Skip to main content

The naughty young person's friend

I tread carefully here, for I am about to suggest that young people are sometimes naughty. As I got berated for daring to say that yoof aren't necessarily as caring and sharing about the environment as the media tells us, I prepare myself for a hail of insults. But I ought to stress that I'm talking pre-teens here.

When I was young, the playground was in some ways a more dangerous place than today. Thinking back to the play equipment on the recreation ground that was wonderfully sited in a field that ajoined my garden when I was 0-11 (it has now been built over with houses - bad move, Rochdale Council), most of the apparatus would now be condemned as too dangerous to play on.

There was one piece of equipment that was actually removed as such while I was there - a long bar with seats on, suspended from above at both ends, so it rocked back and forth. The trouble with this was that the ends of the bar were roughly at head height, and it had a huge amount of momentum once going, so really was a deadly weapon. Rumour had it a girl was killed by one, though pre-teen rumours aren't awfully accurate.

Other devices that wouldn't be allowed now were the witches' hat - a conical metal frame, suspended from the point at the top that rotated and bumped - and a slide that must have been a good 15 feet high.

However, the health and safety elves missed the most unpleasant thing you got in the playground - bullies. Having bright red hair, I got my fair share of bullying, and back then those naughty young folk had to resort to simple pleasures like twisting your arm both ways at the same time (known politically incorrectly as a 'chinese burn'), ramming your face in the sandpit or doing unspeakable things with swings.

Although the dangerous equipment has gone, it strikes me that the playground bullies of today have a much more powerful weapon than the ones we were subjected to. As I walk my dog I pass several playgrounds, which are all usefully provided with dog poo bins, like the one in the illustration. For me these are very useful - it saves carrying the unwanted output all the way home. But they have the potential to be the naughty young person's friend.

I think it's fair to say, that if anyone was held with their face in close proximity to one of these bins for more than a few seconds, they would find it very difficult not to throw up. Now there's a weapon of choice. Thankfully, I am yet to see it in use - the potential users hopefully don't have the imagination to employ it. Even so, I can't help but shudder whenever I use one of these useful devices and think how it might have been.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense