Burnley Grammar School

Since the topic of bare skin running came up last year, I’ve been interested to try it but I haven’t run outside for ages. Normally before my gym sessions I use the cross trainer but after discussion with my PT, I moved to a treadmill. Quite a few leg massages later, I’m capable now of keeping a steady 14-15km/hour over about thirty minutes and so he says it’s time to give it a go so in the next week, I’m going running with my PT a couple of times in addition to my normal gym sessions. He’s not fully committed to the idea of getting his shirt off outside yet but I suspect he’ll come round. Anyway, I’m looking forward to it.

Now, to digress. In my line of work, it’s quite common to set an elephant trap for someone to fall into. This board was becoming utterly toxic, it has always had elements of that, where people were making sensible posts and shouted down and I’ve been on the receiving end of that on several occasions in the past, along with the regular allegation that I was posting under multiple names.

I know I wasn’t using multiple names however over the last three months of last year it reached new levels of nastiness aimed at me and others and some of the posts were quite frankly defamatory along with, again, the tedious allegations that I was posting under multiple names which I wasn’t all coming from someone who I firmly believe was posting under multiple names (why else would he be so obsessed with the idea, it had never occurred to me to do that) and that same person appeared to be orchestrating the nastiness using multiple names including posts deliberately misquoting people and even when that was pointed out, making the misquotes worse, using multiple names and following it up with more names doing similar things to a point where what was being quoted was out of all relationship to the reality of what had been said and the original poster was being defamed.

I showed some of this to my wife who knows more about this sort of thing than I do and she was particularly annoyed at some of the things that were being said about me which she knew to be downright lies. As I said at the time, I’m not a retired school master living in France and I never have been, I’m a barrister living in Hertfordshire. Equally, I know no other poster on this board personally but only last week someone was referred to as my ‘friend’ by someone trying to suggest something unpleasant and it was made by someone who obviously observes this board hour by hour with a nasty response for anyone he doesn’t agree with. We have seen a great deal of this in the last week.

So the elephant trap. Well, I meant what I said back in December and my wife is still keeping an eye on what is being posted here but the elephant is in the trap for all to see as a result of the issue of IP addresses and their at least part publication. Everyone can now only post in their own name or risk being caught out and shown up for what they are, a multi-name poster posting the same nastiness to and about other posters.

The noise has calmed down and the nastiness which continues the previous theme is only now, as all can clearly see, coming from one place only and it’s clear for all to see. Were it not, I suspect my last post and a few made since Christmas would have attracted the same barrage of abuse as they were previously. Other posters have made posts in the course of the last week which has dug the elephant trap deeper and while I sought no assistance, it has cleared the picture for all to see. I attracted a nasty post, very quickly from the person who had always been the chief suspect of the nasty orchestration of posts others have done the same in the course of the last week almost without exception.

Add to that the utter obsession with abuse including repeatedly posting links to stories about it that are of interest to no one and to which no one has responded and you have a nasty, toxic, unhealthy poster who ogles at school children and I note the point that he wishes them to be adults because that in some way assuages his guilt for his wrong doing.

I would just ask then, since people can now post only in their own name and we’ve had several posts in the course of the last week that would have definitely attracted a barrage of abusive responses in times past and those posters have (and possibly without realising it) added to the elephant trap this week by expressing their frustration, why is it so quiet and where have all those other names gone that have been a party to the systematic abuse of posters in the past. They all seem to have vanished into thin air and somehow, I doubt will be back.

Stand forward Alan Giles, you’re guilty as charged many times over and there’s no army of shouters and blusterers running to your defence and now you are finally caught in a nice, deep elephant trap for all to see.
Before you start retaliating and posting more foul abuse and accusations just remember, you are being very comprehensively tracked and if you continue, you will hear a lot more about it, your history and more will be displayed for all to see and there is lots of it.

To others, please keep posting, leave the elephant in the trap for all to see and get back to a good discussion about fitness, health, gym and happy times past.

It looked to me that the teacher took a lot of effort early in the morning before he started work to offer some very well meaning advice to Alan on these pages, he did not have to do that to a complete stranger.

Sometimes advice comes from friends in ways we don't really want to hear and I think this was a good case in point actually.

I'm really very shocked at the hostile reply that came back to the PE teacher who made that effort. Nathan you wrote a fine post.

You are judging a modern teacher by the standards of your own one Alan. Why are you letting a bad teacher from 40 or more years ago to continue to play on your mind and upset you so greatly? Do you really wish to feel like this for the rest of your life and give a bad teacher from many years ago such immense power to control you like this?

There are genuine people here who have sought to be useful to you and offer help but I do hope you are not one of those people who simply enjoys their victim status rather than wishing to move onto more positive areas in life.

Many people have come through traumatic times in life in so many ways and it has ended up being the making of them as better more resilient people. It's not easy but can be done. I lost both my young grandparents and in a car crash when I was just 22 and thought my life was over. It wasn't, I used the that to power me on to greater things and work through the pain. A drunk driver ended their lives in a fleeting moment and never even served time for it. That's how easy life can vanish out of nowhere, so make the most of it. Make that move today. You can do it, you are stronger than you will ever realise, most of us are. Human beings are amazing.

Although a decent attempt I don't think the IP system will address the issues that concerned people. IP addresses alter frequently based on many issues, I see Alan you've already had about four so far. It means little actually.

But if this standard keeps up and nothing changes then like others have already said, I will choose to leave the website for good. I see many missing regular names already and who can blame them.

Unlike the PE teacher who was beginning his day I am now finishing my media night shift at 5am and off on my way home after a long night.

I give everyone my best wishes for the year ahead and hope for better debate, and that includes you Alan and the PE teacher and others.

If I get a similar reply to Nathan Hind I will no longer post.

Comment by Paul 18th January 2023 at 22.23

Paul, I am very happy for you that the remarks I am getting give you so much pleasure. So you think by proxy I am a "weak, whinging, wet whimp" , do you - or at least you imagine you think that is what your late PE master would have said. Well, we are all entitled to our own opinion,

I would, though, just ask you to consider this. All my posts are made under my own name, I always provide my email address as proof of my bona fides, so that anyone who wishes to contact me can do so. When I make an accusation I back it up with a printed reference. For instance, just this week in our local newspaper, we were confronted with this:

https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/24053715.hornchurch-paedophile-choirmaster-still-teaching-kids/

Another teacher - a music one this time. I apologise for any teacher reader who feels I am besmirching his profession, but remember, I am not a journalist I didn't write the story. I was not one of his pupils, but don't you think the fact that 5-8 year olds were involved is disgusting and that he is able to go on teaching after conviction, just as Quinlan in the other case did. makes it even more so?. As I have previously explained I feel these things deeply having had two teachers with similar proclivities, and one of them inflicted severe damage on an old schoolfriend of mine - the other inflicted damage on all of us at one time or another. To see it still going on today despite all the old crap of "safeguarding" and CRB checks is genuinely shocking and intolerable to me.,

I know it is winter and everyone needs a hobby, but what I do take exception to, is the fact that two old men, one of whom cheerfully regaled us with his stories of caning boys in his former profession, just weeks ago, had the cheek to refer to me as "a child voyeur" of peddling "perverted filth" and "obsessed with children". The faux outrage is almost laughable, especially as he hides behind his screen name in France. Another, in some unspecified location, can't wait to rush on here to tell us how many lads he saw without shirts (in the middle of one of the coldest January's in 40 plus years, according to the Met office), and his hyperbole reaches very vulgar conclusions, including a masturbatory allusion, and allegations of hiding behind "net curtains" (twice - obviously they have some strange significance for him). What is my "crime"? - just my observation that some older school pupils, who wait at a bus stop just a few yards from where I am working have beards. Prince Harry has a beard - by these elderly gents logic, does that mean I have some sexual interest in Prince Harry?. It was just an observation, yet you, Hind and several others have not suggested these over-the-top responses are in any way disproportionate. It is only myself that is at fault. Sorry, but when I am hit unjustifiably, I hit back.

It is open season on me, OK - as I said we are all entitled to our opinions, but mine is that some of you are being rather hypocritical The only reason I mentioned the beards was to illustrate my point that treating such lads as "children" is one of the reasons that there is so much truanting these days, I was making the point (and I run the risk of being accused of perversion yet again by the usual suspects) that today's older teenager matures a lot quicker than those of previous generations. I have employed 16-18 year olds in the past, and I have heard their complaints about the way they get treated at school. Some teachers still seem to think it is 1955. They do not want to be patronised (as indeed a current teacher had the effrontery to try on me in my 50s just a couple of days ago - go back a few messages to see it if you have a mind to)

I don't see why I have to justify my working arrangements to anybody, least of all to keyboard warriors, but this observation was based on the fact that I am receiving and despatching goods from couriers who happen to come early in the mornings at a time when school students are around. Perhaps I should keep my eyes closed while so doing so I can see nothing that reduces old men to apoplexy.

I hope the owner of the site, in the interests of fair play, sees fit to publish this message. He seems to have no compunction in printing really vulgar comments against me, but has, on occasion, "forgotten"to publish a perfectly polite rebuke to quite scabrous messages against me.

Meanwhile, Paul you can think what you like about me. I know the truth, and it is far from the hateful, twisted motives ascribed to me by a couple of old timers feigning outrage.

Now on my third IP address!

Alan, I will repeat that you are now on the receiving end of the sort of commenting you have and still do dole out to others over years here when anyone posted anything your agenda of abuse everywhere was disagreed with and if you don’t like it, then you can of course leave as you have driven out many over the years. I haven’t read anything that sounded untrue. I was on the receiving end of it myself for having committed the mortal sin of enjoying PE at school.

Perhaps you were one of the lads our PE teacher used to refer to as the W lads.

Weak, whining, whinging, wet, wimps and there were many more. Please stop inflicting your problems on others.

Further abusive response expected.

FFS! This is turning into Groundhog Day with a vengeance. Give us a rest from all of your excessively-documented posturing.

¨Mr Chips an obious psedonym, writes:

¨he is a child voyeur at the very least, looking at school children, noting their physical features and then posting on line about them. I’ve never participated in any forum with that kind of perverted filth before and it would be nice it a stop was put to it.

He seems to claim that because they were clothed it was acceptable, it isn’t, it’s disgusting. That poster was a key player in the abuse I was on the end of but now we find out what he’s really like, obsessed with children. Maybe his claim that under eighteen year olds are adults is to justify his attraction to them and behaviour around them. ¨


I invite you to repeat those highly libelous (and untrue) remarks under your real name.

Comment by: Barney on 17th January 2024 at 14:56


¨ your twitching net curtains with one hand and no doubt having a tug with the other and then posting about it here. Utterly disgusting.¨

The owner of this site might not care to admit it, but this is surely the coarsest statement ever published on this site.

Back in the day and it now seems many years ago, I was a keen rope climber in the school gym, it wasn’t easy and I burned my hands more than a few times in getting better at it but it had a great sense of achievement when you got to the top and safely back down again and of course after burning your hands a couple of times, the last thing you ever did was want to slide. I don’t recall ever thinking that our PE master was positioned to look up our shorts when standing underneath though, it seems rather a perverse thing to conclude, I'm certain the master had more to think about.

As a master who coached rugby with a couple of training sessions a week, if I had wanted to look at boys without clothes on then I had plenty of opportunity as they changed and showered but as Nathan Hind has rightly said, you see so much naked flesh in those circumstances that you really don’t take any notice any more than I took notice of my fellow rugby players as I showered and changed with them or indeed the guys I now join each week for a cold water swim and some of them swim naked but then c’est la France.

That brings me nicely to cold water, I’m getting addicted to cold water swimming. Like Barney has reported, as you get older, cold is an incredibly effective way to reduce the joint and tissue inflammation of exercise which sadly does occur more easily as you get older – you younger guys have been warned – keep making the most of exercise, it does get harder but I won't be giving in any time soon.

We also have a place here which offers cryotherapy and I’ve been a couple of times now midweek between swims after cycling. All I can say is that I came out feeling much better than I went in and had the same sense of exhilaration as I get from cold water swimming.

I’ll just touch on one more point before I finish. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, my posts too were twisted, misquoted and twisted some more in an utter barrage of abuse I received for truthfully answering questions asked by people who I believed were sincere in their requests. I would say than none of the abuse came from the questioners but anything I said was met by such a lot of noise and unpleasantness, that I gave up for a while.

Things seem to have calmed down with the exception of one poster continuing to make some very nasty posts but who has tripped up to admit that he is a child voyeur at the very least, looking at school children, noting their physical features and then posting on line about them. I’ve never participated in any forum with that kind of perverted filth before and it would be nice it a stop was put to it.

He seems to claim that because they were clothed it was acceptable, it isn’t, it’s disgusting. That poster was a key player in the abuse I was on the end of but now we find out what he’s really like, obsessed with children. Maybe his claim that under eighteen year olds are adults is to justify his attraction to them and behaviour around them. They are children, as someone pointed out, they can’t apply for a credit card and so, are children.

I’ll also add that there is a huge difference between that and noting a class of lads out bare skin running on a cold day. One is incredibly general and something you would observe in passing, the other is a detailed look and inspection of the children. One is completely innocent and acceptable and given the interest here in bare skin activity completely acceptable and relevant. The other is going down the path to criminality. Or maybe the poster is there already.

There were still bare skin lads out again this morning and if anything it’s colder than yesterday.

FWIW, switching off a router will usually but not always change an IP address but also, if you use a PC, a tablet or phone on your own wi-fi, each one will have a different one. Equally, if you post from a different venue as I am today, the address will be different of course.

Nathan Hind on 17th January 2024 at 06:37

Thank you for your highly sensible and comprehensive post. It makes great sense and is very thoughtful, I appreciated reading it. I’m interested in the cold thing too though I’d be more tempted to try cold water than bare skin outside. After old gits gym – my session with mates each morning, we all shower in cold water because it calms the joints down after stressing them with weights. It works very well. For some a cold shower would be a punishment, for us it's pain relief.

Alan on 16th January 2024 at 16:46

Once again you choose to misrepresent what I actually said quite clearly and repeated when you misrepresented what I had said before Christmas and you keep doing it. Is it ignorance or just utter stupidity or as I’ve seen suggested before, do you need professional help?

This is the last time I will respond to you, post whatever bilge you like about me, it doesn’t matter to me but makes a clear statement about your unhealthy obsession. I know I don’t have any perverse interest in boys unlike you, gawping, your twitching net curtains with one hand and no doubt having a tug with the other and then posting about it here. Utterly disgusting.

Just for the record, I'm already on my 2nd IP address of the year, without doing anything. I think it resets every time the router gets turned off and in again.

Nathan Hind 17/1/2023 0637

Mr Hind - you are quite right about my age. Excuse me, if I am equally as frank with you , as were with me. I am rather older than you, I expect, so how would you know what I and my classmates experienced (endured might be a more apt word) back in the bad old days?. How dare you presume to talk down to me in your "schoolmasterly" voice. I am not one of your pupils. You might not like to hear things said about some of your predecessors in your profession, but I assure you Roberts, the man I am talking about did exactly what I have mentioned in my previous post. He was known for it amongst my peers - and he himself made no secret of the fact that he "inspected" us in the way I have told you.

Have you never heard of voyeuristic homosexuals? Because that is what Roberts was. I am sure you believe homosexuals don't exist in your world, but you have to remember that back then, it wasn't the in-thing it has become in recent years with vicars, teachers, politicians and other would-be do-gooders coming out of the woodwork waving their rainbow flags, advertising their predilections . Who knows, under the next government it might well become compulsory. . If a teacher (or whomever it might have been) felt he was in danger of being outed, back then, he would use his authority to quash it, but such was Roberts vanity that he almost boasted about it ("if there is any trouble it is me they will believe, not you"). You might find it inconvenient to believe, but it is true. Quinlan, remember, was teaching well into the 2000s.(with two criminal convictions for indecency under his belt). How the HELL could he have been allowed to have a second ´career´ in an all boys school, in the same LEA, after his first, custodial, sentence? (rhetorical question). Could it be that assaults against boys are treated less seriously than those towards girls?. I don't know about Roberts, he might well be dead by now, for all I know or care.

I don't need any advice, thank you, about keeping fit. I keep fit by working (lots of movement and lifting heavy equipment) and not over-eating and not indulging in drugs or drink - though the tone of your incredibly patronising and condescending message might drive any reasonable man to drink.



I notice it is only me you direct your advice to - not the inflammatory posts made by others - the old man who hangs around school playing fields, for example, who accused me of "gawping" at fully dressed pupils who I see every day at a bus stop a matter of yards from where I am working. There is an example of bloody hypocrisy, but you have nothing to say about that, nor other allegations made by other vexatious posters - it is just me. Still, I can't complain, or I will have to endure another of your lectures, and be accused of victimhood again.

He who can, does; he who cannot, - teaches. My caveat to that remains that homosexuals should not be allowed anywhere near a school PE department, even if they were former Olympians. It would stop the Quinlans and Roberts of this world, who, as you suggest, I am sure still exist. Even if they were the only two, it would still be two too many.

I have always considered that teachers have a frankly vastly inflated idea of their own importance, quite divorced from reality. Thank you for confirming it so openly. As for any pupils going to you privately if they have problems - given your response to me here, I don't blame them for not wasting their breath, just to be given the sort of frankly wishy-washy pep talk you have attempted here. What practical help could you be to them, given your attitude, if that is how you talk to an adult, God knows what your manner would be to a kid.?. As you seem to appreciate the status quo so much, what good would it be if they did talk to you?, what would it achieve?. I suggest damn all.

Let me end by wishing you a good 2024 as well. It would be nice to think you might be more even-handed in your condemnation in future, but I won't hold my breath..Forgive my annoyance, but I had my guts-full of teachers years ago - and their condescension - so I don't need them now.

So, that Christmas truce didn't last long, did it. "Footballs away, lads, and back to the trenches smartish"!

Have people learnt absolutely nothing after the events before Christmas on this thread?

Come on now, let's not start repeating all that again.

Alan, it's long past time to stop this never ending agenda you persist with. We get the points but we don't need them forever rammed down our throats time and again. Know when to finally stop. I've been reasonably kind to you and but you are now trying the patience of the most saintly of us.

We know there are dodgy PE teachers out there and always were, possibly still are. You are not telling anyone here anything they don't know. The impact of your points would have been far more effective if you had used them sparingly.

As for this nonsense about looking up boys shorts while they climb ropes and all that kind of thing, it really is just complete imagination in nearly all cases.

Why would a PE teacher even wish to waste his time doing this? PE teachers see hundreds of boys in changing rooms each week, they don't have to try hard to see what anyone looks like, they've got boys willies literally in front of them day after day if the school showers, like mine does. So ask yourself why any teacher needs to play such silly games like staring up shorts, when they've got every boy in their class parading most of what he's got before their own eyes without much need to try and see in any kind of furtive manner.

Come on now, let's just get real about this once and for all. I'm absolutely fed up with having my profession never endingly rubbished like this and lessons never being learned. I've tried to be very reasonable with you but it just seems to fall on deaf ears doesn't it.

Are you prepared to accept what people tell you in all seriousness and genuinely or not. Later this morning my first class will be a gym one and I'll supervise a group of showers involving 40 boys, along with a colleague. I sure don't need to play weird games in the gym to try and view them underneath clothing when I've got that amount of naked lads surrounding me at the end of a lesson.

Most boys don't mind being like this amongst each other even in the year 2024, I hate to break it to you, and their teacher being able to see a few dozen lads like that with does not a pervert make for one moment, except in the mind of those with some very strange ideas. It is quite possible for a PE teacher to look upon a group of naked lads after PE, or before, without sexualising them and just taking them at face value for what they are, a bunch of boys without anything on doing what you'd expect in the place you'd expect them to do it.

Before Christmas you asked me about something to do with why some lessons end up with the class bare chests while others don't. There is no specific reason for this and I suggest that would have always been the same for teachers going back decades too. Often we do fitness regimes and games that suit bare chests because they involve a lot of intense activity that produces sweat to cite one example, but I am fully entitled to ask my PE class to do the gym bare chests for everyone if I so wish and actually I rather prefer it that way rather than the times when some of the class are asked to remove tops and others keep them on for skins and shirts games which is not my own personal taste for PE but comes from on top with my immediate head boss who dictates such.

I have no reason to have to defend my job and how I do it when all I am doing is my job to the best of my ability. I'm coming up to nearly 10 years doing this job now and compared to some of the older men who did this job long before I was born I think I must be quite reasonable. I've not spent my life with my eyes closed and have heard first hand from older men about the old days of PE long ago and some did leave a lot to be desired.

Just remember this, I've said it more than once on here in the last year. Anyone can come to me or others with their problems privately, or openly if they so wish. It rarely happens. I cannot force someone to say anything to me can I. So if I've got someone who is scared witless about being made to take his shirt off in PE or having to remove all his clothing to shower briefly with others but he will not tell me this but keeps it all to himself then what am I supposed to do about it?

Now I've been so reasonable it's unreal but I can never really win, there is always yet another pointed question.

In the end, even if you are very shy and self conscious about your appearance the best thing is just to get fully stuck in and try hard. It works. I know full well I am only speaking for a period very recently going back to just 2015 and years earlier may be somewhat different but I still think the general principles of what I am saying apply.

Now Alan, you seem like a man in his fifties, you say you have never personally been abused directly so why are you simply unable to let go? It's not good for you to keep on going around within the very same never ending loop like this.

It may not feel like it when you read this but I am still trying my best to be so reasonable with you.


I want to mention the bareskin/bare chests running fad that does seem to be taking a hold. I'm not sure if social media has a part to play in why this is happening but I see it as a quite interesting development and positive for those who wish to do so. It clearly has health and wellbeing benefits and doesn't have to be done in just hot weather, cold conditions can actually be quite beneficial for a number of ailments actually. It's not something we would actually do at school outside as part of an outdoors PE lesson at this time of year and would be frowned upon if anyone tried to do so as a command to a class but I'm gaining interest and have been wondering if it would be something worthy of an after school club situation for those who would like to try something a little different but nothing has been said yet. I certainly don't think it is something that should be considered a young persons pastime and can apply to all ages. Men and and boys who have good well kept bodies are most likely to wish to take part in such things one imagines but any body type should be acceptable, fat or thin.

This is the trouble with this thread over the time I have read it this past year and a half or so, it's like the male human body has somehow been stigmatised, and why should it be? It's nothing to be ashamed of and if people think you look good without your top on don't get funny about it, feel good about it, and at school at the moment there are absolutely no boys at all that I take for PE who have any reason to be ashamed of the way they look, not one.

More body positivity please in 2024, and Alan, get doing some exercise to improve your own self esteem, it works and will do wonders for you and stop worrying about a long gone past and grasp the future ahead of you and stop playing the eternal victim.

Once you do that you'll gain so much more than you realise. I've seen it in other adults younger than me, much older than me and some youngsters too.

Please don't spend the rest of your life wallowing like this. I'm trying to help you by saying this.

May I wish everyone a slightly belated new year and keep it POSITIVE!

Time for me to get ready for work after eating my bran flakes and orange juice.

Well it was nice for the brief period this board went back to school PE memories.

I'm out.

Going back to 'Pirates' - In the 1960s the gym in my Grammar School (which dated from 1896) also served as the Assembly Hall, exam hall, theatre & concert hall, etc. It was a high room with rafters & trusses holding up the roof. 'Pirates' was played there, but I think it may have stopped after one session where the last two boys 'in' were chasing each other over the beams at what seemed like a great height! (To cheers from 'us' and looks of horror from the PE teacher).

Regarding the IP addresses - I see that one poster has posted with four(?) separate IP addresses - I'm sure there's nothing wrong with this, but I haven't had a chance to speak to my friendly 'nerd'. Does this mean that anyone wanting to post under a different identity can just move to a different 'network'?

Barney 16/1/24 1324

And a happy new year to you, too, Barney. You have some chutzpah, it has to be admitted. I apparently "gawp at children", by observing facial hair on older "children", who are fully dressed on their way to the bus stop near where I work (and not through lace curtains - I have storage space backing on to the road where couriers pick up and deliver goods, and I am often out there in the mornings ). Some of us work during the day, and not necessarily near playing fields.

This said by the man who habitually hangs around school playing fields, to see how many lads are not wearing shirts, and by his own admission , had the effrontery to question a PE teacher about the boys showering arrangements!

Recognising facial characteristics is not unusual - how else would we recognise postmen, shop assistants, customers etc?.

As regards our pervy Mr R., it was well known by the lads in my class that he looked up at us climbing ropes - how come otherwise lads who broke his rule (a rather kinky rule IMO about not wearing underwear) got called down and made to go and remove underwear, often getting a a slap as they did so?,. Anyway, he admitted as much even if we hadn't figured it out. How else does Britain's answer to Joe Biden imagine he knew?.

Please Barney, make your New Years Resolution not to judge everybody else down to your own sadly low standards. If I am "gawping", what are you doing, eh?

I hope Matron had a nice hot cup of Bovril waiting for you when you got back from your morning stroll.

Walking back from my old gits gym session this morning, the temperature with wind chill was -3c. As I passed the school there were two classes of lads out running circuits of the field and I would say there were still about 20% of them running without shirts. Very brave lads IMO. Bare skin running clearly has a following. Continuing my walk home I met another man out, he must have been late twenties or early thirties and he wasn’t wearing a shirt either. Clearly there are some hardy men around.

On the age of majority, just one thought. Littler may be an accomplished player but if he were to apply for a credit card, he would be turned down because, legally he’s a child. That’s one of the acid tests of whether someone is a child or an adult and no doubt with his winnings, Littler is a boy with money but that’s what he is, a boy. He also looks like he’s eaten a bit too much lard and might do well to participate in a sport that gets him some exercise.

On the other matter raised recently, gawping at children, no doubt from behind a twitching net curtain, commenting on it and giving a physical description of them is very distasteful. I was utterly pilloried by the same poster for merely observing that a group of lads were bare skin running and I certainly didn’t note any detail on it.

I think we see here, one poster’s very unhealthy obsession with children as he also claims he was sent to climb ropes so his gym master could look up his shorts, how utterly bizarre. I can remember climbing ropes at school and I never for a moment imagined that the gym master was looking up my shorts while I did it, I would think he had far more on his mind with thirty lads in the gym than whether a lad was wearing underpants or not. There’s a very disturbed mind at work here.

I’m another one who liked climbing ropes but it was a scary and nerve racking thing to do particularly as you got to the top and your arms were feeling a bit weak. It stood me in good stead for joining the navy where things like that were in our normal gym routines.

Alan, you might say that Original Andy has given you a small taste of the sort of treatment you have handed out to others over years and years while attempting to turn this board into a discussion about abuse while abusing those who disagree with you and you still can’t resist your bad behaviour. Well done Original Andy.

¨ What I do find unhealthy here is a poster ogling school children on their way to a bus stop and noting their physical characteristics, possibly for an unsavoury purpose and then posting about it. IP tracking, in particular the more comprehensive version I can now see makes him easily identifiable if he keeps this up.¨

Back five minutes and you can help yourself, can you, you odious little man. Unlike your friend I do not hang around school playing fields to look at half naked boys. This was an observation about FULLY DRESSED school,students, male and female, who pass my premises every weekday. Any unpleasant connotations are purely in your somewhat strange mind.

Rope climbing was something I did at school. Our PE master was very strict about it and not everyone was allowed to do it. First you had to demonstrate your ability to do forty press ups and forty pull ups without a break before he would let you climb a rope. Even then, you had to progress in stages. The ropes had coloured bands on them at about two metre intervals and you would be told you could go to a particular colour and no further while he watched. Putting so much as a hand above the colour you were allowed to climb to had a consequence which was without exception the cane, it was the only thing we ever got it from him for but he maintained that climbing ropes was a dangerous activity and you were to do as you were told at all times. He was fairly strict anyway and the slipper was in regular use but it was the cane for going too high on the ropes.

What did I get out of it, it was a huge challenge, there was a huge sense of achievement, I developed skills in coordination and lots of upper body strength, I was proud of what I’d done and wanted to do more and of course being me and always pushing the boundaries, I had to climb a bit higher and so did get the cane but only once because through my gym shorts and no more it was bad. Did I resent it? No, I deserved it and stuck to my coloured band afterwards right until I was allowed to climb to the top.

I also remember those benches with hooks on them. We used to use them in circuit training both to hook one end to the wall bars and then lift the other stretching our arms as far as they would go and also fun up them to the bars, hold and jump down and also the reverse, climb the bars and slide down the bench. We also used to do jumps from the floor on to them and over them.

Other than circuit training, the other big activities in the gym were things like vaulting, high and long jump practice in bad weather and we had thin blue mats for that, routine exercises like press ups, sit ups, burpees, star jumps and so on. Then we played pirates too, my memory of that was that one lad started out as a pirate and everyone else had to avoid him but no one was allowed to touch the floor. Once you were caught, you joined the pirates and so the balance of power changed until everyone was a pirate and the game was over and sometimes it started again immediately particularly on a wet, winter day.

I loved gym work and still do along with games, athletics and running. Rugby and gym were my favourites.

To bring back the discussion of bare skin running and cold. It wasn’t running but it was certainly bare skin. We were in Finland over Christmas and New Year and Finland among other things is the land of the sauna. The place we were staying which only had ten guest rooms so quite small but there were two saunas, one male and one female because in Finland the sauna is never mixed except perhaps in a family home – and many have one.

The men’s sauna was close to a lake and a hole had been cut in the ice so we could cool down. The sauna was, I think much hotter than any I’ve been in before, the dress code is naked and there was a sign telling you to get everything off outside. I felt like the skin on my arse was being seared it was so hot and then after a while, it’s out and jump into water with ice floating on it. The sensation was amazing and the adrenaline rush strong. You don’t stay in the water long and then it’s back in the sauna where for a few minutes you feel like you are in a freezing envelope which then melts and you feel the heat again. You basically repeat as often as you want to and I found the two sensations of baking and freezing quite addictive and at the end of it all, I felt great and my skin was so clean and soft. I’m certainly up for doing that again and for trying some bare skin outdoor exercise at home.

Finally, there wasn’t really any pre-Christmas discussion about the age of children. One or two misguided people were trying to insist that those under the age of majority which is legally eighteen were adults. Others, thankfully, recognised and respected the law of the land. Under eighteens are not adults and indeed; I regard trying to force a child who is under eighteen to take on the role and/or responsibilities of an adult as abuse. All will adopt the responsibilities of adult life in due course but the law is there for a reason.

Littler, the darts player is a child regardless of his level of talent no matter who likes it nor not. What I do find unhealthy here is a poster ogling school children on their way to a bus stop and noting their physical characteristics, possibly for an unsavoury purpose and then posting about it. IP tracking, in particular the more comprehensive version I can now see makes him easily identifiable if he keeps this up.

Returning to our pre-Xmas discussion about ´children´ of 16-18. At the lower end of that scale have you seen darts player Luke Littler. He is 16. Would you regard him as a ´child´?:-

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Luke+Littler+photo&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fe1.365dm.com%2F24%2F01%2F1600x900%2Fskysports-luke-littler-darts_6409467.jpg

I often see 16-18 yer old lads in school uniforms with beards and moustaches (they have to pass my premises to get to the bus stop nearby)., and mature looking girls. There needs to be a rethink on how they are treated - the shadow Education Minister seems to think they need to be kept in place with the use of A.I. (Big Sister is watching you), but it begs the question as there now seems to be so much wholesale ´truancy´, especially amongst older pupils, why school is so unwelcoming to so many young men and women.

We had these benches in both primary and senior school. They were manufactured by a company called ‘Hunts’ of Liverpool.
In primary school they would be hooked up to a tall rectangular tower so you could run up them and then jump off.
I was in Primary school from 1970 - 1977 and Senior school 1977 to 1984.
The Health and Safety at Work Act did not come into being until 1974 and as children are not regarded as employees but rather long term
Visitors to a school there was no thought about our health & safety. The concept of risk assessments did not appear until the very late 1990’s so it is unlikely that anyone thought about the likelihood of us being harmed doing P.E.

They did Drew, I'd forgotten that. But we never used them that way.

We had those benches too. Apart from the uses already mentioned, hey had hooks on the end so that one end could be hooked onto the wallbars. We then had to lift the other end of the bench and then lower it again, often as part of a circuit training routine.

Thanks Bernard, the rules of Pirates you mentioned brought it all back to me. I think a game of tag was incorporated, with one team ‘in’ and the others trying to tag the others as they moved quickly from apparatus to apparatus. I certainly remember the not being allowed to touch the floor bit now. I think you would either be ‘out’ or had to quickly run to another apparatus to be ’safe,’ depending on which version we were doing. I seem to remember that if we had to finish more speedily due to the lesson coming to an end, those caught would then join the team trying to catch the others. Our gym teacher would tell them to rejoin, from sitting and waiting along the side of the gym, which always caused a bit of final panic for those trying not to be caught.

Usually, those caught would wait for the changeover while sitting on those long wooden benches, a few of which were always positioned along the walls of the gym. Anyone remember those? They would often be used as an apparatus to run along, or could be turned upside down, which would then produce a long wooden beam to balance along, obviously built into their design as optional use. Again though, quite good at enabling you to twist your ankle if your foot slipped off, especially while rushing about, and fell within the upturned seating bit. Health and safety didn’t seem to exist back then, and a little expected risk just seemed to be part of learning, and a part of life.

It was all just organised playing really, certainly as far as we were concerned, and a release from academic work sitting at a desk. We’d all be running about, climbing, jumping, balancing etc. All great fun while gaining beneficial exercise, and a lovely memory.

Another difference between then and now is that we never had the really thick landing mats for high jump and pole vault, but had to land in a sand pit.
Of course we used the old 'straddle jump' technique for the high jump and only a few 6th form pupils ever did the pole vault.

I don't know if they still have ropes, though H&S would be more about supervision than taking them away. I wouldn't be surprised if richer schools (private?) had proper climbing walls!

I wonder if they still have those ropes these days?. In this age of Health & Safety I would be a bit surprised if they did.

Ah - the Climbing Ropes! We had a few boys who could get to the top with ease but most of us, as far as I can remember, seemed to struggle and did not enjoy the experience.

Pirates - the object was to avoid touching the floor or being touched by the boy who was "it" or, presumably, by any-one else who had been caught. I can't remember how we knew who was "it" or who had been caught - we couldn't have taken anything off as we only wore shorts, unless we all started with a coloured band normally worn to distinguish teams and abandoned them as we were caught. It's a long time ago so I can't really remember.

Mats - I remeber we had two types. One was thinner, smellier and rubbery - seems like the ones Greg mentioned. The other type were much heavier and made of coir - much exercise was involved in moving the things to where they were needed and putting them away again!