It has been raining for three weeks solid here in Brussels. We shouldn't complain, we had an unbearable heatwave in June which some countries are still suffering in August, but we do of course. BBC's Chris Packham brought us back to Earth (see what I did there) by reminding us that 252 million years ago it rained for two million years. Thankfully humans hadn't yet been invented, or else we'd have webbed feet and gills now. Two million years! Like in Blade Runner. I would venture that this might have been the Great Flood that the Bible talks of, except how would anyone have known? More likely one of several more later ice ages which, on melting, provoked Great Floods which made the waters rise. It makes our current climate crisis look like a blip, and our attempts to hold it back like King Canute commanding the waves to desist.
The
present deluges all over the world are throwing up photos of clouds,
which took me back to the annual school journey at primary school where
we would be marched out on "field trips" to study aspects of the natural
world.
Manchester
and Liverpool sent their kids to North Wales on subsidized holidays.
South London had the Isle of Wight. These all-expenses paid jaunts were
for kids whose parents weren't wealthy enough to take them on a family
holiday. Foreign holidays were almost unheard of, at least in our
demographic. The ILEA as it was, Inner London Education Authority
(1965-90), was a fine socialist organisation that provided grants for
holidays and, later, for language stays abroad, of which I was the lucky
recipient of two.
We would be transported by coach to
Portsmouth, where we were decanted onto the ferry to Cowes. This was
the first time some of us had travelled by boat, and was very exciting.
Not me, of course, I had been many times on the Woolwich Ferry to North
Woolwich and back, so considered myself a seasoned mariner. We were
lodged in guest houses in Sandown and Shanklin, in rooms of 4-6 bunk
beds, all found, for which the guest house owners were no doubt royally
paid out of the taxpayer's money.
We
were ordered to write letters to our parents on arrival, which were
collected up, stamped and posted by the teachers. We were allowed one
phone call home a week. It was as much about teaching us a degree of
independence as about field education. We were about 10 years old.
On route marches over the cliffs we
would meet kids we knew from other local schools marching in the other
direction and unruly banter would break out.
We
were taken by coach to Alum Bay, which is known for its different
coloured sand cliffs, formed 60 million years ago by erosion caused by
the rising and falling of sea levels bla bla bla ... and given empty
glass test tubes with stoppers which we filled with layers of different
coloured sand. We had to take notebooks and keep records of what we had
learned on our field trips. Types of tree, leaf samples, seashells, nothing too
technical for a 10 year old. On the cloud spotting trip we were taught
the names of the different cloud formations and drew pictures. Thus
I learned to distinguish cumulonimbus from cirrus stratus, a piece of
knowledge that has proved invaluable over the years.
Nowadays I
hear of children going "with the school" to Thailand or South America!
With a hefty contribution from their parents no doubt. Although I am
far from being a communist fellow-traveller, I must say that the degree
of concern and support for families with few resources by the
Labour-controlled administrations back in the 1960's was commendable and
sadly may not ever be seen again. It really was a good time to be hard
up.
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