21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) Read online

  The scheme was administered by EMI and supported by all record shops, from the smallest specialist independent, to the big chains like WH Smith, HMV, and Boots (hands up if you remember Boots selling records). It spread the sales around. The token may have been purchased in Smiths in Sheffield, but was spent in Fives in Rayleigh. Or vice versa. For many people, their first ever record purchase was facilitated by a £3 record token. Or £5. Or £10. Depending what decade you grew up in.

  The tokens themselves were small oblong pieces of card, in different colours for each denomination. The bottom portion was licked like a stamp by the sales assistant and stuck into a greetings card – you often had a choice of cards, all shite – when you bought them. When they were redeemed at the other end, the tokens were ripped across a perforation and popped into the till.

  The system worked perfectly well for decades, until WH Smith introduced its own tokens. Other retailers followed suit and, over time, only the independents sold the EMI ones. The writing was on the wall, and they had vanished by the end of the 20th century.

  Apart from the £5 token lying at the bottom of your wardrobe, of course.

  If you added up all these lost, misplaced, ignored, and unused tokens, I reckon you’d have enough money to fill the current finance deficit. Just a guess, but try to prove me wrong.

  Dodo Rating:

  AT SCHOOL

  Where we learnt, got into trouble, and grazed our knees …

  Blackboards

  Have you been into a school recently?

  Where have all the blackboards gone?

  Seriously, it is all whiteboards and computer projector screens and marker pens nowadays. No blackboards. No chalk. All very modern.

  I can remember two types of blackboard from my school days. One, the most common, was the fixed blackboard at the end of the classroom, next to the teacher’s desk. This was the focal point of all lessons. It was where the spelling list went up, where the sums were displayed, where whole passages were written for us to copy out. There was usually some sort of ledge or shelf that held the chalk and duster. It was like a massive black window.

  And then there was the rolling blackboard, the slightly more portable version. Usually on wheels, it was more portrait than landscape, and had a reel of coated material stretched across it so that it could be rolled down as it was used, a bit like a revolving hand towel in a public toilet. It meant the teacher could move on to a fresh, blank area when he or she had used up the space in front of them, but also allowed for a big reveal. The name of a special project, or the answer to a puzzle that the kids had been working on, could be written up and then rolled round to the other side, ready to be pulled down on cue.

  The rolling blackboard still had to be cleaned, but it did give you a bit of time with the duster between sessions. It also allowed the pupils to draw a penis or write ‘Mrs Jones is smelly’ while the teacher was out, roll the blackboard down, and then convulse in spasms of anticipation as they waited for it to come round again. Along with the inevitable detention.

  Of course, blackboards were rarely actually black. They very quickly became grey, coated as they were with layers of chalk dust. All the blackboard duster did was spread that dust around, really, although it was still a sought-after job for the kids in the class, teachers often handing out the task to the ‘person who is sitting most still and quiet’.

  But the best job of all was when you were asked to clean the blackboard with a wet cloth. This opportunity only came round once a week or so, but was the chance to get the blackboard back to its original glory. All traces of chalk were gone and, for a few brief moments, it looked pristine, unblemished. It was a thing of beauty. And then the teacher would start writing on it again.

  This, in itself, was quite an art form. Have you ever tried writing with a new piece of chalk on a blackboard? It is bloody difficult, and especially hard to have anything remotely resembling neat handwriting while doing so. I guess this is now a dying art, writing on a whiteboard with a felt-tip is much easier.

  As the blackboard vanishes off into the past with a puff of chalk dust, so does the origin of the phrase ‘Like fingernails down a blackboard’. We all know what that means, and some of us will have goosebumps at the very thought, but do our children? And will our children’s children?

  Another classic image lost in the march of progress.

  Dodo Rating:

  Blackboard Rubbers

  With the death of the blackboard comes that of the blackboard rubber.

  Yes, I know that whiteboards also have rubbers, but they don’t leave a comet trail of chalk dust as they fly towards the head of an unsuspecting child who is busy nattering to his best mate about the fact that he can see Jessica Hunter’s knickers.

  This is almost as much fun as the sound it makes as it connects with said boy’s head and showers his school blazer with chalk.

  Not that teachers are allowed to do that sort of thing any more, more’s the pity.

  Dodo Rating:

  Antiseptic in the Playground

  OK, this is what used to happen.

  You’d be playing British Bulldog in the playground, get splatted by the fat kid in the class above you, and end up with a torn trouser leg and a grazed knee full of grit and dirt.

  Holding in the tears, you would hobble over to the dinner lady on duty, present her with your mortal wound, and she would take you to her medical box which contained only three items:

  some cotton wool

  a box of plasters

  a bottle of mysterious liquid

  She would then proceed to douse the cotton wool with the mysterious liquid, press it against your knee, tell you to stop being a big baby (as you experienced pain greater than childbirth), and then plonk a plaster over the top and send you on your way.

  Nowadays, when a child falls over in the playground, parents get a letter a little something like this:

  Dear Mr and Mrs Stack,

  Your son/daughter received an injury at school today. The graze was treated with distilled water. No medication was given to your child.

  If you have any questions regarding the incident, please do not hesitate to call us.

  Yours sincerely,

  The Headmistress

  ps Please do not sue us.

  Dodo Rating:

  Calculator Watches

  It is hard to believe now, in a world in which school playgrounds are awash with iPods, mobile phones, Nintendo 3DS, and all manner of other devices, but the most impressive thing a kid could bring into school in the 1970s was a calculator watch.

  That is partly because it was one of the few things you were allowed to bring in. OK, so none of those other things were invented then, but these were the early days of portable (albeit very basic) electronic games, and pretty much every school in the land forbade pupils to use them there.

  A calculator watch, on the other hand (pun noted, but not intended), was perfectly acceptable. It was, after all, an educational item, although woe betide any child foolish enough to wear one during a maths exam.

  Casio was the manufacturer that really went to town on calculator watches, producing a wide variety of versions, each more swanky and with more scientific functions than the last.

  Not that many people used their watches for such elaborate equations. They were all too busy with the hilarious result of the sum 6,922,251 x 8.

  Dodo Rating:

  Satchels

  Whatever happed to satchels? We all used to have them. Slung over the shoulder with just enough room for your schoolbooks, a Spam sandwich, and a Club biscuit, plus a few chewed stubby pencils.

  I suppose they were replaced by sports bags with swooshes or three stripes, and designer handbags from knockoff stalls down the market.

  A shame, really; I still think they are rather cool. Indiana Jones had one, you know.

  Dodo Rating:

  Ice Cream Bricks

  Please tell me I am not the only person who remembers these. I have been a
sking around, and cannot find anyone who recollects them. I am not talking about the blocks of ice cream you can buy in most supermarkets – they are still (thank the Lord!) readily available, and only a quick slice with a sharp knife away from forming the perfect dessert – no, I mean the individual rectangular cuboid of vanilla ice cream that slotted into cones with square holes.

  I’ve confused you now, haven’t I? Allow me to elaborate.

  At my primary school summer fête there used to be an ice cream stall run by the dinner ladies. They had individual blocks of ice cream, about the size of two Weetabix sellotaped together, but with square corners, wrapped in paper. They also had stacks of wafer cones that had rectangular tops rather than the traditional round ones. When you bought your ice cream cone – they were 10p in my day, but this was a long time ago – they unwrapped a bit of the block, shoved it in the hole, finished unwrapping, and handed it over.

  It was the ideal way to serve hundreds of kids without needing a scoop, a tub of hot water, or getting your hands dirty.

  Come to think of it, I seem to recall that we would get served these treats once or twice a year at school dinners. I am guessing this was probably the first Monday after the fête!

  I haven’t seen any of these rectangular beauties for a good 30 years. I wonder if they still exist?

  Dodo Rating:

  Corporal Punishment

  This was on its way out when I was a lad back in the ’70s, but it was only eradicated from all British schools as recently as 2003 (where the last private schools in Northern Ireland finally stopped the practice). It was banned in state schools in 1987. The year I left. Coincidence? I think not.

  In olden times, the weapon of choice for headmasters and teachers was the cane, a whippy piece of bamboo or similar wood, that would administer a good whack and a mighty sting to whichever part of the body it was applied to with force. To this day, the classic image of a posh schoolboy hiding a book down his trousers to deaden the pain of six of the best is well known to all.

  But it wasn’t just the cane, the slipper was also a common punishment implement, presumably because the flexible sole gave it a bit of heft. I can recall my PE teacher using an old trainer to spank the kids who forgot their kit. The fact that he used to administer this punishment in the showers probably harmed his reputation more than it acted as a deterrent.

  Some teachers, such as my history teacher Mr Milne, were more creative with their punishments. He would stand behind the offending boy and pick him up by the little straggly bits of hair by the ears; if you didn’t manage to stand up in time with him, then it was agony.

  But hilarious to the rest of the class.

  And that was the thing. Apart from some extreme cases of proper cruelty, I don’t think most kids minded corporal punishment. It added some excitement to school life. Getting caught doing something wrong got you a wrap over the knuckles or a blackboard rubber hurled at you across the room, and that made it more risky, gave it an edge.

  I know I sound like a real old fogey, but discipline in schools now is a genuine problem; there must be some connection between this and the fact that a teacher can no longer give someone a whack. If my son came home from school and told me he’d had a clip round the ear for being cheeky, I’d say it served him right. Many other parents would sue, the teacher would be suspended, and it would be front-page news.

  So, while I am not mourning the passing of a proper bare-arsed caning, I do think it is a shame, for both teachers and pupils, that the war of Us v. Them isn’t made that little bit more dangerous by the allowance of a tiny amount of violence from the grown-ups.

  Dodo Rating:

  Bulldog

  That’s what we used to call it, anyway. It is also known as British Bulldog, Bullrush, or numerous variations thereof. It is a school playground game that has been banned (or, at least, frowned on) by many head teachers because of risk of injury*.

  Here are the rules, such as they were:

  A bunch of kids, the more the merrier, stand at one end of the playground.

  One child is elected to be the Bulldog. He or she stands in the middle of the playground.

  On the cry of ‘Go’, the mass of kids have to run from one side of the playground to the other, avoiding the Bulldog.

  The Bulldog has to catch one or more of the players as they rush by.

  A simple tag will not suffice; they actually have to wrestle their opponent to the ground or otherwise incapacitate them.

  Once captured, a player becomes a Bulldog and stays in the centre.

  When a ‘run’ has been completed – i.e. all the players have reached the other side – the whole thing starts again with players running back the other way.

  Repeat until there is only one player left, the rest being Bulldogs.

  Then, commence the Glory Run.

  The Glory Run was the stuff of legends. Only one player remained standing at the end of the playground. Facing them were 10, 20, 30, or more Bulldogs, all scenting blood. Everyone knew that the last man standing had no hope; it simply wasn’t possible to get past that many Bulldogs.

  But that didn’t stop you trying. For a few fleeting seconds you thought you could do it, become the first person to survive the Glory Run. You had already won the game, now was the time for immortality.

  You took a deep breath.

  Glanced around quickly, desperately looking for a gap.

  And legged it as fast as you could.

  Chances are you came to, a few minutes later, at the bottom of a pile of Bulldogs. Defeated, but proud.

  Of course, this was a full-contact sport and lots of people got hurt. Some of you reading this will have bad memories of Bulldog, and perhaps rightly so. It was dangerous. It was foolhardy. It was irresponsible and a bit silly.

  But that was sort of the point.

  Dodo Rating:

  Schools’ Programmes Countdown Clock

  Before the days of video recorders and DVDs, the BBC and ITV used to show a range of educational programmes for schools in the late morning and early afternoon. These would cover all manner of topics from maths to English, science to computing, foreign languages to history.

  If you were a school with only one television set, your teacher would lead you from your classroom to the hall, where you would sit down on the floor, or on benches, waiting for your programme to start.

  Some of these programmes are well remembered to this day, such as Look and Read with Wordy, the disembodied head who would educate us through songs and short animations, or How We Used To Live, a dramatic account of the olden days. Others have faded away to be forgotten forever.

  But the thing that no one will forget is the countdown clock. The schools programmes usually had a 5-to 10-minute gap between shows, presumably to allow schools to get shot of one class and bring another in, and that space was filled with an analogue clock counting down to the start of the next programme.

  With two or three minutes to go, the benches would be a flurry of shuffling, pinching, punching, and kicking, as kids jostled for the best place – ideally out of sight of the teacher and not behind the kid with the massive afro.

  With one minute to go, the teacher would inevitably yell at everyone to sit still.

  And with ten seconds to go, the whole class would shout out the countdown.

  10 … 9 … 8 … 7 … 6 … 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1!

  In the 1970s, that was about as exciting as school got, I can assure you.

  As the 1980s dragged on, the afternoons became a time for more traditional programming, and schools programmes started to be shifted to the evening or early morning, with schools being encouraged to record them on video to show during the day. In fact, a wide range of such shows is still aired in the early hours on the BBC, and are well worth viewing if you want to brush up on your Spanish or square roots!

  Dodo Rating:

  ON TELEVISION AND RADIO

  That we wasted hours in front of …

  Answers on a Pos
tcard

  No children’s show of the ’70s, ’80s, or even ’90s, would have been complete without a competition to which the only way to enter would be to write an answer on a postcard and send it in to the studio.

  Nowadays, of course, the BBC doesn’t run competitions anymore after a series of ‘scandals’ revealed that some of them were rigged, and commercial channels have expensive phone and text quiz questions that are so mind-numbingly easy that it is an insult to the intelligence to actually pick up a phone and answer them. Here is an actual question that I saw on a TV show recently:

  What nationality is the actor Tom Hanks?

  a) Irish

  b) Russian

  c) American

  d) French

  There then follows about five paragraphs of small print along the lines of:

  Calls will cost £1.50 from a landline but calls from a mobile will cost so much more that you will have to go without Heat magazine and fake tan for a month when your bill comes through and you realise how much you have pissed away on a stupid quiz that you stand little to no chance of winning. Lines close at 3pm but we’ll still leave the lines open so we can fleece you for more money and, let’s face it, if you do call after, then you deserve to be robbed. If anyone phones in and answers A, B, or D, then we will immediately send social services round to your house and remove your children. Judges’ decision is final. Now, quick, put the phone down and start watching again; we have an item about a girl who crocheted a life-size model of her father in the hope that it would bring her parents back together.

  See? It’s all a bit shit, really, isn’t it?

  I much preferred the transparent bin stuffed full of postcards from which Alvin Stardust or Zammo from Grange Hill would select the winner of a signed Five Star 12” single. Simpler times, but not without their own controversy. Some people would send in ridiculous oversized postcards in the hope that they would stand out, others went for bright colours or other blatantly cheating tactics, but OfCom never called for an inquiry when one of these were pulled out, did they? Oh no.