A repost from yesteryear.
When was yesteryear? How many years have to
pass before one becomes a ‘yester’?
The Oxford Dictionary defines yesteryear thus:
/ˈjestərjɪr/ [uncountable]
(old-fashioned or literary) the past,
especially a time when attitudes and ideas were different.
I was wondering what I had written about in September of 2009, the year I
started blogging, and came across the following.
Rockets and Explosions
Barry, aged 15, three years before I met him and before boxing had
remodelled his nose.
Barry has always had a lively inquiring mind and a need to test theories
for himself. When he was around 15 years old, he became interested in creating
rockets. Acquiring the components was simple enough and he entertained himself
trying different ‘recipes’, concoctions he discovered in the Public Library.
All fuses were ‘Jetex’.
A by-product of the rockets was explosions. On one occasion while testing the
latest prototype in his back garden the rocket flew off at speed into the
next-door neighbour’s cabbage patch, destroying it.
A far more serious event happened at school when the rocket propellant
Barry was trialling badly scorched and blew a hole in the cricket pitch. The
experiment had been conducted at night and he had selected a test site in the
middle of the sports field as far as possible from habitation.
Not being a cricketer he was unaware
that the chosen location was destined to be the coming season’s cricket
pitch. (Bear in mind that this was in Kent, one of the eighteen first
class cricket counties in all of which cricketing is taken very seriously.
Kent, together with Sussex, is the birthplace of the sport. It is believed that
cricket was invented by children living in the Weald in Saxon or Norman times.)
The groundsman was very unhappy the
following morning, muttering that the last time this happened was during WW2
when a German aircraft bombed the place.
A search for explosive substances revealed that Barry’s locker was a veritable
jet propulsion lab. Unaware of the fracas he had caused, Barry was ordered to
report to the headmaster’s study where he was presented with the evidence of
the locker and the cricket pitch. He feared uncomfortable retribution.
The head, a former Colonel during the
Second World War and a Quaker, took a most enlightened view and, though he left
no doubt in Barry’s mind that his activities had been noted and disapproved of
and were not to be repeated, informed him that his punishment would last for
two terms; he was ordered to report to the chemistry master and attend
compulsory after-school lessons on explosives. He concluded, 'If you are going
to do this sort of thing then you will do it properly and under supervision and
ONLY under supervision.'
It transpired that the chemistry master
had been in the SOE (Special
Operations Executive) during WW2 and knew a thing or two about 'doing it
properly' as far as explosives were concerned. Barry learnt much and effected
his future 'experiments' under the guidance of his ex-SOE mentor.
Eventually other interests developed and rocket-making became a thing of the
past. Many years later, Barry was sitting with a very senior member of the
armed forces waiting for a meeting to start. They were of a similar age and
started reminiscing about school days and it emerged that he also had carried
out similar 'experiments' in his youth. The difference was that he was never caught.
Postscript: Barry recalls these events with some horror - but it was not
at all uncommon for schoolboys to engage in dangerous activities. Even
schoolgirls in chemistry laboratories could be observed mixing various
chemicals 'to see what would happen.' I certainly did. Nothing ever happened, in my school anyway, but school pupils were poorly supervised in the days before 'Health and Safety' ruled.
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