Written by Frederica
Somewhere on or about my eleventh birthday I was given a book by my maternal aunt. It was ‘Chemistry Experiments for Boys and Girls’. The preface contained exhortations on the encouragement of chemistry as a hobby, for those children who were interested. The purpose being, the hope that such encouragement might lead to further and more in-depth studies being taken up in years to come.
Even then (mid 1950’s) it expressed the opinion that this ‘harmless and educational hobby’ would lure the young from the attractions of….. ‘cinema, wireless and more doubtful forms of entertainment’! Television was not mentioned – and the internet was not even remotely on the horizon of the masses.
The table of contents and lists of illustrations and diagrams was followed by an extract from the ‘Sale of chemicals to Juniors’ rules and regulations: “A recent Annual Report of His Majesty’s Inspectors of Explosives announces a large increase in the number of accidents caused by the illegal manufacture of fireworks”. It went on to say that “Pharmacists are further requested to ensure that certain substances should not be sold to children under sixteen years of age”. Pharmacists were further asked to ensure that chemicals were required for the proper purpose and would not be used by the purchaser for making explosives!
There was a section on general hints and precautions for the young aspiring chemist. Obvious ones like: start with simple experiments; wear old clothes etc., etc. and … the best till last: ”Do not annoy your Mother by spilling chemicals, leaving apparatus lying about or wanting to work in the kitchen when she is making dinner. It is important to keep your Mother on your side!”
Armed with a list of requirements culled from a perusal of the experiments that caught my imagination, my birthday pocket money in my pocket, I ventured off to the local pharmacy to order my equipment. Bunsen burner; retort stand; test tubes; tripod; glass beakers and Petrie dishes and a selection of the chemicals I felt would get me started. I encountered no opposition to my request although, looking back, I do wonder at my being permitted to purchase Sulphuric Acid and Mercury! I suspect I had to return later to collect the majority of my requirements but soon I was in full possession and with boundless enthusiasm to begin. I was fortunate to be given access to one shelf of my Mother’s sideboard for my storage. In those days our house had an open gas tap by the fire (presumably for a gas poker) so my Bunsen burner was soon in operation. I confess to sometimes going ‘off piste’ and combining chemicals ‘just to see the result’. But … nothing much happened and the house was still standing long after I finally left home.
Recounting this tale recently, I was met with exclamations of horror at my being allowed to do such a thing! “Think of the possible damage you might have done, both to yourself and to others”! I am pretty much certain that pharmacists would not be selling these chemicals today and most definitely not to someone as young as I was then. Sadly, I lost my taste for experimentation and did not take up chemistry in my latter years of education. I came across my old Bunsen burner not so very many years ago as I was clearing out my parents’ house after their deaths. It certainly brought back memories!
Which makes me ponder about how far we have come down the road to the ‘Nanny State’. How much influence over our lives is now exerted under the ‘safety-first’ and ‘just-in-case’ principle. I agree that in the more hazardous working environments, ‘Health and Safety at Work’ has done much to ensure that unnecessary accidents and deaths have been very much reduced. However, it does seem to me that the Authoritarian State has fed off this ‘Elf ‘n Safetee’ principle in order to reduce us to the status of meek ‘order-takers’ rather than have us using autonomous, common sense awareness of our own safety and well-being!
Is this why we are in the position in which we now find ourselves, where the ‘Big State’ has not only assumed responsibility for our every move but has devised legislation in order to ensure our absolute compliance? Do we really need to be told in such detail that certain activities might be hazardous to our health and wellbeing?
Are we now so uneducated and ignorant that we cannot recognise a situation where we might be exposed to harm? Crossing the road is a hazard. Driving a car is a hazard. Leaving our homes for any purpose is a potential hazard! During the past 14 months, where we have been virtual prisoners of the State, we have been lectured and exhorted by ‘Big State’ in the form of ‘government’ to be careful; vigilant and mindful of our ‘safety’. The ‘fear factor’ has been indoctrinated into us with such ferocity and intensity that it is no wonder that so many are fearful of even drawing a breath. The ‘Black Death’ could have hardly produced a more fearful and compliant population than the daily insistence that ‘non-compliance’ could kill us all.
What a far cry from the days of my childhood when we roamed the fields and woods and river banks with scarcely a thought uppermost in our minds other than enjoying ourselves and our lives! Sure, we were aware of the hazards of being around water courses and climbing trees etc., but we were not paranoid, just ‘mindful’.
A far more unpleasant hazard facing us today is the importation of people from other lands whose culture and beliefs do not chime with our own and whose attitude to the Country that has given them housing; clothing; food and a life here, appears to be one of aggression and hatred.
Coupled with the seeming inimical stance of our own ‘government’ against the people it was elected to serve, there seems to be every reason why we should be more vigilant of our own ‘Health and Safety’ than ever before. Why has ‘government’ driven its countrymen into such a state of unrest and unease? I know which era I would prefer to be in at this present time … and it is not this one!
I had a lovely war ( my parents didn’t they were bombed out)
Our family was evacuated and found an abandoned farm cottage, 5 fields from the main road, school Ashby de la Zouch.
I was 5 at the start of the war and we didn’t return to city life until 1947.
All I can remember for two lads, we had complete freedom to go where we wanted whenever we wanted, most of the time nobody even asked where we were going or even when we would be back .we helped out and interested ourselves in all aspects of the main farm close by, we helped out at harvest time, threshing time hay making time and spud bashing time.we kept chickens and ducks and cleansed the fields of spilled grain after the harvest to augment their feed. I helped the thatcher who came to do the corn ricks and helped I’m drink his cold tea which he kept in a big lemonade bottle – one of those with a wired stopper. We helped (watched) the blacksmith shoe the horses in the smithy attached to the farm.
We fraternised with the Italian prisoners who came ( a Lorry load with one guard) to help out mainly with the harvest they also helped me out with fishing in the nearby river.
We blew birds eggs, we knew the names of wild flowers, we gathered rose hips and took them to school to make syrup, we gathered mushrooms., we marvelled at the night’s work of the mole catcher which he had arranged so decorously along the barbed wire fence.
We discussed in the playground our hauls of shrapnel that we had picked up, some of the lads had fathers stationed in nearby army depots, they had strips of cordite which they lit and watched them whizz off.
Oh we were free alright, but I don’t remember us causing any trouble, we did truly help out where we could
But by jimminy it’s was cold in the 1947 winter, we had no gas, electricity or water laid on and the bog was a hut 50 yards from the house
Bathing in a tin bath before the range in the kitchen
Wonderful reminiscences Roger! It would be great if all the collected memories could be brought together in one book. For certain once we have all snuffed it these stories will die too. Then the record of lives lived in a much more untrammelled World will be lost forever!
Thank you Frederica, but perhaps all my tales should not be included in such a tome.
Items such as this one I couldn’t tell to mother.
Yes, it’s about my early dally with explosives.
I think it was on gaining either the fourth or fifth form at my secondary school, that we were divided into three classes;
Maths, Modern and Classics, general science was divided into Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Maths taking Physics, Modern taking chemistry and Classics taking Biology.
You will see there is a certain exclusivity in this allocation, in that for instance biology, all owl edge of previous studies in general science were forgotten and biology in this instance ruled OK.
I took classics and biology, but I still had a pal in the Modern section who was a whizz at chemistry, so enthusiastic in fact that he described methods and ingredients for making explosives.
Such was the enthusiasm he communicated to me, that I decided to have a go myself. I think I had visions of setting off an explosion in the adjacent sports field – no thoughts as to the consequences of blowing up the cricket pitch.
Anyway, first ingredient I think was acid – it may have been hydrochloric, anyway, I stayed behind after a last period of biology in the Science lab (we still all used the same labs) and I entered the store/workroom attached. Lines of shelves full of chemicals and acids and glass jars and all the paraphernalia needed in experiments.
I located a tall thin walled narrow glass open jar, I located a bottle with a thick stopper marked hydrochloric acid, I opened the jar, I grasped the thin tall glass receptacle in my left hand and lifted the jar of acid in my right hand, holding all, luckily, at some distance from my body.
I tilted the acid bottle until some of the liquid ran into the receptacle in my left hand.
To my horror it just seemed to run straight through and onto my new black leather shoes.
So ended the great explosion and any future ambition in that direction.
I never could adequately explain to my parents why my shoes had sustained such catastrophic damage that one of them appeared to be melting.
In the early 1980s a chemist in the Medicinal Chemistry dept at Wellcome, where I worked, was collaborating with research in our unit. He had nurtured his fascination with chemistry and future career from a chemistry set present – experiments conducted in the garden shed to where he was banished, presumably by mum. That would, my best guess is, have been in the 1960s. How many youngsters today would have that chance to explore chemical reactions – even school practicals got heavily ‘elf n safety’ sanitised by the time my children were in school.
Mind you there is a limit to parental encouragement! We have a laboratory and an accounts with chemicals suppliers. In his teens our son handed me a list of chemicals, did we have any of these? Even this biologist recognised that they were used to make explosives of one sort and another. By way of consolation, I brought home leftover dry ice pellets and let him add them, plus a little water, to empty plastic lemonade bottles, screw lid tightly and retire – until some horses were put into the field next to our garden. Later on he served as an armourer in REME!
Helena thank you for contributing your own reminiscences. I love to hear of other people’s experiences and stories. The dry ice and lemonade bottles really made me laugh! Your son had a great advantage….an understanding Mum! Obviously he never lost his taste for the ‘big bang’!
Thanks Frederica – great. I don’t remember my brother daring our mother’s wrath to do chemistry experiments, let alone me.
But once he had enticed me across that DANGEROUS Main Road, there were woods and fields to do all sorts of dangerous things in. We even had a conker tree in the front garden to risk life and limb climbing.
Then there was my Bike, that he taught me to ride. That was my huge step towards FREEDOM.
Looking back it is a bit difficult to pinpoint exactly when the health and safety doctrine started to impinge on my freedom to use my own judgement, common sense, but I certainly agree with you that the authoritarian nanny state has been used as the excuse to reduce us to a meek compliant population.
Oh Pauline! Brothers eh?
Back in the 50s, I too was a chemistry freak (almost exclusively interested in making explosives). Back then,if you were stuck, the chemistry teacher at school would help you out as would your local chemist’s shop. The children’s library had books on the topic.
I well remember making a “depth charge” which failed to sink and exploded on the surface, I still have a scar on my ear from a shrapnel fragment.
This grumpy old man must be of the same vintage as the author.
My father taught me how to make gunpowder. Medical grade sulphur and powdered charcoal from Woods The Ghemists of Church Street (now long gone) Saltpetre from the Pork butchers.(Now even the butcher cannot get pure saltpetre, thanks to the IRA, ditto potassium chlorate)
Rocket propelled model aeroplanes were not a success, predating the fiery catastrophes at Cape Canaveral, but in the process I discovered for myself the principle of the spiggot mortar.(and yes, I did end up in the Royal Artillery)
I finally managed to make a powder good enough to be used in an old muzzle loading shotgun (percussion caps made from milk-bottle tops and match heads) to shoot starlings in the garden. I needed the wing feathers and neck hackles for tying trout flies
One way and another we had little time in which to get bored Now I am a grumpy old codger who watches with distaste as Nanny State inexorably prohibits all forms of enjoyment in the interests of Elfin Safety.
DickatBarn. I like to think it was a great vintage! I can see you were a typical boy! Your exploits have made me chuckle – thanks! I censure you only for the Starlings! They were, of course, more plentiful in our day – almost a pest.! But I loved to see them formation flying at the time of their nightly roosting routine. We had the best time! All so different for the youngsters nowadays.
Looking at the picture, Irn Bru never did that cloud stuff in my day.
“the daily insistence that ‘non-compliance’ could kill us all.”
Cause no harm.
Be honest.
Be peaceful.
Be responsible.
The essence of Natural Law
It works for me.
1940’s. Happy days.between war things.
The principle of As Low As Reasonably Achievable (Alara) formed the basis of Britains Health and Safety Act 1974. It was a very sensible, workable and successful basis of managing risk.
Unfortunately, over the last 40 odd years the straitjacket of the precautionary principle (Incorporated into the Maastricht Treaty) approach to managing risk has displaced Alara. Maybe now that we are out of the EU we can gradually re-introduce Alara in many aspects of everyday risk management.
ALARP is the HSE std, and prevails in all the industries I have worked in – As Low As Reasonably Practical.
That is to say, it is achieveable to make everyone wear a suit of armour when walking up and down the high street, but not practical (except to keep us safe from those millions of meterorites we neede to worry about – oh, err, back to the point). One company I know of thinks that a paper clip is a trip hazard – yes!
The regs also say that just because company xxx (and there are a lot of them these days) has made it a ‘sacking offence to mount / descend stairs and not hold the handrail’ does not mean your company has to do the same.
This Elfin Sayftee subject can fill a book nearly as big as the British Airways book of excuses.
All current British Health and Safety and Food Safety regs came under the EUs area of competency (can’t say from which year). Although, breaches of the the law were prosecuted under the Health and Safety Act 1974. Don’t know if the EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement will prevent us from moving away from the zero risk utopianism that is part and parcel of the precautionary principle.
We should indeed go back to what worked before but at least two major issues stand in the way:
– too many people are scared thanks to the nanny state
– government control will not be given up easily.
And the being scared is the saddest thing of all Jack!
There is an even more major issue in that only a very few of the oldest in the workforce know anything of the days before the time of the EU’s “eliminate all risk however unreasonable or impractical”. The majority have spent most of their working lives under the EU’s “control everything” culture, plus a large influx of people into the workforce for whom this is their native culture. It will be hard to reinvigorate our workforce, civil service, law profession (including judges) etc back to the days of personal initiative and free thinking. The Socialist controllers have almost achieved their goal.
Good point Stanley.
Stanley, the fact that I cannot find a single thing to say to, in any way. mitigate your assertion makes me feel absolutely desperate! Everything you said is true and I find that detestable! What a dire World those Socialist wretches have created! They take all the joy out of living!