Burnley Grammar School

Comment by: David W on 4th December 2023 at 13:04

Thanks for that David. You are quite right. I only discovered this board about 5 years ago. I didn't know of it 15 years ago, and you can''t post retrospectively.

As regards Mr Dando's post. I actually favour showers because even as a kid I sweated easily. I just objected to being shouted at and looked at by the teacher concerned, but knowing other lads sweated like I did, I know we would have been more uncomfortable without them, but for a lad that doesn''t sweat, or is especially self conscious (we had one lad who had a long scar from his chest to his navel due to a serious operation in very young childhood - and he was very embarrassed and self conscious about it), then I think if they prefer not to shower in public that should be respected. I also don't agree with the idea of ''unisex'' anything in clothing, and I honestly couldn't be bothered to trawl through websites looking at school uniforms. As a matter of fact - and I don''t want to open a new can of worms, I am a bit anti-uniform. I believe we are all individuals and that should be reflected all our lives. I read with interest on here the other day - I can't recall the guy''s name - where he pointed out that one school insisted on an ''approved'' clothing store and wouldn't allow the lads to wear supermarket bought trousers - terrible at a time when so many people are struggling financially. Thanks for your support - I really do appreciate it.

Greg2 on 3rd December 2023 at 19:09

I was never enthusiastic about swimming in a chlorine filled pool of blue water, I've done it but I don't think I've ever enjoyed it. We do have a pool near us but I rarely visit it.

Open water is a whole different world provided you've got reasonable strength and it does feel amazing. I find it calms down joints that are a little inflamed in no time at all and once I've thawed out, I move much more easily for days afterwards. Give it a try! You can only decide never to do it again if you don't like it and pop back here and have a rant at me!

You lived in a beautiful part of La Belle France, when we were deciding the choice was between Finistère and Charente-Maritime because we wanted to be close to the sea. What may I ask, made you return to the UK?


Will on 3rd December 2023 at 20:34

We discussed this a couple of weeks ago. In my head, I'm 35 but I was born in 1940 so my body is now 83. I keep fit and it works. I don't think there's anything strange about going wild swimming, it helps me keep moving with agility. I have a little arthritis these days and the cold water really calms down joints that have some inflamation and it's much more healthy than taking pain killers. The other thing is the lads I swim with really do watch out for each other so I'm perfectly safe.

Graham Butterfield on 3rd December 2023 at 20:51 & Greg2 again.

I agree, the matter of the measuring is very strange, I never encountered anything like that at school. I did have a physio ask to do it once for a study he was doing and I was happy to let him but that's a whole different thing to a class of lads ready for PE.

Original Andy on 4th December 2023 at 08:35

Enjoy Finland. I agree, a Finnish sauna is hotter than anything you will find in another country and the Finns are experts at it. Enjoy that and then plunging into an icy lake, it will do you the world of good.

Graham Butterfield 3rd December 20:51

I have no memory of why this happened. I do remember that he was new and we all seemed to acknowledge that he was temporary. In fact, now trying to give it more thought, perhaps he wasn’t with us for a whole term, as I only have a very vague memory of any gym lesson with him in charge, if at all. I think we may have been told that something like this was going to take place, possibly mentioned by him sometime, or maybe even during a morning assembly. I just can’t remember those details now I’m afraid.

It all took place in the changing room. Our usual gym teacher wasn’t present, and it seemed to be a lesson with just the boys from the form I was in, so perhaps only 10 to 12 of us. I think we were wearing just our shorts. I don’t think it was before we’d properly changed, so just in our underwear or something, which we weren’t allowed to wear under our shorts anyway. I’m sure we had something on, otherwise I’d certainly have remembered it much more profoundly!

I do remember we had to remove our usual gym shirts, as I think he measured our chests, waists and arm lengths etc. I admit the finger measuring bit needs more clarification, so what I think I recall is him measuring my hand from the wrist joint to the top of my middle finger, so the length of my entire hand I suppose. I think he then measured the width, so from beneath my little finger to just above my thumb maybe. I’m not sure he actually measured every finger, so I apologise for that vagueness.

It was all taken very seriously with each measurement taken noted in his book. One part that has remained clear to me was standing on the bench while he measured me, as we were all obviously shorter than him. I also remember an interest he had in the distance between joints, as I think he must have mentioned this, so remember him doing it. So he would have measured shoulder to elbow, then forearm to wrist joint. He also did do inside leg measurements to our knee, and then from there to our ankle etc. One boy was done at a time, while all others sat and waited their turn. This must have taken several minutes checking each of us, so perhaps this took up one whole lesson period. It was all so long ago, but just stayed in my mind, however vaguely. I think it must have been around 1969.

Perhaps he did spend time at the school specifically to include us in some sort of study he was involved with? We all complied and none of us seemed to mind. I think we were all quite interested really, as it was all so novel and different for a change. We were certainly all too young to question it.

I think the evidence of your own eyes and common sense should be good enough in regards of what Mark J said to you Andy.

It's quite clear to me that Alan did not write that post back in December 2008 so stop the sh*t stirring. There are many duplicate names here, that's why others use an initial. Just recently I think it was picked up on that two names called James posted and they might have been different people. It happens!

And while we're at it, I don't see anything about the school lists that Mr Dando writes down on here that in any way suggests a connection to Alan either. I've read enough of what Alan says to know he isn't someone who holds the views that Mr Dando writes, he's not against school showers for example but is very much pro choice in them. He can put me right and correct me if I'm wrong in that understanding. That is not Mr Dando's attitude is it. He wants total abolition irrespective, therefore not even giving youngsters the opportunity to clean themselves after a gym class if they even want to by choice.

Toby on 2nd December 2023 at 14:03

Very funny!


Jim on 2nd December 2023 at 14:30

Well, I promise I'm not Alan but I do believe that Alan & Dando are one and the same, just too much coincidence in their posting over time.


Mark J on 2nd December 2023 at 14:46

You make a claim but provide no evidence, do you have any or are you just making a suggestion?


Timothy on 3rd December 2023 at 00:11

You make a very valid point about mental well being. I know that if I miss my gym sessions I don't feel anything like as good, keep them up and I feel great. I don't go for huge muscle building, I've done that before and got to a point where I had to buy bigger shirts to fit my shoulders and I thought it looked all wrong. Now I work on my legs and just on tone for my upper body. The tone stuff is challenging because it requires patience and care to get everything right but at least I think I look pretty good and I'm not nervous of taking my clothes off.

Steve on 3rd December 2023 at 08:19

Increasingly I see men and boys out without shirts, now in all weathers. A couple of years ago you wouldn't have seen them in the winter but now you do. I guess men like to push boundaries and just keep going. Let's see what happens if we have more snow.

Mr Chips on 3rd December 2023 at 12:25

Amazing, well done sir. I can't see myself ever trying this but at Christmas we are going to Finland so maybe it will be out of the sauna and into an ice hole for a cold plunge and cool down. At one level, I really want to try it and at another I'm nervous. IME, Finnish saunas are a lot hotter than you would find in the UK so the experience of the ice hole would be a much greater contrast than anything to do with a warm shower here.

Chris G on 3rd December 2023 at 23:53

I guess the vest thing happened in every boy's changing room across the land at the start of every school year. Do vests still exist? I haven't seen one since I was eleven.

Is that post that was left here on Sunday lunchtime meant to be some kind of gigantic P take out of the comments Craig leaves on here about his bareskin running whatsapp group, because it somehow reads and feels like it to me.

A student teacher or someone on work experience joined our class in a state junior school when I was nine (that young, I cannot remember which she was). She worked alongside our older, experienced teacher. It was summer 1994.

One moment sticks in the memory. Our older teacher was out of earshot. Our class was outside in a games lesson (possibly sports day), all of us in white T-shirts and shorts, and I was sitting cross-legged on the grass with other children waiting our turn. The young woman student was with us. Two boys in our class jogged past right in front of us. One of them was somewhat shorter than average (his feet are off the floor in a school photograph), the other boy was the tallest in the class and unfortunately rather overweight.

The student shouted: "Look! Little and Large!"

They must have heard but gave no visible reaction (goodness knows what they were thinking). I was scandalised, but powerless to do or say anything. (She referred, just in case anybody doesn't know, to two television comedians of the time).

I don't give my full name or name the school partly to avoid identifying the two boys; it was the same school I mentioned in my comment on 9th October. It was a lovely school and I was happy there; the unexpected crassness just noted was all the more surprising.

(By the way, I also stopped wearing a white cotton vest under my uniform - and under clothing in general - aged eleven, at my mother's suggestion, to change for PE more rapidly).

Steve, 3rd December
"Mum. No one wears a vest". Isn't that the battle-cry of all early teens? Within half a term of topless PE being introduced at my school, the hitherto ubiquitous vest had almost universally disappeared from the changing room.

Greg2 - 'I do remember a student Gym teacher being at my school with us for one term. My main memory of him was his interest in measuring the bodies of each boy while filling in long lists all written down in his book. He was interested in distances between joints, various limb lengths, even our hands and finger lengths, together with our weight and height and precise age. I remember we each stood on the long bench seat in our changing room as he measured each of us.'



The detail you mention there seems very strange to me Greg and not the job of any PE teacher, trainee or experienced to do any of that. But could you provide any further details about that, do you know any more about why that was happening? That sounds much more like some kind of agreed set study rather than something that would take place during regular PE lessons in a school gym just because of the peculiarities of any teacher. How was it conducted and how were you dressed for it, and what exactly was he measuring, and for whose benefit exactly? Finger lengths, that's an odd one. Can you remember the year that happened Greg?

Comment by: Mr Chips on 3rd December 2023 at 12:25
Just to report I went wild swimming yesterday.



Last week you told us that some of your eldest former pupils are now in their late 70s. What age are you then out of interest? Telling us you now go wild swimming is extraordinary.

Despite my own difficulties to deal with at school, my adjustments to the new routines seemed otherwise trouble free, compared to what others have said. I don’t ever remember bare chest running outside, though we certainly did cross country, with several different circuits which were chosen at random. I don’t ever remember shirtless gym either, though I don’t think this would have bothered me at the time, possibly due to witnessing from a young age my eldest brother (9 years older than me) being frequently shirtless around the house as he posed in front of a mirror, striking up what seemed to me at the time, amusing poses, specifically designed to display particular muscle groups, as he observed how each were developing. He had taken up body building around the age of 21.

I do remember a student Gym teacher being at my school with us for one term. My main memory of him was his interest in measuring the bodies of each boy while filling in long lists all written down in his book. He was interested in distances between joints, various limb lengths, even our hands and finger lengths, together with our weight and height and precise age. I remember we each stood on the long bench seat in our changing room as he measured each of us.

Au vieil homme,
I could never entertain wild swimming, but do think I can understand the benefits. I decided I hated swimming at the age of 9, and this psychological blockage emerged entirely due to one experience after happily going to the local pool with a few similar aged friends one hot summer’s day. We were with one older boy of about 14, who was entrusted to look after us all. But, for some reason, soon as we’d all entered the pool, he kept coming up behind me and pushing me under by my shoulders. I seemed to swallow a gallon of awful tasting water and remember trying to avoid him after that. I eventually got fed up with it and left the pool, to just sit on the corner steps which lead down into it. I can remember people’s legs brushing past me while I sat there waiting for them to finish, before we all went home.

Because of this, I didn’t bother trying to swim properly until I was a teenager in the sea. I seemed to just do it, which might seem odd, as I was certainly never scared of water. I’d just had the enthusiasm and enjoyment of it taken away from me when so young.

By the way, I used to spend a lot of time in France, and frequently worked from there. Only last year I sold the cottage in Parthenay which I’d restored. It was called, La Vieille Boulangerie, because that is what it once was, in its hamlet of Migaudon. Its beautiful bread oven, with its fascinating domed roof, was still there, just off the kitchen.

Just to report I went wild swimming yesterday. Just south of where we live, L' Aber Vrac'h becomes much wider before finally entering the Atlantic. It's tidal but not strong. There's a rowing club that allows use of their facilities for changing and warming up afterwards which is great.

In France, Speedo style trunks are the norm for swimming and many pools have them as a requirement for reasons lost in the mist of time so that was the most any man was wearing including me but several were naked.

I had two, twenty minute swims and felt amazing afterwards. It was a nice clear day with a blue sky so perfect for outdoor activity. It's just on a four kilometer bike ride from home so perfect warm up too. There were about fourteen of us out, I was by far the oldest and the younger guys very kindly kept checking on 'le vieil homme' both in and out of the water.

I don't know what the water temperature was but it didn't feel as cold as Arctic Norway did during the summer.

So come on lads, get on out there!

If you listen to Radio 4 you will hear a lot about wild swimming and other back to nature fads, but it is worth pointing out that it does have health hazards as the Wild Swimming Association is honest enough to mention on their website:

https://www.wildswimming.co.uk/health-safety/

I hope nobody here is thinking of it this weekend, even in London it is extremely cold the coldest early December for many years.

Just a quick note to say that I am not 'Timothy' - well I am but not in this context!

Interesting comment from Steve about 'peer pressure'.

I saw a group of boys at my local school (outer London), all running shirtless on cross country (I assume), but this was mid September and reasonably warm.

Out of 60 boys, aged 14/15, all of them were stripped to the waist, so I guess it was "normal" kit. Just one or two had no socks on, all had branded trainers, navy school logo shorts, so not quite like our cross country runs in the past !! (only a pair white cotton shorts and basic plimsols).

Boys of this age follow "peer group pressure", so as soon as one lad takes his shirt off, there is pressure on the rest. Typical of this at my school was how in the very first PE lesson at 11, we nearly all had vests on (under our normal shirts), by a few weeks later no self respecting 11 year old wore a vest. ("Mum, NO one wears a vest")

Good luck to the lads running in bare chests at that school if that's what they were doing I say. I've been reading up on some of this new fangled stripped down back to nature way of doing exercise that is gaining a following, everything from the wild swimming in lakes and rivers to the bareskin running that Craig has got into and also the new running thing called grounding, so if you don't fancy taking your shirts off to run some are now running with nothing on the feet. Videos galore on YT about all that too. Some might go for the who lot. It's all being used not for muscle and cardiovascular health like we always associate with PE and exercise but with a very strong play on the mental well being side of things nowadays for those who seek to do all this. Who knew that just taking a few bits off could be so beneficial. Those teachers who did this years ago with us were ahead of the game clearly.

Mark J on 1st December 2023 at 14:06

Yes they were definitely from the school, some of them looked to have the logo on the tops, those who were wearing them. There was what appeared to be one young adult, under 40, with them in a jacket and shorts. They were just outside the school itself going along the adjacent road Canesworde Road close by and then into a lane known as Buttercup Lane which is very close to the school but goes into a quiet area away from homes. I'm not sure how you can easily judge an enthusiastic runner but they were going along quite well.

Thanks, Jim and Mark J. I am genuinely not Mr. Dando and I wasn't here in 2009. Thank you for saying so.

That 2008 post isn't the same Alan we know on here today.

If you remember anything you'll know he definitely hasn't been to a northern grammar school, but some kind of run down 'dump' as he describes it in the state system somewhere in the London area.

Over a 15 year period you are going to get some people turn up with the same names. You should know that Andy, isn't that the whole reason you now recently prefixed yours with the Original tag because another Andy came along in the meantime probably without noticing you were here already.

If the name was Aloysius, Ace or Antares then I might have thought so.

Comment by: Toby on 2nd December 2023 at 14:03
Personally it wouldn't surprise me if all four were the same person.


All four, who - Alan, Andy, Dando and which other name gave you rise for that comment Toby?

I think what you and also Derek said last night has some merit but I think if Alan and Andy were the same that would be a very schizophrenic personality indeed. I don't think they are by the way, and I don't think that Alan is Mr Dando either because I can't see the motive for him to be. It seems to me that Alan is more than happy, if that's the right word, to place his own strong opinions out there in his own name and stand by them and take the hits he gets for it.

Personally it wouldn't surprise me if all four were the same person.

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts..."

Shakespeare

Craig on 1st December 2023 at 21:48

I'm really tempted to give bareskin a try. I think I'd better start back on a treadmill though because I haven't done any serious running for a few years and I don't think bareskin and outside is the place to begin particularly at the moment. If it was a summer evening, I might try but it isn't. That said, I saw a couple of guys out this morning in shorts and trainers so it is happening. I'll talk to my PT at the next session and see what he thinks at least about starting to run again. Thanks again for raising the topic.


Alan on 1st December 2023 at 19:43
"I am not Mr Dando, and I have not been here since 2009."

Dear oh dear. Alan Dando has been caught out again. His first post was in 2008.

Alan on 20th December 2008 at 10:53

He just can't help himself.

Bill, that's unusual nowadays isn't it. Do you think it was definitely a PE lesson you saw there, although if it was in school on a weekday it sounds very much like it. I fully approve as long as any boys actually wish to go out like that to run, then why not.

I'm not going out bareskin running at all this weekend myself and we have nothing arranged for the next few days on the whatsapp group until things get a touch less cold, even by daytime. I've done two cold runs this week and that's enough for me in two very small groups. I do think you should go for it and give bareskin running a go Andy and add it to your fitness regime, you will definitely be surprised how much you enjoy it if you think it's your kind of thing and it's much more enjoyable done in company rather than alone which even I would feel a bit self conscious about at some of the times and conditions we do it in. Safety in numbers.

You can be anyone you like on the internet and I think this site might just be proving it in some instances.

Jason.

What weight division are we talking here do you think - lightweight or featherweight? In the red corner Alan Dando, in the blue corner Andy Chips.

Comment by: Jason on 1st December 2023 at 18:29

As far as I am concerned Jason, the matter is now closed. Whatever I have done to try to convince the other party I am not Mr Dando, and I have not been here since 2009, it hasn't worked. The poor bloke will have to find somebody else to target in his mum's basement.


Vince (earlier today) I have never walked out of a commercial job, but I did once do it in a semi-pro band I was in, as the leader tended to get into Alan Sugar mode, and he picked the wrong day with me, and I told him to go **** himself. He told me I would "never work in Ruislip again". I never did, but I can't say it worried me overmuch. A damned long journey on the Central Line. Who needs Ruislip when you have Maida Vale!. I made up my mind, after school that I would never allow anyone to talk to me like dirt again, and I have always stuck to that. I am glad it all worked out well for you

You two just don't give up do you.

I wish we could get Andy and Alan dragged to a school gym, stick a pair of boxing gloves on them and leave them to it.

You've gotta be shirtless though Alan, is that okay?

Comment by: Bill on 1st December 2023 at 00:00
About half the boys I saw cross country running out of Queensbury Academy in Dunstable on Monday afternoon this week were running along shirtless with entirely bare chests. They looked to be about 15 to me. There must have been at least 20 doing that. It looked very old school and like they might have even been divided up like that deliberately but it was impossible to tell.



Where were they running and were there teachers with them then, and did they look enthusiastic? Perhaps this bareskin lark that Craig says is getting popular among a certain set is now finding its way into some schools all over again. That won't please some of the bodyphobes on here will it. I just can't imagine anyone was pressured into doing that against their will though. It's not 1970 after all.

Comment by: Original Andy on 1st December 2023 at 08:14





"I really do think you should stop attempting to draw others into your stance and posts. This is a typical example:
Repeat of my message 30/11/23 1249


"...I take those who post here at face value with the exception of you because it is clear over time that you post under multiple handles and a sign of that is your enthusiasm to accuse others of it. It was something it had never crossed my mind to do and other than to control an agenda, I can't think of a single reason to do it but any poster here only has to look through the 190 pages of entries to see you continually attempting to control the agenda and in many cases succeeding because people who have a different point of view get fed up with your abusive comments and just go elsewhere."
--------------------------
If I were you "Original Andy" I wouldn't talk about "abusive comments" since you make quite a few of your own. Pots and kettles, dear boy, pots and kettles

I really can't be bothered with you any longer - just let's say there is a remarkable similarity in posts, not just in content , but tone, coming from yourself, Hugh and the new late entrant James. The sniping waspish comments to myself and a few others who you do not agree with, and the frankly, ingratiating, Uriah Heep on an especially humble day , tone to others (you even called somebody "sir" the other day!). I am done with you, clearly a troll. I m sure others might have noticed it.

As I have said before anyone is welcome to contact me - I do understand you are too frightened to do so, because you have some paranoid belief I could harm your online integrity. I couldn't be bothered, even if I were clever enough to do so (and I'm not).

BTW "handles"seems a remarkably non legal word - for a barrister!

On Alan's last point, I have actually walked out of a job because of the way someone has spoken to me. You should have seen the look on the chaps face as I got up from my desk, collected my bag and personal belongings told them I was off and left with my head held high. This was also a foreman who came up to our works office and thought he could simply talk to me like a piece of rubbish, I'd seen him do it to someone else at the time who put up with it. The managing director was at a desk opposite me and as I went he added his own two pence worth and told me that the world didn't owe me a living and I responded that he wasn't giving me one, the salary was so poor. Stunned silence in the place and out I went and was gone, never to return. During the exchange I'd had my surname thrown at me in anger plus a couple of expletives over something to do with a phone call I was alleged to have taken that I had not done.

That was at 11am in the morning. By 5pm I'd already secured another interview, got the job and was back in a much better place earning more money being spoken to rather better. That's the way to do it, although I could afford to act like that at the time, obviously not everybody feels they can do so.

When it comes to using your surname, I'd find that trickier if they were not being outright hostile. It can also depend in what context they are doing it.