Doctors and Nurses
Tuesday May 3 1977 may not be a date many have cause to recall or even remember; but that was the day when the BBC’s TV service for schools and colleges broadcast the facts of life to a classroom of nine-year-olds at my school. Episode one of ‘Merry Go Round: The Facts of Life’ was the first of three which outlined the basics of reproduction both between humans and in the animal kingdom, the most simple and straightforward explanation to that eternal kids’ question: ‘Where do babies come from?’
In a sense, that’s the only question that need be answered at that age, even though I don’t recall ever posing it; it wasn’t really of interest to me, even when my mum gave birth to my brother when I was going-on five. I don’t think it ever crossed my mind as to how my mum became pregnant; it was just something that happened to mums. I suppose belonging to one of the first generations to receive the rudiments of sex education from television spared my dad any embarrassing chats about the birds and the bees that had once been obligatory between father and son, but ‘sex’ was just a word to me and my playground chums that provoked sniggers. Via ‘Carry On’ films, Benny Hill, page 3 and the odd pair of bare breasts exposed on an episode of ‘The Sweeney’ we’d managed to catch sight of on those rare occasions when we’d stay-up past our usual bedtimes, sex was something to laugh about.
If a near-the-knuckle joke about sex was sneaked into a family comedy show, parental opinion would be that such indiscretion was ‘dirty’ or ‘filthy’ – associating sex with something nasty that a cold shower was required to wash away. There was even a magazine in the 1970s called ‘Funny Half-Hour’, consisting solely of cartoons in a saucy seaside postcard style; tits, bums, fannies and willies were objects of humour or disgust, as rubber johnnies would become as soon as we heard about them; every nickname for a sexual organ or act was a funny word. Porn mags (or ‘mucky books’) on the top shelf of a newsagent’s or the photos in the window of a seedy city centre sex shop were there seemingly to be pointed and laughed at; we knew reference to them in adult company would probably lead to a smack on the backside, so they were only referred to in whispers.
It’s evident now that by equating sex either with humour or dirt, our parents were doing their best to prolong our childhoods, well aware there’d be plenty of time for us to experience the realities of sex. Even when we were let in on the secrets of reproduction, the nature of sex as it had been presented to us through the media remained that of something ‘naughty’ and ‘cheeky’, reserved for adults and not for us. The school sex education syllabus, with the help of the BBC, wasn’t an attempt to indoctrinate an approved design for life, but a necessary and sensible aspect of the educational process as much as learning to read or count. We’d always been warned to steer clear of strangers, but it was only short films shown at school that gave us a clearer indication of what the intentions of these strangers would be should we fall for their spiel. So, we were made aware that some men saw children in a sexual light. Another lesson learnt – end of.
Marriage was suggested as the proper place for sex, but that didn’t mean sex outside of it was branded evil; there were a few kids at school whose parents were rumoured not to be married or the odd one or two who had different surnames to their siblings; but that was all regarded as their business and nothing to do with sex education. The notion that the facts of life should also include stern advice about ‘relationships’ was something that was closer to the more moralistic Catholic incarnation of sex education, not the more flexible C-of-E school version. Across the Irish Sea, sex was also a sin as well as a joke. We were at least spared that.
Some men were ‘poofs’, some women were ‘lezzers’, and some men liked to dress up as women – Danny La Rue being the most famous. But what had that got to do with where babies came from? It was the school’s job to spare parents from awkward lectures and it was the parents’ job to expand the knowledge of every variation on the basic heterosexual theme should they feel the need. The older one grew, however, the more advanced playground chat on the subject became, and by the time puberty approached, we were certainly clearer on what was what than our parents had been at our age.
I would say the sex education I received was sufficient; I was told as much as I needed to be told; the rest I picked up as I grew up. It wasn’t the business of school or state, let alone church, to provide lessons on anything else, really; again, that’s what happened in Ireland. Each aspect of the sexual experience was revealed in dribs and drabs over a period of four or five years at perfectly timed intervals, not in one overwhelming burden of too-much-information at too young an age. The thought of a sex education lesson consisting of a transsexual and his shaven-headed civil partner showing the class how to apply a KY Jelly-covered condom to a banana would have reduced the whole process to a Monty Python sketch, yet one can’t help but feel many within the education system today would regard that as ideal – and, crucially, an approach that should be undertaken without the remotest trace of a smile.
The intervention of those for whom every element of living should adhere to certain rigid guidelines is something that would once have been the preserve of the archetypal Mary Whitehouse types, whereas those whose more adventurous sexual preferences had left them out in the cold mocked the narrow constraints of a no-sex-before-marriage, wholly heterosexual interpretation; now the situation is reversed. The one-time outsiders have ascended to the establishment and are now imposing their own equally inflexible concept of sex education on schoolchildren just as their despised predecessors had, going one brave step further by including lessons on how to behave in a relationship, something that is merely the flip side of the theory that the place for sex is a marriage. The irony is that the previous approach left teens to their own devices, enabling room for mistakes that would be made in order to learn from; the new proposed syllabus lays down a set of rules and regulations that are almost Orwellian in their attempts to breed a society of sexually approved citizens, as laughably limited as those guidebooks that used to be given to young couples as wedding presents.
If the aim of this sex education overhaul, spearheaded by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan (and backed by ‘Rape Culture’ lobbyists), is to prevent the sexual exploitation of adolescents, discrimination against the only gay in the village and the ludicrously high rate of teenage pregnancies, so be it; that’s an admirable aim. But perhaps the excess of soft-porn that has infiltrated so many influential aspects of the media should be looked at? Perhaps the easy availability to children of tunnel-vision hardcore porn that can be sourced via the click of a mouse should be looked at? Perhaps the growing belief that all men are closet rapists or paedophiles should be looked at? Perhaps the enforced worship of WAGS and women who show the path to fame and fortune depends upon the size of one’s breasts and narrowness of one’s waist should be looked at? Perhaps the dereliction of duties by parents should be looked at? Perhaps eleven is too young to be burdened with all this?
And perhaps the importance of love should be mentioned somewhere amidst this rush to sell sex to eleven-year-olds as a sanitised, Utopian videogame sponsored by Durex (in association with Coca-Cola) where, as long as you stick to the rules laid down in official government policy, instant physical gratification will be as easily accessible as the latest release by your favourite band on iTunes.
Petunia Winegum
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March 19, 2015 at 9:46 am -
As always, Monty Python explained it the best…
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March 19, 2015 at 10:11 am -
For years I thought “sex” were what posh people had their coal delivered in.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:20 am -
* we were made aware that some men saw children in a sexual light *
Not sure that is true on any level really.My Catholic schooling never had any “relationship advice” whatsoever. At school we had no sex education whatsoever either until we were over 16. That seems logical in retrospect. My “formal” sex education at puberty was done at home and simply depended on my mother giving me a book to read, which I doubt most ordinary 12 year-olds of today would be capable of reading. It referred to “seed” rather than anything clinical and mentioned something about God making it pleasurable because physical love was intended to be a good thing and NOT a sin. This notion was emphasised by it being pointed out that animals liked to do it too. There was perhaps an undercurrent there of my grandfathers comment about sex once, which was that you didn’t have to be clever to have sex – the dogs in the street were very good at it! That last was I suppose where quite some notions of the mechanics of sex came to my notice. No dogs in the streets these days though.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:37 am -
You mustn’t have been shown the film shown at my school when I was about nine – one of those ‘don’t talk to strangers’ ones. The aims of the strangers were emphasised in a roundabout way, suggesting they might want to do something ‘rude’. Cue sniggers from some, but it was the first time we’d been told. Not having had a Catholic education myself, the impression given at the time (and via subsequent accounts) was of nuns hammering home the concept of Original Sin and girls being warned Damnation was their destination should they consider sex before marriage.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:40 am -
The nuns are my sister’s all-girls senior school advised putting down a sheet of newspaper before sitting on a boy’s lap. Perhaps that one “barrier” precaution they did not disapprove of….
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March 19, 2015 at 11:41 am -
“The nuns are my sister’s all-girls senior school advised putting down a sheet of newspaper before sitting on a boy’s lap. Perhaps that one “barrier” precaution they did not disapprove of….”
You try getting ‘protein stains’ out of a cassock.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:41 am -
Sixties versus Seventies I imagine is the simple answer to la difference…
Something significant did change in the law in 1967.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:42 am -
My old man was a copper – and not a particularly clever one. There was a hairdresser/barber who had ‘previous’ in our neighbourhood. My instructions were simple: “he’s bad man. Do not go there under any circumstances”. That’s all I needed to know, it never troubled me and I did as I was told. Despite being immersed in pop music from being a toddler, first I knew about my willy having other uses apart from pissing out of was being being told by my dad at the age of 9 about the basics, around the same time my mum announced she was pregnant with my brother. I found the thought of dipping my wick very unappealing indeed… perhaps I was right?
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March 19, 2015 at 10:49 am -
@Chris
Hair-dresser? Queer? How very dare your dad…
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March 19, 2015 at 1:24 pm -
“At school we had no sex education whatsoever either until we were over 16. That seems logical in retrospect”.
I think we need more than logic, especially given the number of girls under sixteen who get banged up every year! Maybe the differences between sexual education here and on the continent have something to do with the fact UK has the highest teen pregnancy rate in Europe?
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March 19, 2015 at 1:29 pm -
Was never aware of a single girl becoming pregnant in my school. We were co-ed from about 14.
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March 19, 2015 at 1:38 pm -
Considering the attitudes of the time, all you might be aware of would be a girl vanishing for a term or two for no openly explained reason, perhaps never to return. That or else some new girl who seemed somewhat less childish and more preoccupied than her peers transferring from another school for no openly explained reason.
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March 19, 2015 at 1:48 pm -
I’m not convinced that if you have a society that is quite screwed up about sex to start with, that having State sponsored “sex education” is any solution, especially when those running the State seem even more screewed-up than the citizenry. The “English-speaking world” does seem to be quite uniquely messed up insofar as the “western world” goes and one has to conclude that this relates back to “Victoriana”. I think we’re trapped in a reciprocating tangle with the UK, US and Oz alternately tensing and relaxing and keeping us all collectively in a state of hysteria about the entire subject. People really do need to lighten up but the pressure from the law just now is becoming intolerable and if they keep it up summat is going to break and it might well be what little democracy we have left.
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March 19, 2015 at 6:36 pm -
Whatever about your school, this is the reality now:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2794234/uk-highest-rate-teen-pregnancies-western-europe-despite-25-fall-decade.htmlI think the least we can do is explain the basics of contraception …
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March 19, 2015 at 10:31 am -
This does effectively lead on from yesterdays article in terms of the “how did we get here?” question.
And the answer is young minds poisoned by the consumerist media.
What *they* have effectively done is deliberately sexualize children from a very young age – thus all of the things we became aware gradually are thrust (if you pardon the pun) upon them via braindead pop stars, computer games and the proliferation of ‘devices’. And, having done that, we are now told that to *protect* these youngsters we need to explain the full mechanics of sex and relationships – things they can’t understand.
This is proving disastrous – but why are they doing it? The younger the child, the more furtive the imagination. And by planting information no child can really comprehend – that a boy doesn’t use his ‘tail’ for weeing, he shoves it in a girl etc etc – they then create a nightmare situation when a child making up tall stories is likely to veil their natural figments of their imagination with sexual elements. Cue lots of families being investigated for things that never happened due to the state planting thoughts in their heads that they cannot fathom themselves, and because they cannot understand them they play heavily on their young minds, twisting and contorting. You only have to look to the shelves in the supermarket full of depraved headlines http://retardedkingdom.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/viva-hate.html
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March 19, 2015 at 10:38 am -
* a boy doesn’t use his ‘tail’ for weeing, he shoves it in a girl *
You are plainly a homophobe with your excluding type of commentary. Go to the back of the class and learn to celebrate the splendour of human sexuality in all it’s rainbow hues.-
March 19, 2015 at 11:16 am -
Splendour of sodomy? Stick to what you do best.
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March 19, 2015 at 11:26 am -
The Americans seem especially obsessed with it, and I’m talking guys’n’gals here…
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March 19, 2015 at 10:38 am -
There is, however, undoubtedly a degree of gross ignorance amongst “the youth of today.” Whereas I’ve pretty certain I was clear at the age of ten in the mid-1970s that it was only the act of putting your willy in a girl’s fanny that would (not “could” or “might” – that certainty was a great disuader) get her pregnant, you would think that with such even greater access to information now there would be less uncertainty, yet even older kids don’t seem so sure. A few years back my wife was working supply at an all-boys school, and at at the start of one lesson walked in to find some Year Ten pupils loudly discussing what they were going to do to the supposed girlfriends, it being Valentine’s Day. Thinking it was no doubt mostly bravado, but could be let go without a word of advice, she said if it was true, she hoped they’d take precautions. One boy then asked if his girlfriend gave him a blowjob, could she get pregnant. My wife thought this could be a wind-up, but figured there might at least be one or two boys in the room who might not know, she said no, that wasn’t possible. That afterwards some of the boys falsely claimed this had let to a long and detailed discussion of all manner of sexual practices that resulted in my wife being suspended by her agency for months – and thus losing literally thousands of pounds in potential wages – is one can of worms, but the fact that boys aged 14-15 who may be sexually active are still so ignorant of even the basic details is – in the grand scheme of things – a much bigger one.
The biggest problem seems to be that children are bombarded with a plethora of mixed messages. On the one hand, sex is something fun and without any consequences. Even the past dread of the burden and shame of pregnancy is no more. Condoms and the pill can stop it, and the morning-after pill can make it doubly sure, but if not there’s abortion, adoption, or just having the thing and a perception that the State will pick up the tab. Conversely sex also equates to HIV/AIDS and other STDs, some of which can be easily dealt with, and others that can’t be. In the midst of all that, they are told that sex under 16 is illegal, and yet “nobody” gets prosecuted unless the senior – and usually male – party is more than a few years older. Now we have the added garnish that sex is something through which someone can be exploited, and invariably the message seems to be that it’s boys exploiting girls, even though some surveys have suggested that boys are more likely to be pressured into sex that they don’t want than girls are.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:50 am -
There is a real need for frankness and explict explanations of the physical aspects of sexuality in the classroom. Looking back now I am appalled at the amazing ignorance in which I remained about the most important matters until well into puberty (the facts of life book my parents gave me came several years too late at fifteen).
It is interesting now to read about the straightforward and informative books and programs that children in continental countries of my age were given in sexual education lessons. It is a sign of how closed the British still are that many of these are illegal in the UK and are considered ‘child pornography’. ‘Zieg Mal’ is a beautifully photographed book on sexual development which was produced in the millions in Germany and Denmark but which has never had an English edition and has been seized by the police on a number of occasios. Similarly the Flemish ‘Sexuele voorlichting’ (1991) treats topics like masturbation in documentary fashion with real subjects in a way that should instantly banish natural adolescent worries about their own normality.
I am no Mary Whitehouse type and there is definitely a place for pornography in any teenagers life but it would be nice for future generations to learn about sex from sources other than their peers and porn and in ways that will make them less anxious and more comfortable. Sadly in today’s climate this is just not going to happen.
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March 19, 2015 at 11:03 am -
“There is a real need for frankness and explict explanations of the physical aspects of sexuality in the classroom.”
When this doesn’t work – and it obviously doesn’t – its advocates always press for yet more of the same. -
March 19, 2015 at 11:09 am -
* it would be nice for future generations to learn about sex from sources other than their peers and porn *
Every generation had learned that way until about forty years ago. Pompeii anyone?
Not broke so why do they keep on trying to fix it and why are the results so utterly crap.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:51 am -
“Perhaps the easy availability to children of tunnel-vision hardcore porn that can be sourced via the click of a mouse should be looked at? Perhaps the growing belief that all men are closet rapists or paedophiles should be looked at? Perhaps the enforced worship of WAGS and women who show the path to fame and fortune depends upon the size of one’s breasts and narrowness of one’s waist should be looked at? Perhaps the dereliction of duties by parents should be looked at? Perhaps eleven is too young to be burdened with all this?”
Solve the bolded one, and all the others will cease to be an issue.
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March 19, 2015 at 11:02 am -
Tell that to Victoria Gillick, if she’s still alive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillick_competence
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March 19, 2015 at 10:55 am -
March 19, 2015 at 10:57 am -
I was shocked (and that is saying something) when our then 6 or 7 year old came home from German Primary school clutching a photocopied sheet with a depiction of two puzzle pieces on it -“male” and “female” pieces- and the homework to draw a picture of Janet and Johannes (or whatever their names were) under the shower together.
Later I always gave my teenage sons some advice before going to parties etc, “When you meet THE girl, the one who really ‘gets’ you then do remember that I , your Dad, probably went to the same parties her parents’ did and Norfolk is a small place”.
Me: “ALWAYS use a condom, even if she says she is on The Pill”
Teenage Son: “But why DaaaAAD? They like told us in school like that the Pill is like 99.9999% certain protection like y’know innit?!”
Me: “No what they actually told you was that The Pill is 99.9999recurring % protection IF *used in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions*”
Teenage Son: “BuuUUt DaaAAD…”
Me:”would you trust her to program the VCR?”
Teenage Son: *whiter shade of pale*But seeing as Eldest still managed to sire a child out of wedlock on an underaged girl, maybe I should have stuck with him drawing Michelle and Michael under the shower. Yep, I sucked as a parent.
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March 19, 2015 at 11:38 am -
Jeremy Kyle makes a very good living from getting women on his show who swear blind that the got pregnant despite being on the pill, or because “the condom broke.” The latter seems to be the magic excuse that nobody can question. Having done a fair bit for increasing Messers Durex’s profits over the years, I can honestly say that the “broken condom brigade” are mostly either incredibly unlucky, or liars.
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March 19, 2015 at 11:55 am -
My mother’s generation said it could happen by sitting on a toilet seat. The only thing that never seemed to occur to them in those days was why girls would be in the gentleman’s lavatories in the first place…
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March 19, 2015 at 1:41 pm -
Well, it could be that the transmission path is woman – seat – next woman in cubicle. The slight problem with this is that (I’m led to believe) the relevant viruses can only survive for about 3 seconds on a toilet seat or similar, which makes the standard excuse trotted out by many a Catholic priest a tad lame.
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March 19, 2015 at 1:50 pm -
Aha… pre-turkey baster stuff then…
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March 19, 2015 at 4:07 pm -
Oh, well before. It doesn’t quite explain what the priest was doing in the ladies’ lavatories, either…..
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March 19, 2015 at 8:20 pm -
He was wearing a dress, where else was he supposed to go ?
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March 19, 2015 at 3:31 pm -
Jeremy Kyle should never be watched by anyone, unless it is to play ‘Jeremy Kyle Bingo’ – phrases in the game include ‘this diamond lady’, ‘results of the lie detector’, and other cliches.
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March 19, 2015 at 11:14 am -
Interesting point on porn.
I differ from the author on this topic – soft porn magazines were part of my sexual self-education. It was not so much the objectification of women as sexual self-exploration that didn’t involve me trespassing on anyone else or giving in to a pressing need to embark on relationships for the wrong reasons. I’m a wanker, I’m a wanker and I was always pulling my pud. http://retardedkingdom.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/faith-hope-chastity.html
Porn changed though – and, funnily enough (again leading on from what we discussed earlier) – it changed just as we also got Bliar’s education reforms and nasty ‘reality’ television. Almost overnight, your standard top shelf titles such as Club International were deregulated, and instead of ‘glamour’ shots of sexy models every other image was hardcore – ‘kebab shots’ and the like. So where I as a curious child stumbled upon a ‘mucky mag’ with naked ladies in, a child of the noughties would be faced with explicitly sexual images which – shorn of hormonal context – is a lot more damaging to a young mind. And before long such images were at the click of a button whereas just a few years before they were in plastic bags in unmarked ‘private’ shops.
I’m not ‘anti-porn’ but I am anti desensitizing of the nations children. Looking at the old magazines I pored over as a younger man it – like so many other things – is like looking back on some quaint, gentle olde worlde. Take me back-
March 19, 2015 at 11:21 am -
High art was of course sometimes “pornographic”. What a splendid reason to develop a taste for art.
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March 19, 2015 at 11:45 am -
I spent a lot of time when I was at college going through the many record shops in the city centre – but an alternative ‘browse’ was discovered around then… the ‘photography’ section of bookshops looking through for ‘tasteful’ books
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March 19, 2015 at 11:55 am -
Sorry to disagree, but “kebab” shots were a staple of Playbirds and the cheekily-titled Whitehouse in the early-/mid-80s. Like Playboy, Mayfair was generally more tasteful (although still with the occasional and completely legal 16 or 17 year old model – Shock! Horror!), while the likes of Fiesta and Razzle were somewhere in between. Most magazines did become more explicit throughout the 1990s, and in the case of Mayfair specifically the change was very abrupt, when the title was sold to Paul Raymond in 1990. All this was long before New Labour got elected, never mind after whatever changes they introduced to education. I’m also not sure what “deregulation” you are referring to.
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March 19, 2015 at 12:03 pm -
Obviously that should be, “Playbirds and the cheekily-titled Whitehouse,” not a single convoluted title….
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March 19, 2015 at 12:03 pm -
Fiesta was mostly bought for Readers Wives wasn’t it?
Presumably all those wilting Violets were forced into a life of publicly naked humiliation.
Class Action anyone? Documented evidence after all.-
March 19, 2015 at 12:08 pm -
Yes, Fiesta was the first to do that sort of thing. I recently trasfered to DVD a 1994 Channel 4 documentary about the phenomena, and in it the Fiesta editor explains that originally it was just a spur-of-the-moment decision tol print a few as a one-off, because even before they printed any, redears had been sending in photographs of their supposed wives/partners for some time.
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March 19, 2015 at 12:09 pm -
I really need to get the hang of this HTML mark-up….
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March 19, 2015 at 12:19 pm -
I was quite astounded a while back, after using flickr quite innocently for two or three years, to stumble upon a cohort of women who posted porno pictures of themselves and then discussed the ins and outs of it all with their online fans… … I guess it makes them feel woorrrrth it…. I became quite fascinated for about a night. Perils of searching for pictures of pussy…
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March 19, 2015 at 12:23 pm -
All I can say to that is I speak from experience – I do still have the magazines somewhere, and there is a marked difference in the late 80s/early-mid 90s ones (Mayfair, Razzle, Club International, Men’s World) which I pored over regularly – and the same titles from 1999/2000-on which were far more explicit. I don’t have references to hand, but there was a development of the ‘R18′ classification of porn films to bring us in line with the rest of Europe (which kicked in circa 1998/99) which caused a boom of the UK Porn ‘industry’ for most of the noughties, and caused a knock-on effect as the print pornographers felt obligated to ‘go hardcore’ for fear of losing out their market share. Prior to that the ‘hardcore’ titles available – Playbirds, Whitehouse, Private, etc – were only available in licensed sex shops. In reality rather than the ‘open-minded erotica’ of mainland Europe, everything seemed to go ‘American vulagr’…. but perhaps I’m just an old-fashioned wanker?
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March 19, 2015 at 12:28 pm -
Wasnlt this a reason for the popularity of NUTS and their ilk in the 90’s? Pretty pictures of again rather than gyaeno-gorno… although the inflating boobs seemed a sign of the times. Not so much the rivers of Babylon as the river of Jordan I think…
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March 19, 2015 at 12:51 pm -
Nuts started in 2004, as did Zoo. Loaded starting in 1994 was the initial game-changer, but in comparison to even Mayfair of ten years previously, their photo-shoots were very tame.
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March 19, 2015 at 12:54 pm -
Ah.. Loaded must be the one. Never bought them you understand…
Never knowingly pay for sex… it’s me ‘uman right innit…
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March 19, 2015 at 12:47 pm -
Well, somewhere I have a virtually complete run of Mayfair from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, and there was certainly very much a marked change when Paul Raymond took over the title in 1990, and then a progressive change throughout the 1990s. To try to pretend that this was somehow linked to New Labour getting into power and specifically whatever educational reforms they introduced, though, is just wrong and more than a little silly.
The R18 certificate was introduced in the early-1980s, but was pretty much limited to simulated sex, but then in 2000 the BBFC were forced to accept real hardcore after judicial challenges under existing laws. Again this had nothing to do with whoever was in government at the time, although it could be said that a Conservative one may well have introduced counter-legislation.
Oh, and Playbirds et al were not necessarily restricted to licensed sex shops. They were certainly sold in the newsagents for whom I delivered papers in the early-1980s. They were part of a city-wide chain, and certainly not just some rogue individual shop operating under the radar of the local council. It was also at a time when there were actually very few licensed sex shops outside of London, anyway. Many council refused to grant licences, but a loophole allowed the shops to trade while an application was pending, hence many of the “Private” chain constantly cycled through various names (e.g. “Private Lines,” “Private Goods,” etc.) as applications were submitted and rejected.
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March 19, 2015 at 12:53 pm -
Paul Raymond? Intriguing. Was this perhaps something to do with his daughter taking the reins as I believe she did before she died and left him broken-hearted? Women often have the worst ideas about what it is that men want to see.
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March 19, 2015 at 1:21 pm -
I think that may have been coincidental, as when Mayfair changed hands in 1990 it very much simply changed to reflect the standard of Raymond’s existing titles. It was a standing joke that titles like Mayfair contained “safety pages” of artciles not even tangentially related to sex, that one could quickly flick to (no, not like that!) if caught reading them. In Mayfair‘s case this could be anythign from motoring and aircraft to military endeavours, although they were well-known for beautifully-painted pieces on railway locomotives (I always suspected the editor was a not-very-closet train spotter). Obviously that sort of thing vanished overnight when Paul Raymond took over.
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March 19, 2015 at 1:28 pm -
While we’re on the subject, I had to laugh recently when someone turned up on a more adult forum I look at occasionally, saying she wanted to sell off her late father collection of hardcore DVDs (as you do). More than a few people pointed out that if they were R18-rated titles, they could only be sold through licensed sex shops, and that if they were not BBFC-rated, it would be illegal to supply them to anyone within the UK. She got all snotty about that very accurate advice, and eventually came back saying she’d e-mailed our old friends at S&G, who basically told her that unless the DVDs were bootlegs, there was nothing to stop her selling them to anyone she liked who was over 18! Given their obsession with taking on cases of a sexual nature, you would think that the firm would be a bit more clued up on the porn laws….
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March 19, 2015 at 6:10 pm -
Mayfair ‘Girls Of Summer’ 1990 – that was a good ‘un.
Very good article on the new Rover Metro…
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March 19, 2015 at 2:40 pm -
Hands up those who remember “Health and Efficiency”?
From memory (honest!), a 1960’s / early 1970’s copy would conflate ‘very soft’ porn (tits, bums & flaccid dangly bits) with what would probably nowadays be classed as child porn. The ‘continental’ naturist families of ma, pa & kids of both genders frolicked on a sunny beach.
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March 19, 2015 at 11:22 pm -
I was just thinking about that one. In 1967, when I took the Queens Shilling (RAF) as a boy entrant, copies of Health and Efficiency were well worn , pages stuck together, valuable items for barter for ciggies. Never seemed to do the business for me though, must have been the bromide they put in the tea lol. The only sex education given us was a most horrific film about V.D, (no STD’s in them days). The film, still in the memory, shows the LADS out on the town in some overseas (Asian) country. The worse of the film was seeing an ERK, sat on bed a few days after said night out, squeezing his member, in agony, as pus came out, I kid you not. That was enough to put me off any form of sexual activity , at least till my first leave.
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March 19, 2015 at 3:41 pm -
And I’ll bet those women were hairy as well!
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March 19, 2015 at 6:45 pm -
Sex education was definitely not on the menu for under-16s at my remote boarding school, but, since the only males of the species within a ten-mile radius were the gardener, the visiting chaplain and the seniors’ maths teacher – all well-past retirement age – it seemed somehow irrelevant.
What we did have, however, was ‘The Encyclopedia of Golden Health’, a volume (I think originally translated from German) expounding the fashionable ideas of the 1930s, complete with abundant black-and-white pictures of bronzed Aryan types participating in mass gymnastic displays, outdoor eurythmic dance and exuberant downhill skiing, all completely au naturel. It did mention sex, but only in a brisk and hygienic paragraph sandwiched somewhere between Sanatorium and Shingles and marginally less interesting than either.
There’s a lot to be said for teaching children that nudity is not necessarily sexual – it would certainly help avoid the sort of problems that arise when British holidaymakers, taking their children to splash about in the jacuzzi in Germanic or Scandanavian hotel spas, are visibly – and vocally – horrified to find other guests there obeying the customary no clothing rules.
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March 20, 2015 at 9:24 am -
* There’s a lot to be said for teaching children that nudity is not necessarily sexual *
Bang on. There was time when topless bathing for british women in Spain at least became almost de-rigeur. Strolling round the buxom beaches never revealed the entire male contingent in some priapic raping frenzy. Funny how normal people are, when normal people are left alone by all the nutcases at the top of the Establishment.
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March 19, 2015 at 12:05 pm -
There’s a lot to be said for the old country way of learning about sexual reproduction. Even the primary school children knew when the tups went in with the ewes, and why.
Which – digressing slightly – might make a good storyline for the new editors of ‘The Archers’, who, I gather, are slowly turning the BBC’s favourite bucolic village into something like a dodgier district of Chicago with 4×4’s and ferrets. It would jazz things up no end if Brian Aldridge was caught indulging an illicit relationship with somebody else’s sheep, and Lower Loxley was discovered to be the secret base of a child grooming gang set up by Jimmy Savile, Eddie Grundy and Caroline Stirling. They could also run a storyline about the declaration of Jihad against The Bull for serving non-halal Shires bitter, leading to the planting of a small thermo-nuclear device discovered in the nick of time and defused by Bert Fry and Joe Grundy using a billhook, a pitchfork, and instructions downloaded onto Joe’s Ipad.
(Completely ridiculous of course – the chances of Joe Grundy ever owning an Ipad are very remote indeed!)
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March 19, 2015 at 3:43 pm -
How many children over the years, I wonder, has old Joe enticed into his shed with the telling words – ‘Would ee like to play with moi ferret?’
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March 19, 2015 at 4:09 pm -
Oh, thousands. But they’re all scared to come forwards because they feel they won’t be believed…..
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March 19, 2015 at 4:57 pm -
I didn’t realise he was so powerful!
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March 19, 2015 at 5:37 pm -
Well, every time he was investigated, Special Branch and MI5 closed down the investigation and demanded all the evidence be handed over. Though what they wanted a ferret for is anybody’s guess…
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March 19, 2015 at 5:42 pm -
Need some Flanagan & Allan here….
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March 19, 2015 at 8:26 pm -
I worry how much you guys know about The Archers – I believe you can get counselling for it, so give it a try.
Just off to The Bull now, for a pint of Borsetshire’s best…….-
March 19, 2015 at 9:52 pm -
Actually, I gave up listening to it when they started adding token Asians, token Northerners, token gays and so on. Must be about ten years or so. However, I gather from the letters page of The Telegraph that all is not well in Borsetshire, since the appointment of a token East-Ender. Hence the plotline suggestions….
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March 20, 2015 at 12:19 am
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March 19, 2015 at 9:56 pm -
Come to think of it, there may have been one aspect of learning the ‘country way’ that may have had it’s downsides. One wonders how many young, inexperienced lotharios felt they had to strap on a raddle harness come rutting time; and how many of her mates wanted to check the chalk-mark the next day to see where he left off.
Maybe ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ missed a trick.
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March 20, 2015 at 12:52 pm -
It has been suggested in the staffroom on more than one occasion that such an arrangement at school dances would make policing the occasions far easier.
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March 19, 2015 at 12:39 pm -
Being a Catholic lad and ending up in a single sex grammar school my knowledge of the fairer sex was dashed limited, but then in other ways i gained for i had a now rather quaint country childhood, which seems to be extremely difficult for the modern child whose interchangeable parents seem to want them to be grown ups before they reach secondary school.
For the life of me i can’t understand the rush to sexualise children, none more disturbing than those crass American (probably here now) beauty pageants with little girls not long out of nappies made up and dressed to all intents and purposes like mature young women out on the pull…it’s bloody disgraceful and the mothers of those girls need a good slap round the back of the head with a wet kipper, little kids should be little kids, plenty of time for them to discover what THEY want out of womanhood at their own pace.
Let the poor little buggers have a childhood again, just leave the sex education for when its appropriate, by all means warn them about strangers, but there’s no need for them to be walking encyclopaedias of all forms of sexuality before their time.
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March 19, 2015 at 8:22 pm -
The most sensible comment here so far. It didn’t do my friend and I any harm at all, at the age of fourteen, not to know how babies came out. We learned from asking and I am so pleased that nobody forced us to learn before we were ready. Children will learn the truth on their own, no matter what adults tell us or fail to tell us. Today we live in a sick society.
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March 19, 2015 at 1:56 pm -
“there were a few kids at school whose parents were rumoured not to be married or the odd one or two who had different surnames to their siblings; but that was all regarded as their business “
Not entirely true. I suppose it depends on where you went to school. Sniggering innuendo and social exclusion was my experience.
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March 19, 2015 at 2:04 pm -
I had a friend whose mother was divorced… * shock-horror * … The story went that hubby was an ex-british soldier who brought her back from post-war Germany and then started smacking her about, so she divorced him and kept the kids. She had three. My mate, who was the youngest therefore was one of the very few in my class who qualified for free school meals back then. We may have been patronising but we would have thumped anyone who tried to get in his face. But I know that it did happen to him anyway at times.
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March 19, 2015 at 2:14 pm -
My parents got away with it on account of my mother’s first husband being her second husband’s nephew (although there’s only a year between them), hence she already had the same surname.
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March 19, 2015 at 2:15 pm -
… and it could be a false memory but I think mum was a bit wary of me going to his house because of the divorce situation but dad told her not to be so ridiculous. Females were often much more disapproving about social abnormality than males were back then. I wonder how much has changed…
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March 19, 2015 at 2:21 pm -
Shows how easy it is to be ‘educated’ by hard porn images, and annoyed too. Yesterday afternoon I was looking at images of erysimum or perennial wallflowers and clicked on a link thinking it would be a garden centre, only to be presented with explicit copulations of of a multi ethnic kind. A provocative montage of extremely impressive weapons thrust into shaven orifices. Just a click away from a child on my unprotected computer, but a child would not not type in Erysimum and be presented with a very strange garden centre. There are no kids in my house. It also illustrates how easy it could be to be discovered to have an illegal image slipped onto your computer. Could be accused of looking at child pornography, if any of these girls under age.
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March 19, 2015 at 3:35 pm -
Having an older sister rendered all school-based sex-education redundant! So much so that I don’t actually remember anything except a biology lesson about fallopian tubes & how some clever-clogs did his best to make the teacher blush. (Sorry, Miss!)
(I’m off to reminisce about afternoons spent with the Grattan catalogue’s lingerie-section now, haunted by those big-boned women who would be hiding overleaf in an enormous girdle, waiting to chastise the poor innocent page-flicking sinner.)
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March 19, 2015 at 3:42 pm -
Ah, the Grattan catalogue! That covert comfort to so many adolescent boys and – I was surprised to find out subsequently – even some girls, as well.
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March 19, 2015 at 5:53 pm -
It occurs to me that the problem of sex education could be solved by teaching engineering to youngsters. You see, in engineering, we have male and female threads screwed together, piston rods reciprocating in glands with plenty of lubrication, sometimes involving grease nipples, and machines being erected on beds. Any youngster completing a course of such instruction and not then being fully aware of the ins and outs (as it were) is probably only suitable for a career in BBC Comedy.
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March 19, 2015 at 8:57 pm -
As an inquisitive 7-year-old, I was taken to a wedding where my sister was a bridesmaid. My parents had told that the happy couple were getting married ” so they could have some children” – this facet baffled me, wondering just what part of the wedding service would cause that, so I watched the whole service intently, scrutinising every act of that big bloke up-front, to see what he did to enable them to give birth. Didn’t spot it. But then, just when I’d figured it was getting near the end, he took them off into a back-room for a few minutes, so I concluded that’s where it must have happened, but I missed it. (I didn’t understand about signing the register either – I was only 7).
A few years later, at my single-sex grammar school in the 1960s there was absolutely no sex education at all – not even in a disguised form in Biology because that was a specialised subject only taken by those aiming for medical careers. Home was the same, never a mention.
This had two effects – first that ‘girls’ were a foreign species, not routinely encountered, so completely incomprehensible. Secondly, all sex education was garnered in the playground or elsewhere, where the chief skill became one of sorting any tiny wheat-germ of truth from the considerable chaff of ridiculous rumour and speculation.
Having a sister two years older helped to some extent, if only by providing the opportunity to observe (and occasionally covertly tape-record on my Grundig reel-to-reel) her gaggle of giggling pals as they compared notes and opinions in the apparent privacy of her bedroom – a most fruitful part of the learning process, if I’m honest.
As the time came to start experimenting with the knowledge acquired to date, inevitably many fumbling mistakes were made but, fortunately none with serious medical consequences. After a while I got to understand that girls were people too, they had personalities and attributes far beyond merely being convenient, if usually reluctant, receptacles for seminal output.
Ever since then, I’ll admit to enjoying female company in all its forms, with or without clothing being involved. I don’t think I suffered by my absence of any formal sex education, school or parental, indeed I may have developed a finer sense of the whole scene by virtue of being largely self-taught – but maybe that’s for others to judge.
But in context of the times, it was quite feasible in the 1950s and 60’s to avoid exposure to most sexual content: that is plainly not the case today, so it’s hard to imagine how the same child would have turned out in such different times. -
March 19, 2015 at 9:21 pm -
Anna Racoon, I’m a long time lurker (yes, hate it!) but I think you’ve brought around a number of fellows here (none-gendre specific – on the contrary – what I lik are the girls, here) that, almost, makes me think I’m not alone. I’m a poet (I thnk your good nature attracs poets and poetry) so here’s a poem:
The street II.
Now and then a curtain flits and a stare
At second or third floor windows opposite,
Half inquisitive of hotel happenings,
Half irritated by mock grandeur,
Brute noise this particular Victorian,
Part empty site displays. It’s the habit
Of some drawn up to face, across the nightly peace
Of no mans land, the street, dull combatants
On each side: Perhaps poverty separates you
From the pub downstairs, a certain angst
About the pull of popular haunts,
Getting more than your fair share of inarticulate friends.
A chance modern law decides
Dividing speech and the neighbourhood,
Forming false battles, situating
Between you and it a televisual screen,
Your thought on some Heaven
Where face to face we met,
Your eyes on some dark glass of a window.
You’re seen, the curtains drawn.It’s something to be remarked upon,
Odd how every night it is done
Not only by you but repeated
Down the street, each side a sentinel,
If not throwing sticks in a fire, then
Looking out to see who’s watching who,
Catching the nightly skirmishes that,
With not uncommon frequency, continue
To punctuate a phoney war. Now and then
That irregular exchange of cigarettes
Or your side strikes the light, mine offers the fag.
Usually, though, askers are causalities
Rejected by us both, mostly ignored,
Often sleeping somewhere out of sight,
Under a bridge or whatever bomb shelter
Accident has devised, they roll in slumber
Tight into a plastic bag or the damp,
Soggy cardboard once used to wrap our guns,
Tanks, communications, surveillance units.It is to be remarked upon how little
I see of you, how quickly you disappear,
How suspicious of you and I this neutral,
Unneutral status makes us: Together
Manufactured means of war – now we test them out.But I’m bored of killing, it’s become such a
Common exercise – I wish you’d sign a truce. -
March 19, 2015 at 9:42 pm -
I’m listening to Tears For Fears – bullied into it by all those who keep ‘stealing’ it – though I think ‘stealing’ is a nonsense when it comes to artistic productions – how would the “Waste Land” survive that? – but just needed to get back were I was. I believe I’m the same age as Petunia – 47 – born in ’67. But I remember the 70’s. My mum took us on a demo in Bristol – I remember looking out the window and seeing this strange snake of humans – a feminist demo – and we went to the Bristol Vic – sitting in the Gods with my lovely, sceptical mum – and they were ranting and raving about ‘men’ – I was 7 – so me mum said lets make aroplanes and throw them down – she was great – but at that moment, accidently, an actual man came in – Bacchantes or what – “A man, there’s a man!” and they picked him up, literaly, and threw him out the door. Wtf. But that was th ’70s.
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March 19, 2015 at 9:48 pm -
Dialectic.
.I.
You deal only with the hard present,
Something I envy: your record’s written
By another, no one cares at the time
To stop you, drink doesn’t kill you or,
If it does, it’s at the end, a full stop
To who you are. We die, some of us,
Still incomplete and some whose life is nothing
But the presence of failure. I write this
Like a man who sits in the comfort
Of possibilities, the cobalt
Of a gun eyeing his talk of sophistries,
Entertained passion, solitude,
A neat cushion to back me up, stinking fear.
I don’t register what’s there.Unlike you: you have the gun, I think.
As an aspect of that script I haven’t grasped
You turn this B movie into something more:
Like Marriott in ‘Farewell, My Lovely’
I’m the patsy, the limbo of certain guilts
Whose weaknesses ditch me in the end;
A clobbered beauty, corrupted by such
Expectation my body is forced beyond
What feeble reach I had into those other lives,
A sub plot that’s their harder climb..II.
Offended by the wrong words and never
Catching your welcome I retell mostly
A monologue of what could be done
Given conditions, appropriate sun,
Five mile wind, compliant interlocutors,
The usual list, verbatim anaesthesia
Of the irrepressible ego. Can’t be done.Everyone expects, seconds before
The end, some kind of recognition:
Just the usual mechanics of the gun.
Except: I knew you before, before
The days of ‘hard drinking’ and searching out
Other people’s lives: a time when you were
Merely possible, not always there,
Treated as a friend of what was future -
March 19, 2015 at 10:06 pm -
Don’t remember getting any sex education at school except a bit about biology that we didn’t equate to sex. My mum was sensible and took the view that if you were old enough to ask you were old enough to get a truthful answer and I was quite content with that. Mostly we learned from each other in bits and pieces. I didn’t know there was such a thing as homosexuality until I was about 20 and then couldn’t imagine why, such ignorance, but then no one would admit to it in those days. Children develop at different stages and some will be ready for a lot of information while others will be confused and frightened. My 5 year old granddaughter posed a real question, looking at a picture of her older brother as a baby with his parents, she wanted to know where she was. On being told she wasn’t born she wanted to know if she was in mummy’s tummy, told not yet she demanded to know well where was she? Any answers? We were stumped.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:10 pm -
Gardens.
‘In unsern Jugengarten führt strasse mehr.’
H. HesseWhat amused in the gardens we treasured
But never had was the pretence that somehow
We could abandon with our clothes our fear,
On certain rare, indeed impossible nights,
Those saturnalias, vague, as imprecise
As antediluvian grass, caress
The warm, illusory dream of our being
Ourselves alone. Among asphalt,
Embedded stone, between the slabs of urban business
Our toy soldiers fought, finally lost,
Slain on the battlefield of the interstice.We still live in those cracks the best of council
Maintenance cannot fill, disillusioned
As to security, the uniqueness
Of its fauna, even that ossified
And precious ego we watered and wept over,
Kept secret, was proud of, itself
But one common blade of grass: picked, plucked, gathered
In our cities, pressed to that green and bitter dew
Of being human somewhere in the subsoil
We pretend to maintain a true home:
Place of temporary, shabby rooms,
Of ‘secret gardens of ‘childish fantasy’.-
March 19, 2015 at 10:32 pm -
“Gardens.
‘In unsern Jugengarten führt strasse mehr.’
H. Hesse”No actually it is : “In unsern Jugendgarten führt keine Straße mehr.”
Which means something like “no roads lead to our Garden of Youth” (that’s a Blocked Dwarf ‘Quick N Dirty’ translation with no guarantee).
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March 19, 2015 at 10:37 pm -
Thanks It’s not my German that is wrong (?) but my quote?
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March 19, 2015 at 10:38 pm -
Herman Hesse
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March 19, 2015 at 11:12 pm -
But you like the poem?
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March 20, 2015 at 1:01 am -
Singular not plural roads…like I said, quick and dirty.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:22 pm -
Carol42, just be straight, she won’t understand, but make it simple as you can. Children ar open and honest and if you pretend to them thy know and tha confuses them. If you can’t answer, or don’t want to (which is your choice) just say it. Dimples (I have). For instance, if a four year old asked me I would either give the facts (simplified) or say your to young, I’ll tell you later. Up to you. Dimples
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March 19, 2015 at 10:37 pm -
It took us by surprise the usual awkward question is how did I get I to your tummy, we are very straight but really didn’t have an answer to that one. While we were trying to think of one she started playing and forgot about it, but knowing her it will likely come up again, she is quite a character while her older brother shows no interest at all. Thanks though, having a word is ahold idea.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:39 pm -
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March 19, 2015 at 10:42 pm -
I’m quite broody (I have a son but I knew nothing of him until h was ten – my loss) so I think of these things. I have cousin too. Male idiot!.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:33 pm -
Anyway, you’d be surprised how truly innocent kids are – that is why thy ar vulnrable -how there wid eyes will ‘understand’ anything. So, if you are honest and correct and good at heart, what you say to them – to her – will be right. Don’t second guess yourslf – be confident.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:38 pm -
Meant good idea, these iPads can run away with you,
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March 19, 2015 at 10:43 pm -
Yep!!!
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March 19, 2015 at 10:55 pm -
Carol42, my mum wrote a wonderful poem about us – I’ve got it somewhere – but what I remember is her phrase “My wide, wild childrens eyes” which I thought beutiful – in ’71, when I was 4. What is sweeter than a mother and a child? It is not for nothing that throughout history it is the most iconic imagery? Because both the child and mother are innosence itself. Yes, it is not always true, but that must be what we believe. To think otherwise would be madness.
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March 19, 2015 at 11:12 pm -
Yes, they are at such a lovely age now, a bit spoiled as so many are, they have far too much but I guess that’s how it is now. I say nothing! Best way but very hard to buy them a birthday present as they have everything I think of. Not that they behave spoiled I mean they have so many toys I run out of ideas. They are very polite and usually well behaved but have no conception of waiting for anything.
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March 19, 2015 at 11:01 pm -
Carol42 (I hope I’m not plaguing you – tell me if I am) the poetry of being 5:
Child At The Window.
Raining again among the ash pots
And hardened flies of a garden.And the expected face at the window
Seemingly wet, staring at the one broken tree
Toppled on the late roots of a burning.Eyes amongst clogged weeds
Tossed through the sly greys of morn
The reception he demanded:Blank and called at dawn
To witness the first vision
Of a broken, scattered soul
Ever to stay hidden
In destined torment
Of childish pains. -
March 19, 2015 at 11:24 pm -
Sorry, Anna, too much Deane – I’m a bit drunk but I like your sit and have been brooding over it – how to intrude – and then I do like the typical drunken bore. The only thing I can always give you is my poetry. If I expressed my emotions for why I like you and your site I’d just be stupid. I like being drunk (o it feels good!) and I like smoking and I like th little freedom your site seems to offer. None of the afformntioned activities are condoned by you and I wouldn’t imply as much. Nothing is ‘condoned’ it just is. It just is.
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March 20, 2015 at 2:29 am -
You must be the life and soul at a party.
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