One lunchtime, a few years ago, I had an important telephone call.

I could tell it was important even before I answered it - the ringing was more insistent, somehow keener and more agitated, and it had an urgency which was exhorting me to pick up the receiver as soon as possible.

My heart pounded. 'Ring ring, ring ring', it went. What could it be? Who could it be?

It was a telephone call from a personage at the school attended by my fine, strapping son. Or, to be more precise, a member of personnel from the school's Emergency Severe Head Trauma And Other Critical And Life-threatening Injuries Unit.

I listened aghast as this highly-trained para-teaching-medic-type-lady described the lime green jump suit with handles on the shoulders she was wearing, and that my son had cracked his noggin on a piece of equipment in the school gymnasium, and grazed himself!

There was blood!

Before I could gather my wits and ask if he was still alive, the skilled technician on the other end of the line listed the checks they had done to establish whether the next course of action was a call to the air ambulance or to get a large hessian sack out of the cupboard.

They had checked whether his pupils were dilated.

They had checked for sub-dural haematoma, lesions, contusions, tumours, rumours, ruptures, sutures, lumps, bumps and stemmed the bright scarlet arterial fountain which was spraying corpuscles all over the sick bay.

They had palpated various body parts to check for range of movement, and hit him on the kneecap with a toffee hammer.

They had checked whether or not he had a headache.

They had checked to see if he was dizzy, disorientated or incoherent.

They had asked him if he knew where he was, to which he replied with great presence of mind, "The Andes."

We were asked to collect him as soon as possible.

"But is he alright?"

"We're awaiting the results of an MRI scan, CAT scan and an X-ray, and he's on a saline drip together with 180mg p.h. of diamorphine intravenous."

"But how does he feel?"

"He says his head hurts."

Well, fancy that. If I'd nutted a piece of immovable gymnasium apparatus, my head would hurt, too.

We raced down to the school, slung him unceremoniously into the back of the car, told him to stop looking so smug about having the afternoon off to play on his X Box, and brought him home.

I remembered what it was like when I was at school.

There was no Emergency Severe Head Trauma And Other Critical And Life-Threatening Injuries Unit.

There wasn't a team of highly-trained and dedicated technicians in chromed helmets who looked as if they belonged in the pit lane at Monza.

We had a school matron who resembled Nurse Gladys Emmanuel. A school matron who was the proud owner of a bosom which defied the laws of physics as it heaved and wobbled, barely restrained by a giant cantilevered brassiere clearly visible inside a too-tight white blouse. She also wore, if that's the word, a navy blue pelmet which was a foot too short for the ample thighs which protruded from it, a blue cardigan with a hole in one elbow and sensible black brogues.

A school matron who would sneak out of her little room behind the assembly hall for a crafty cig when she had no triage to perform.

Our school matron could turn her hand to everything from lacerations, fractures and complex trepanning procedures to dispensing aspirin and sewing up split trousers, while the wearer sat nervously in his Y-fronts in a cold plastic chair with his hands coyly in his lap.

We had accidents while doing 'gym'. Of course we did.

You would expect the occasional bruise when playing British Bulldog in a room full of large, hard wooden things.

We caught javelins with our bare hands at the far end of the school playing field, and nobody ever got killed.

Playing head-tennis with a medicine ball in the equipment store room was bound to lead to the occasional broken neck, but nobody ever complained.

We fell off rope ladders with monotonous regularity, and sometimes from a considerable height.

We twisted and sprained sundry things in the greasy woods while pretending to do cross-country, dodging the gym masters as they ran round the opposite way to catch the shirkers.

People broke legs in the long-jump pit, and lost teeth to hockey balls.

Ma and Pa didn't come to get us if we did, because Pa was down t'pit, and Ma was on her back mekkin' ends meet.

We walked four miles home dragging our severed limbs behind us, and it made us stronger people.

Tha kno's.

.

I can remember at my grammar school standing in the queue to do the high jump and distinctly hearing the 'crack' as the guy in front of me landed badly and broke his arm.

Naturally, after the injured lad had been cleared from the sandpit, I opted out of joining him at the fracture clinic. Instead, I was sent on a cross-country run as a punishment.

It wasn't until 25 years later that I learned that I had been born with a heart defect that eventually needed corrective surgery. I'm still amazed that the sadistic games master didn't manage to kill me. Strangely though, when I and the future Mrs G were a bit older, we met him by chance in a country pub one night. He bought us a drink and was absolutely charming even though the hatred between us at school had been intense and mutual. I learned a valuable lesson about people that evening.

By the way, would you by any chance have a picture of the top half of your school matron?

Zitat

---

TeePee said......."huge pointed breasticles.......She also had that Les Dawson forearm movement of shepherding the enormous bosoms"

---

See, didn't I tell you of his fixation?

Ref: .....Caravanstore parts