day and please don’t give me that look, because I do.  Do I look as though I need to lose weight?  Do I look fat?”

“Well, you’ve got a bit of a tummy.  Do you drink?”

“Of course.”

“I mean alcohol.”

“No”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes”

“Never?”

“Not for three years.”

“Do you regularly get out of breath?”

“Yes, I do sometimes.”

“Sometimes isn’t regularly.  Do you eat a lot of cookies and candy?”

“No, I don’t but I do have a lot of sex,” I said, getting a little irritated by now with the cross examination. 

Sandra said nothing.  Her face was expressionless as she looked down at her desk and shuffled her papers around.  

“Oh no,” I thought. “You’ve done it now, you pillock.  You’re in Cayman, not in London. She’s a nice, unmarried 25-year-old Caymanian girl.  She almost certainly goes to church twice on Sundays.  You idiot.  You total, stupid idiot.  She won’t think that was funny.  She’ll probably report you for sexual harassment.”

I stood up to leave.  Sandra looked up at me.

“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “it could work.”

“What?”

“What you said you do a lot of.  If you did it really energetically, you’d lose weight.”

“No, I wouldn't.  It's not like England here.  It's much too hot to do anything energetically in Cayman."

Then I suddenly had a thought.  Was she flirting with me?  I looked at her again and she smiled her delightful, captivating smile.  I think she was.

And that’s something else that never happened forty years ago!