Safety

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

I’m not going knitting-too dangerious with those big pointy needles,and you proberbly need a pair of scissors as well!IAN S C

[CirclipParticipant @circlip]

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1940’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Take away food was limited to fish and chips; no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC, Subway or Nandos.

Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn’t open on the weekends, somehow we didn’t starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO-ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with.
 

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in them, but we weren’t overweight because……
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY, no video/DVD films, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms………. WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time…

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Mum didn’t have to go to work to help Dad make ends meet!

RUGBY and CRICKET had trials and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on MERIT. 

Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and bullies always ruled the playground at school.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn’t invent stupid names for their kids like ‘Kiora’, ‘Blade’, ‘Ridge’ or ‘Vanilla’

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO
DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

 

Edited By David Clark 1 on 30/11/2009 19:42:46

[Ian AbbottParticipant @ianabbott31222]

You forgot about chasing mercury around the science room bench, into the sink and then watching as it passed through the lead pipe back into our hands.

 

Oh and the lead cold water pipes that we all drank from. 

 

And sucking chunks of ice from puddles in the street. 

 

Ian 

[ChrisHParticipant @chrish]

Plus, we didn’t waste loads of food because some theoretical “use by” or “best by” date had been exceeded – as the theory didn’t exist and the brain washing hadn’t begun!  

 

If the food was ‘off’ we binned it, if it wasn’t we’d eat it.  We didn’t bin much food, despite lack of refrigeration and lack of preservatives in food, because as there wasn’t much of it and we were always hungry because we were so active playing outside, we used to eat it; and our Mothers cooked tasty meals with the left-overs.

 

Cooking meals, how does that work then you can hear modern kids (and adults too)  asking………………………………

 

ChrisH 

[Martin CottrellParticipant @martincottrell21329]

Hi Circlip,

 

Great memories there! I’m happy to say my daughter is bringing up my 3 grandsons with the same values listed in your post, plenty of fresh air, mud, streams & falling out of trees! She says the only problem with this lifestyle is the sense of accusing interrogation she gets from the doctor when he sees 3 boys covered in cuts and bruises!!

 

Sadly, once the kids go to school the “nanny state” takes over to wrap them in cotton wool and protect them from the wicked outside world. Schools are like day release prison camps now, surrounded by high fences and locked gates.Parents and grandparents are told they are not allowed to photograph their children during sports day or the school nativity play in case they should include someone elses child in the photo. I recently offered to take some steam related bits into my grandsons class who were doing a project on the industrial revolution. I was curtly told that it would not be appropriate as I had not had a police criminal record check. Crazy, crazy world!

 

Sorry about the rant! Regards, Martin

[Flying FiferParticipant @flyingfifer]

HOI Circlip,

what`s  the matter with the real golden oldies? You know US PREWAR ONES !! I reckon I`m not the only one on this forum. So show some respect for us. After all we invented the original mobile phone you know the one with 2 tin cans & a long bit of string. Then there were the handgrenades, tin can with some carbide in it then p** on it jam the lid on & throw (or run like hell before it explodes)

After all we were junior members of Dad`s army waiting to fight the jermuns. Must have heard about our grenades they never came.

Our woodwork teacher was deadly with a chisel as well but it was always the blunt end he`d hit you with never the sharp end. Just as well they were real sharp. Metalwork bloke used to let us melt lead, ali & iron & make things called castings. That metal was red hot. Can`t remember anyone getting burnt though.

Happy days. I pity the kids these days they dont seem to be able to “invent” like what we did. Still  suppose that`s progress.

Crawl back into shell & go to sleep now. Rant over. Nighty night.     

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

I remember chasing mercury around in the school lab,also remember one of the girls had a gold ring-gold ring mercury amalgumate,silvery ring,tears,oh well you live and learn.Our school was a tiny country secondary school,16 pupils,the main class room was a well equiped laboratory!Usually on Friday someone would get the strap,I think the lack of this is a disadvantage to anyone wanting to be a Cricketer,its a good way of toughening the hand,or at least preparing one for the impact of the ball.IAN S C

[CirclipParticipant @circlip]

Sorry DC1, just lifted it as a copy from a Knee male sent to me a while ago, it missed the last line :- “And it’s so big due to our failing eyesight”

 

  Sorry, didn’t mean to exclude you Fifer, thought all the tin cans would have been snaffled by Beaverbrook to make Battleships like they did with Aluminininium pots and pans for Spits.

 

  In the true spirit of make do and mend, our woodwork teacher used handy bits of 2″ x 1″ as “Memory Sticks” and the Physics and Chemmy Barstiches used Bunsen tubes as canes. No, NOT with the burners still attached, that would have been sadistic.

 

  Regards  Ian.

[charadamParticipant @charadam]

My school chemistry teacher was demonstrating distillation or some other process one day (1961) and he left a rubber bung sealing the boiling flask.

 

Predictably it exploded creating a very loud bang and a mass of glass shrapnel.

By some miracle, only the teacher himself was injured (a small cut to his upper lip) and the class quickly recovered from the shock.

 

One week later, the lesson was repeated. Same class, same teacher – and he did it again!

 

Nobody sued, nobody even complained. 

 

[Richard MarksParticipant @richardmarks80868]

Me again

If you think you were adventurous try doing some of the projects in The Boy Mechanic or The Boy Eletrician, i,e, build a 30KV coil and go and buy an X Ray tube to look at the bones in your hand, purchase sulphuric acid and mercury to make electrical items, build a 90ft long roller coaster,build a glider to fly in,and it goes on and on, these books were published about 1913 and were quite advanced for the time.

Regards

Dick

[chris stephensParticipant @chrisstephens63393]

Hi Guys and Guyettes.

Has anybody else read page two of today’s Telegraph?

Under the banner  of  “Cameron pledge to halt ‘culture’ of compensation” such quotes as “the over-the-top health and safety culture provokes a lot of anger” do you think he has been reading all our posts?

I would scan and post but I have had no success in the past, so you will have to see if it is on line.

Sounds hopeful that politicians may actually listen to some of the people some of the time., but sadly not all of the people all of the time.

chriStephens

[chris stephensParticipant @chrisstephens63393]

To add to my last,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/david-cameron/6700596/David-Cameron-pledges-health-and-safety-clear-out.html

is a longer version of the hard copy paper article, hope it doesn’t contradict the one I read.

chriStephens

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Back in the 70s & 80s I was nursing in a country hospital,one day we got a patient who had chopped the end off his finger with his lawn mower,thats OK,accident.Two or three weeks later,same bloke,same accident-oh someone asked me how it happened so I showed him!!!When I was a kid of about 10 I remember dad had some pre-war Hobbies magazenes,and one told how to make an X-Ray plant including how to make the tube from a vacuum type light bulb,can’t remember the whole circiut.IAN S C

[Ian AbbottParticipant @ianabbott31222]

Ian’s back….. again.

 

Sort of a lesson here.  Story condensed.  After having surgery to remove my sinus cavities and the surrounding bone, I’d come home.  Anyway, I started bleeding heavily from up somewhere behind my eyes, which came out of my nose and mouth.  By the time I arrived in the emergency room, face in a bucket, which is about half an hour at high speed,  I’d lost a litre or so of blood and losing consciousness.  Fortunately, a quick squeeze of large amounts of fluid into an IV, an alert doctor and a week in hospital and some discomfort,  I’m home, with orders to do nothing.  Of course, I’m obeying that one.

 

Anyway, the lesson here.   I’ve lived my life with a fairly good first aid kit handy at all times, there are fire extinguishers handy in all the right places and I’ve done the first aid training, CPR, bleeding etc., everything.  Quite complacent, I was.

 

None of this helped one little bit.  If you can’t reach the spurting artery, it don’t stop.  If I’d have been in a workshop and something had caused an accident with similar bleeding, such as a flying object in the face, and no one to help, I’d be a gonner.  Fortunately wife and neighbour were handy.

 

I have now completely revised my first aid assumptions. 

 

A much chastened

Ian 

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