School playgrounds are a battlefield (Image: Getty)
School children are spending significantly less time playing outdoors than they did 30 years ago, according to a report. Primary schools provide around 23-minutes less screaming-and-running-about-like-a-lunatic-time each week than they did in 1995, the Raising the Nation Play Commission found. Which would have suited me fine if I was still at school.
Fresh air is overrated, and I despised being forced out into the cold. I still do. I cannot stand being even the slightest bit chilly – hence my collection of thermals for every season, including summer.
I loathed having to put my coat on and go outside to stand in a miserable square of tarmac, half-watched by a couple of dinner ladies having a fag and a gossip.
And my goodness, it was carnage out there. One disturbing ‘game’ I remember involved trying to make each other faint by taking turns to cut off circulation in our necks. What wholesome fun! It’s a miracle no one was ever hurt.
Another one was a sort of extreme version of It, inspired by a Tango advert that was airing at the time. Remember the one where a big fat man painted orange ambushes an unsuspecting bloke with a double-handed slap round the face. It was extremely popular in schools nationwide. You couldn’t get from one side of the playground to the other without some scamp thwacking you round the chops and screeching ‘You been Tango’d!’. If memory serves the advert was swiftly pulled after some kids suffered perforated eardrums.
Secondary school was even more brutal, but at least there was some entertainment value. One lunchtime I counted 15 separate fights breaking out. My friends and I would weave through the chaos, assessing each brawl like Roman generals scouting fresh gladiatorial meat. “This one shows promise – he can stay. But Kittenfists here? Not worth the bread and garum we’re feeding him. Throw him to the lions. Next!”
With children spending more time inside, glued to screens, the commission is quite sensibly calling for the Department of Education to ring-proof playtimes to ensure pupils get the chance to stretch their legs and scream their lungs out. Whether they like it or not.
Fresh air is not all bad, but be warned it’s a battlefield out there.
The Birth of Venus by Botticelli (Image: Getty Images/Hemis.fr RM)
Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus – one of the most famous paintings in the world – has been slapped with a “nudity” trigger warning by prudish uni chiefs. English literature undergrads at the University of Roehampton can decide whether they dare risk a mental health crisis by catching a glimpse of the Renaissance masterpiece. The painting, which (brace yourself for the next part — it contains a shocking description of a naked woman) depicts the goddess Venus emerging from a giant clam, baring one breast, has been deemed potentially distressing.
What would be much more useful for students is a trigger warning that states: “This degree will involve a lot of hard work. You will be expected to sacrifice weekends and evenings to study. You will also be lumbered in debt for decades afterwards, possibly for the rest of your life. Oh and there is no guarantee of a well-paid job at the end of it. Proceed with caution.”
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Dodo (Image: Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Dodos could be brought back from extinction using Jurassic Park-style science. A team of US researchers are experimenting with injecting dodo DNA (try saying that after a few) into chicken egg cells. The genetically modified embryo would then be implanted into a surrogate hen, who—if all goes to plan—will lay a little egg that hatches into a bird lost for more than 400 years. That’s the theory, at least.
Lets hope that humankind will treat them more kindly this time around.