The big freeze

After a comparatively mild Christmas and New Year period, the thermometer took a sudden nose-dive.  We had snow on Monday, although only about an inch or so, but a lot more fell yesterday and I spent most of the morning looking out of the window at the white-out developing.  Predictably it caused the usual travel chaos, and I learned at lunch-time that my Italian class this week had been cancelled.  I don't really have any clear recollections of the famous last great freeze of 1963 except that I was at school: we at the time only lived just round the corner so I didn't have any great difficulty getting there and I don't remember that we had classes cancelled or impromptu days off - although I do have a dim recollection of makeshift timetables for a while.  I'm sure we were all hardier and made of sterner stuff in those days!  This morning I swept the path clear despite a forecast of more snow later in the day, which in the event didn't materialize, although I see there is likely to be some tomorrow.  Well, I know someone who's going to be pleased.... Woof!   

Tempting fate

I've been putting off writing this entry for one particular reason.  Every time I write anything about wearing a corset *again*  I immediately go off the idea and it all comes to nothing.  After two months, that may still be the case, but I very much hope not. 

I've been corseted now for several weeks - and when I say "corseted" I mean laced up in a corset tight all the time apart from showering and 'essential maintenance'.  Although I've had brief spells of lacing up before, and did it on and off on a pretty regular basis a few years back, I've never managed to do it quite so successfully.  How do I define success?  I've gone from a fully-closed 30" corset, down to a 28", and at the beginning of this week to a 26" one - which I bought some years ago when I could only just about fit into it.  So I'm feeling pleased, quite proud of my efforts, and best of all really comfortable and happy at being so tightly corseted.  I was pretty amazed at the photo I took last night of the jeans I'd been wearing all day - 34" waist Levis (my natural waist size) looking positively baggy!

I've always tended to look back rather wistfully to the time when I'd just left school but was still only a 28" waist and used to buy boys jeans because I could still get into them and they were in fact a better, slimmer fit on me than the men's styles.  It's probably optimistic to expect to be able to recapture that, but I'm able to pull my laces just a little bit tighter every few days so I'm certainly working on it!        

Of cans... and the worms that lie therein

In a blog entry written round about this time last year, I concluded with the observation: "In an age increasingly dominated by revelations of sleaze amongst the rich and famous, it's a refreshing change to have come across a genuinely good person".  Normally, I stand by what I write on here as being an accurate reflection of my thoughts and feelings, based on my own perceptions and experience.  However, I'm neither omniscient, infallible nor clairvoyant and so I wasn't to know that other peoples' childhood memories of the late Jimmy Savile are considerably less happy and innocent than mine were.

The full story is yet to emerge.  While I have considerable reservations about the principle of launching accusations against people who are dead and therefore unable to respond to them - and the cynic in me can't help wondering if there's a "me too" element involved with an eye on a prospective claim for compensation - can this many people really be making it all up?  There's certainly a disturbing element of complicity and cover-up allegedly involved and a better-than-average chance that other famous names may get caught up in the fall-out.

Thinking back to when I was a teenager at the time, I'd have been an innocent victim, too.  Would the word of an unknown 13- or 14- year old boy be believed against that of a "respected" broadcaster?  Of course it wouldn't.  Would I have been naive enough to believe that being groped - or worse - by a famous DJ was 'par for the course'?  I might well have done, having overcome the initial shock.  The "untouchables" rely on their victims' continuing silence, as well as on the co-operation of their accomplices.  No-one, but no-one is in a position to blow the whistle.

What's going to eventually happen is at the moment pure conjecture.  The police are still trying to build up a complete picture of the extent of what went on, and you can't of course prosecute a dead person - although you can strip someone posthumously of their knighthood (incidentally I think it's high time we ditched that particular anachronism which has its origins in medieval chivalry, but that's another story).  But if a prima facie case is eventually made out, what good's it going to do?  It's bound to give the victims some sort of satisfaction, certainly.  Perhaps more significantly, it might at last make some headway towards encouraging other victims of abuse to come forward and take a firmer stand.  As events in Rochdale have recently shown, the problem is still being swept under the carpet just as it apparently was thirty or more years ago.

Trial by Jury Facebook

His dream in ruins, the hapless Jeremy Forrest was hauled into a Bordeaux court this morning, handcuffed - and complete with a coat over his head!  What was the point of that, incidentally: his photo was in every paper in the land last week, everyone knows what he looks like?  Anyway, if all goes according to plan, the extradition will be finalized on Thursday and he'll be winging his way back shortly afterwards.

Talking of things going to plan (or rather not, as the case may be) the journos have been busy digging away to find out what really went on last week.  The answer, we're told, is a staying in a seedy back-street hotel, living out of packed bags and subsisting off kebab takeaways.  Oh, and the thing that "betrayed" him - the dodgy fake CV.  Personally I'd have thought that was enough to tarnish the gilding a smidgeon on any fairytale romance, but maybe that's just me.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Megan Stammers, who was flown home on Saturday, has been staying at an "undisclosed location" being interviewed by the authorities (I do hope they're feeding her well after all those kebabs).  Presumably she'll soon have to start back at school: I mean, she's had a week-and-a-half of 'unauthorized absence from school' already or hasn't anyone else cottoned on to that yet?

There's certainly been no shortage of comment on all this.  After all, being a pupil at school is something almost everyone has had at least some personal experience of.  One that struck a particular resonance with me is this one on pupils' changing perceptions of their teachers.  Coincidentally I was just fifteen, when at my all-boys grammar school, we got our very first female teacher.  Married (well, a Mrs at least), 40-ish and by swinging sixties standards somewhat frumpish, she was in our eyes definitely not flirt material.  Her arrival to take our German O level classes nevertheless provided us 15-year old boys with something of a lively conversation topic, which soon descended into plumbing depths of hitherto uncharted vulgarity.  Certainly no-one had a crush on her, and if she had one on any of us she kept it well hidden.  Had she been on the other hand young, single and attractive (or even two out of the three) I can think of several of my ex-classmates who'd have been more than willing to test the water to see if they were in with a chance!  Taking that line of thought one stage further, I'm willing to bet that - then as now - if a 15-year old boy had run off with a 30-year old married female teacher, the level of outright condemnation and frankly rather judgemental criticism would be much more muted.

Perhaps rather tantalizingly if cryptically, Jeremy's lawyer has indicated that we can "look forward to the full story emerging".  Fair size chunks of it already have, courtesy of some determined ferreting.  Some of it scrupulous, some less so.  In my schooldays this would have seen the light of day in the form of a scandalous 'exposé' in the now-defunct News of the World.  Now, thanks to the magic of the internet, considerable material can be amassed and pieced together bit by bit: a tweet here, a photo there, a wish list, a diary entry, a link.... there's a reason it's known as the "Web", you know.  Everyone can play at being detective: forget privacy settings, a picture of sorts can still be assembled.  It may be incomplete or inaccurate: stuff uploaded in all innocence or with the best of intentions can appear to assume a sinister significance far removed from the one its owner or author may have intended.  The finger of guilt will point.

And maybe that's the moral in this story for all of us.  If you're ever accused or suspected or wrongdoing, the thing that will hang, draw and quarter you - even if you're innocent - will be your Facebook page.

Hang on a minute, though..... what now?

So, the runaways have been found, I see.  Twitter is chirping positively nineteen to the dozen with tweets of joy expressing how relieved all her family and friends are at the prospect of having young Megan Stammers back home again.  Don't get me wrong, I'm glad she's apparently safe and well and hasn't suffered the same fate as countless other teenage runaways: in that respect at least she's been lucky.

The reports however are that the pair were spotted strolling hand-in-hand like any young lovers down a main shopping street in the middle of Bordeaux in broad daylight and the police were tipped off.  Megan was said to be "in floods of tears" when the police separated them.  Which suggests to me that she may perhaps not in fact have actually wanted to come back and be reunited joyfully with her family - or at least not just yet.  Either way, the scenario certainly doesn't bear the hallmark of a kidnap victim, and whatever the legal nicities of it, an "abduction" is not the word I'd use to use to describe it.

Jeremy Forrest the maths teacher is under arrest and if I were he, I'd get myself a good lawyer sharpish: he's going to need one.  His job and marriage I imagine are down the tube, and despite the UK judiciary's propensity for pretty perverse sentencing, he's got to be looking at jail time as being on the cards.

And what's Megan going to make of that, I wonder?  She's had an awful lot of her private life dissected in public this week (if anything on Twitter or Facebook can legitimately be described as "private", that is).  Will she blame her parents and/or the police for the abrupt end to her little escapade and the loss of the guy she loved (or thought she did)?  How will she look back on it in years to come?  What will she make of all the things that have been written about her?  Will she one day end up on the Jeremy Kyle show *shudders*?

We shall probably never know.  Out of the harsh glare of media publicity, some semblance of a normal schoolgirl's life should start to return.  But I doubt somehow that either of them are ever going to be able to just carry on as if none of it had ever happened.

... and crushes on 'Miss'

"Childhood is a time of innocence" used to be the old saying.  Much or most of what I remember doing as a child was innocent enough, and although I don't particularly recollect having a schoolboy crush on any of my Junior school 'Miss-es' (or anyone else either) it certainly wouldn't have been looked upon as unusual - almost a rite of passage, you might say.  Going to an all-boys secondary school with (until I was in my O-level year) all-male teachers effectively then ruled out crushes anyway.  In fact we never knew anything much of what our teachers did in their private lives - even those whose own sons were at the school: it was regarded as bad etiquette to tittle-tattle or indulge in slanderous gossip.  And in the days when "social networking" was decades into the future, when phones were things on the end of a wire fixed to the wall, and when "grooming" meant nothing more sinister than making yourself look presentable with the aid of a brush and comb, it was all pretty harmless anyway.  The doodles on the cover of your exercise book and the names on the inside of your satchel or pencil-case weren't plastered all over Facebook and Twitter for all the world to see.

So I can't help feeling a little sorry for Megan Stammers and Jeremy Forrest, the story of whose 'crush' and subsequent 'elopement' to France has been plastered all over the papers this week.  I make no judgement on the rights and wrongs of this, save to say that basically tradition has it that the guy always cops the blame, because whichever way you slice it, he's old enough and supposedly mature enough to know better.  There is some probing and much apparent obfuscation over how much the school, the police and the parents knew beforehand about what had been going on, and what they were doing about it - the net result of which is probably going to make it more awkward for the star-struck lovers to return, if that in fact is what they eventually intended to do.

So far, almost a week after they were spotted on a cross-channel ferry to Calais, the couple seem to have disappeared without trace, although they could now be practically anywhere in Europe.  I've seen it reported that the usage of CCTV and ANPR on the continent isn't anywhere near as extensive as it is the 'nosey' UK, and the fact is (a) they're not armed bank robbers being pursued by a manhunt and (b) no-one really knows where to start looking.  In a way the romantic in me hopes it all works out for them, but the harsh reality of life is that it's far more probable to all end in tears.  Compared to all the missing teenage runaways who disappear every day of the week without anyone much even bothering to start looking for them, 15-year old schoolgirl Megan has at least had a bit of a head start at being found.

The onward march of progress

After a hiatus of almost three years, during which my old school lay empty and deserted, the rebuilding work is evidently progressing in earnest.  Today I came across a further set of photos, apparently taken over the weekend.  Although the science block has now been demolished, and everything else is covered in scaffolding, I spotted this photo of my old form room!

Although now stripped of furniture and fittings, Room 12 of Leamington College for Boys is just as unmistakeable as it was nearly fifty years ago.  Our desks were in rows across the room parallel to the beams of sunlight shining through the bay window, facing the blackboard on the wall at the right of this photo. The photographer was standing in the doorway, and I sat on the far side in the front row, probably just this side of where that ceiling beam is.  I was 15, in Form 5A and taking my O levels.

Looking at it now - I'm glad once again of the opportunity to do this bit of reminiscing.  It's something I never expected to see again, and I'm thrilled to have found it - and to have discovered it was all just as I'd remembered it.  It's been quite sad for me seeing the old school steadily crumble and disappear: I have very happy memories of those seven years, and I guess that's why probably why I remember the detail as well as I do - though I never imagined at the time that I'd be sitting here, five decades later, writing all about it!