The old paperclip cure

Posted on December 1, 2014 by Nigel Hurll

When we first moved to the New Forest market town of Ringwood, our first house there had a ground-floor extension with a patio door. One day (it was Sheila’s birthday and we were going out for a meal at a local restaurant that evening), I came home from work to find that the older lad (a mere four-year old whippersnapper at that time – the younger would not appear on the scene for four years) had somehow wedged some small plastic balls inside the track behind the sliding door.

This created two problems: (1) they were stopping the door from closing, and (2) the door would have to be removed to get them out. Well, I am by no stretch of the imagination the King of DIY so you can understand how proud I was of myself when I managed to get the door off; you can perhaps also understand how proud I wasn’t when I dropped it on my big toe. It hurt. A lot. Didn’t you wonder what that noise was? You must remember it: September 14th 1982? A very loud screaming? Yes, that was me!

Well, the pain did subside a little and we went to the restaurant. It was not long, however, before the toe had swollen up to the extent that I could not keep my shoe on, so I took it off and spent most of the evening with it hidden under the table (the shoe, that is). This was considerably less embarrassing than having to limp out of the crowded restaurant carrying it.

Anyway, over the course of the next few days, I sought medical advice, discovering the bone at the top of the toe had been broken. It was only a minor fracture (so I didn’t wallop the little lad too hard) and there was little to do but wait for it to mend itself.

After another few days (those of you of a squeamish disposition should probably get ready to look away), the pressure under the toe-nail became unbearable, so I rushed (bah!) to the Health Centre where a nurse performed a minor miracle. She part-straightened a paperclip and, holding the curly end with a clothes peg, heated it until it was red hot. She then inserted (look away now, I did at the time) the red hot end slowly through the toe-nail. If you’ve ever been with a blacksmith while he was shoeing a horse, you’ll be very familiar with the smell. But oh, the blessed relief when all the blood that had built up underneath was released! Marvellous! It was a shame that the nurse got a bollocking from the doctor when he got back from lunch. Presumably, this was not a recognised clinical procedure in the Manual; what the hell, it worked.

So, the moral of this story is: don’t throw paperclips away, you never know when you’ll drop a patio door on your foot.

Attack of the hundred-foot caterpillars

Posted on December 1, 2014 by Nigel Hurll

I mean they had a hundred feet, not that they were a hundred feet long, of course. Or is that centipedes? Anyway, are you sitting comfortably, mes enfants?

Thaumetopoea processionea is a complete bastard, whether it has a hundred feet or not. The Wikipedia article does not actually refer to the Oak Processionary Caterpillar in those terms but you may take it from me that it undoubtedly merits that base epithet – and probably a lot baser. It inhabits oak trees; guess which type of trees were growing next to our mobile home in France? Ooh, good guess. As you will see if you bothered to follow the Wikipedia link, they have up to 63,000 fine hairs (the caterpillars, not the trees) which are easily shed (usually in the direction of holidaymakers from Hampshire, a fact unhelpfully not reported by Wikipedia) and which contain a substance poisonous to humans.

Most of us only came out in several tiny spots on arms, legs and neck (strictly speaking, necks, I suppose), but my younger son is more susceptible to allergies, being a hay-fever sufferer, and I ended up having to take him to the local doctor who prescribed some cream, anti-histamine tablets and – to the boy’s horror – some special soap to be used in the shower twice a day! It was fun watching firemen shinning up ladders, though, with a kind of mini-flame-thrower, burning the nests. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear the inhabitants screaming, probably because they had already been killed by the chemical spray administered prior to our arrival at the site.

In other holiday news, it only rained twice: once from the 14th June (the day of our arrival) to the 18th (the 19th was dry and sunny) and once from the 20th June to the 27th. I went in the pool once and we barbecued once. Guess which day? Ooh, good guess. My older son had organised a tournament for everyone to take part in, having drawn up elaborate rules for each individual element of it; there was table-tennis, pool, petanque, two separate mini-golf games on the site (the brilliantly conceived Birdie Seeker and the Best Score From Three Rounds), a team guessing game called “Who’s In The Bag” and the Apremont Open (a mini-golf game at Apremont next to a café at the inland lake there, traditionally played every time we camp in the Vendée); we even had a cup for the eventual winner.

Well, the weather put paid to the petanque and the hairy bastards mentioned above put paid to the mini-golf on the site, which was closed off because it is surrounded by certain kinds of tree; guess which? Ooh, good guess. Apathy and late rising on the part of some of the competitors (I’m not saying which) and, to a lesser degree, the rain, as the tables were under cover, although your balls got wet when they shot out of the covered area through the open side – stop sniggering – put paid to the table-tennis, which involved playing everybody twice. Next year, we may continue with the tournament, but include some more appropriate events, like The Least Time Taken To Suck Out Snake Venom, perhaps, or The Most Number Of Festering Boils On Two Arms.

Au revoir!

Keeling Schedules

Posted on December 1, 2014 by Nigel Hurll

Does anyone know what Keeling Schedules are? If you are familiar with the law, you probably will. Put simply, they comprise the text of a piece of legislation with bits in bold showing any wording inserted by a subsequent piece of legislation and drawing a line through what’s been taken out. With me so far? I thought I might find out a bit more about Keeling Schedules so I could pass on some interesting information to members of the association for whom I work, via my weekly newsletter, especially since one of these extraordinarily useful devices had recently been issued which was of significant interest to them, what with the European elections looming and all.

I reckoned they must have been named in honour of the chap who came up with the idea and so, very early one Friday morning (about 10, I think), I commenced using the power of the internet to assist my investigations. I got quite excited when I came across the name of Dr. David Keeling linked to Schedules, only to be disappointed to discover that he is merely the head of the Department of Geography and Geology at West Kentucky University, and the Schedules are simply his term timetable; why they are not called that as opposed to “semester schedules” (pron. skedules) is beyond me. I glossed over the flight schedule for the Jet Charter and Air Charter Service to and from Cocos Keeling Island (no, neither do I) as being irrelevant, as was the list of TV Schedules for Liise Keeling, who is, apparently, a stunt woman who has performed in many films and TV series from 2001 to date, including the memorable “Monk”; unfortunately, imdb.com fails to tell us what role she played in the episode “Mr Monk Meets Dale the Whale” (2002). Her listings reveal that she was mostly a “stunt double”, “stunt performer” or “stunt driver” but I did wonder what particular qualities were necessary to bring to the set of the 2008 film The Rocker as a “stunt waitress”. Perhaps, as most American waitresses are, she was adept at juggling with eggs over easy, pastrami on rye, bagels, cookies, and interminable steaming jugs of black coffee, all probably whilst wearing roller skates.

I was becoming a little dispirited by now and the only vaguely interesting information I could come up with was the schedule of rowing events in the 2008 Olympics, involving the South African, Shaun Keeling, all you would ever need to know about scheduling a conference call between the Cocos Keeling Islands and Luxembourg (bearing in mind the time difference) and the service schedule of the funeral for Jimmy Keeling in Allegre, Kentucky, in July 2008. Finally, I had some success. Wikipedia – of all things – tells us that Keeling was the MP for Twickenham between 1935 and 1954, the year of his death. I am unsure of the circumstances surrounding the development of his Schedule (pron. “shedule”) but I found one or two references, despite being riddled with mental fatigue by then. The well-known work Legislative Drafting by V. C. R. A. C. Crabbe explains (at p. 147) that the device is named after Mr E H Keeling (later Sir Edward Keeling) who, with Mr R P Croom‑Johnson (later Mr Justice Croom-Johnson) came up with the proposal.

A bloke called Bennion who subsequently rubbished Keeling’s system in Statute Law (at pp. 278-9) came up with something called a Jamaica Schedule, but I reckon he was just jealous and I dismissed that out of hand as well as a summary of Montesquieu’s Principles, Thring’s Rules and Ilbert’s Questions and Advice. In my book, Keeling is a hero and anyone who can come up with something that can be used to demonstrate the practical effect of the Loan Relationships and Derivative Contracts (Disregard and Bringing Into Account of Profits and Losses) Regulations 2004 and the effect of the Deregulation (Weights & Measures) Order on the Weights and Measures Act 1985 has to be worthy of commemoration.

That’s what I think anyway. Don’t you?