Sunday, 8 December 2019

Odds and Sods - Bonus Post - Hoist By His Own Petard


This story wasn't included in Jennie's compilation, but David has a number of the original Harrow Post publications, and this was amongst them. So, for the first time since it was originally published in 1979, here is "Hoist By His Own Petard".




Ever heard of the saying "Hoist by his own petard" ? 

My interpretation would be "Caught in his own trap" and if what I read in the paper is true, the petards of todays' youth are to be well and truly hoisted. I read that the incidence of the flea is on the increase, owing it is said, to the long hair now worn by the youth of the world, because they don't want to be like dad, is not washed enough, and the grotty tangle of matted rats tails is proving to be an ideal breeding ground for our old mate, the small, wingless, leaping insect (re. Websters dictionary).

The logical sequence of events following such a disclosure, must be the return of the 'short back and sides', possibly even the crew cut and the return of untold hordes of redundant barbers gleefully polishing the scissors and razors, long since discarded.



One thing's for sure, you can't alter nature and no boy is going to wash himself any more than he can possibly help, never has and never will. Thus, in their efforts to be different they will become the same, because if they persist in looking like mum, because they don't want to look like dad, then we shall see the return of two more old friends, the flea comb and Nitty Nora, with her dreaded judgement - "All off". 

The flea comb was as much a necessity as a frying pan in the household when I was a boy, for no matter how much parents preached cleanliness was akin to Godliness, kids in Paddington, and in any other district which housed citizens basking in the affluence of the mightiest Empire the world had ever known, avoided too much washing, as they still do. The homes we lived in were old when the Empire was young and generally housed tribes of Gods' smaller creatures inside the lathe and plaster walls.


So the small black comb, with its rows of fine teeth along both edges, was regularly run through our hair over a sheet of newspaper spread over the table, and any flea unfortunate enough to be unhoused, despatched with the thumb nail pressed on it, when it disintegrated with a resounding crack.





If the thought of the poor man's big game hunt makes you itch, it's because (a) you're too young to know of such conditions, (b) you've forgotten all about them, (c) you've been living in a cloud cuckoo land of hygiene, good food and coloured toilet rolls, or (d) you're just plain finicky. 

Well, you are coming down to earth with a bang, because youthful fashion, which has decreed that every effort must be made to cover their faces and heads with what grows in profusion round their backsides, has resulted in the massing of the legions of the night, once more to march down the walls to invade your bed and keep you company in the wee small hours.

Now and then, school kids of my time, were marshalled for health inspection and paraded in front of a grim female in a starched uniform, who, after testing your eyes (if you had two, you passed) our ears by looking in them with the aid of a torch, and our heart by listening through a stethoscope, like a gully mans' drain plunger, and thumping our scrawny chests with her big red fist, and then ran a large metal comb, which stood in a bowl of Jeyes fluid, through our hair and then delivered her verdict - clean or the dreaded "all off". Thus Nitty Nora, as she was universally known. Should you be one of the unfortunates to receive the thumbs down stigma of 'all off', you were literally branded in public eyes as unclean, for it meant what it said. You were made to go to a barber, who clipped your hair tight to the skin, leaving only a small tuft of hair on top of the forehead, which was known as a knocker, and many a small child went through life with a 'tuppenny' all off and tormented by jeers of his mates who were more fortunate in the diligence of their parents with the flea comb.

Mind you, it seems as though we are to see the return of a lot more things that were commonplace a generation ago, and through no fault at all of the long haired brigade, much as the Alf Garnetts among us would like to blame them for everything from aberrancy to zymosis, which sounds very technical but ain't if you look it up. The world shortage of timber is causing commodities that we take for granted, hard to get, sometimes to disappear entirely and we will have to resort to the make-do efforts that wore unquestioned in the days of the flea comb and Nitty Nora.

People adapt very easily to unavoidable conditions, so eating your fish and chips out of the Evening News won't come as a surprise for long nor will wrapping your sandwiches in a bit of damp cloth to keep them fresh. 

Friends of ours, out for an evening spin the other Sunday, were faced with the harsh realities of life when their car broke down outside a famous hotel in Park Lane, W.1. Not at all awed by the number of stars the hotel merited, they marched up and asked the porter if they could use the phone to call the A.A., and it happened that this regal wallah, who'd probably kept the rain off more famous bonces with his big brolly than you've had hot dinners, was a very matey type and ushered then into the lounge, sumptuous as it was, and suggested they had a drink served while waiting for the breakdown van. Well, after a couple of hours and several drinks, a visit to the toilet was necessary and matey with the top hat and outsize umbrella, who obviously knew that the greatest leveller of all, is not the old man with the scythe but the call to nature, directed them to the bogs. Those palaces of sanitary engineering weren't exactly in the same class as the local pub gents, where you're apt to get your shoes wet if the spreader on the wall suddenly gushes, even had an attendant to dust you down and wipe the beads of perspiration from the brow in cases of difficulty. But hanging on the wall in both ladies and gents, was not the usual toilet roll for the hardy few who couldn't work the bidets, but squares of newspaper threaded through on a bit of string.

Which goes to show that when adversity hits the Nation, we must all make do with what we can, and square up to it with a smile on our face, and we will find that our hardest times are well behind us.




No comments:

Post a Comment