Nigel Gordon

Methamphetamines were often used, up to the late 1960s to counteract the effects of opiate-based painkillers. In fact, in some European countries, they are still used medicinally and one of their major uses is to allow higher levels of painkillers to be administered that would otherwise be possible.

Fifty years ago I heard a piece of radio broadcasting which I have always considered to be on of the best pieces ever broadcast. It was originally broadcast on the 9th of June 1968. Today the BBC re-broadcast Alister Cooke's "Letter from America" about the assassination of Robert Kennedy. You can listen to it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b49549 I think the message it is giving is as relevant today, if not more so, than it was fifty years ago. Nigel

Loved it.

That's what it is all about.

Must get some cat food in.

Well, we have the start of another story in the Leopard series. So far, we only have the prologue, though if that is anything to go by the rest is going to be very interesting. Then again, all the Leopard stories have been entertaining and interesting. They have also been well written, so we have something to look forward to.

I strongly suspect they may be avoiding saying people have died just in case they have not. They have made that mistake a few times in the past.

I am a bit annoyed with Amazon about this. Have the first two stories on my Kindle and had a watch set for the third, but did not get a notification from Amazon of publication. Just be on the site and purchased it.

Hi Mike, I had already emailed Wayne and suggested he submit it to AD. I had a reply that he was looking at self-publishing it.

Yes, considering it was meant to be a short story. N

Cole, one of the serial novels I am working on "Living with Johnny" is now approaching its end. Just written chapter 61, suspect I have ten more chapters to do, then the epilogue. Then it is down to re-writing and editing. Hope to get it finished this summer.

Well, the latest news on the project is that it is now fully funded. From some emails I got I suspect a few members of the AD Forums have made a contribution to its funding. Hopefully, we will see the results sometime in the future.

What can one say about this story other than it is classic Cole Parker. A really interesting story, well told, which is enjoyable to read. Highly recommended.

There is a young final year film student who is trying to raise the funding to make a short film about 1950's gay society in England and the use of Polari - the language of the gay community. If any of you would like to find out about it, he has a YouTube video: You can also get more details about his project on indiegogo.com. Just go to the site and search for Separate Tongues.

Well, Guarded is finished and it is a great story, well worth reading.

I was one the way to Dublin when news of this broke in the early hours of Wednesday morning. I actually heard it on the car radio of the taxi taking me to the airport. When I got to security there was a whisper going through the crowd waiting for clearance. All you could make out was the repetition of the name Hawking. He was a great thinker and his intellect will be missed.

Much as I despair with what I see in the political thinking in the Western World, there are times I come across something that gives hope. Finding this video was one of those times:

What is somewhat more worrying about the gun statistics for the USA is that 50% of the guns privately owned in the USA are owned by 3% of the population.

A major problem of any two-party system is that it can be effectively blocked from taking necessary action by the presence of a minority interest group that has a presence within both political parties. Neither party will act due to fear of losing part of its support base. Only when a third political force comes into action can be deadlock be broken. It looks as if you need a third effective political party over there in the States, I know we need one here in the UK.

Well, I have only read one of them so far and that was outstanding, looking forward to having time to read the rest.

This I found by chance browsing some sites, then I had to chase down the original on YouTube. These boys are amazing. To steal a line from 'Cast A Giant Shadow' "Now I suppose they will start to dance."

There is something about Nicholas's writing which always seems to capture my imagination and draw me in. I must say that I have not been a fan of all of his work, but even that which I did not like I have to respect for the quality of his writing and his ability to evoke a time and a place with minimal description. A sure sign of a highly talented writer. In the first chapter of 'The Leapling', he has managed to build a picture of time and place which is tangible. More importantly, he has laid the foundation for what appears to be a very interesting story. I cannot wait to read the next chapter. You can find 'The Leapling' here: http://awesomedude.com/nicholas-hall/the-leapling/index.htm

Cole, the system I am describing was how it was some fifty years ago. Unfortunately, in the 1960s there was a general move in the UK to the comprehensive system, which was based on the system in the States. Basically mixed ability schools with mixed ability classes. The argument in favour of it was that it provided equality of opportunity in education and allowed students to achieve in some subjects whilst they might not in other. However, the main driving force behind it was cost cutting. Rather than having four or five smaller schools with up to about seven hundred pupils in each you could have one massive school with a couple of thousand pupils. The administrative resources required for one large comprehensive was not much more than was required for one smaller school so you got massive cost savings. In addition, local authorities could sell off the land and property of the old schools for housing developments and industrial development. Most of the new comprehensive schools were badly designed being built more along the lines of office blocks. As a result, they were hard to supervise and bullying became a problem. Fortunately, most of them are now badly in need of replacement and the new schools that are being built are being designed to minimise the opportunity in the school for bullying. Also, there is a move campus schools where age groups are located in different buildings across the same site, with separate specialist buildings for subjects taught across age groups. Whilst many schools dropped the prefect system in the latter part of the last century it now seems to be coming back into use. A recent study showed that pupils felt safer in schools that used prefects than in schools that did not have them. With the re-introduction of prefects we have seen houses being brought back into schools which appears to be providing better support to pupils both in and out of school. The main bullying problem these days seems to be cyberbullyin, which whilst school related is taking place out of school.

Cole, I think there is some transatlantic confusion here. In Britain, specifically England, when we are talking about the house system in relation to schools we are not talking about boarding schools or even the residential houses within boarding schools. What is meant is an administrative division of pupils in a school into a number of units, called houses for the purpose of non-scholastic activities. Although the concept originated in the boarding schools, it was generally implemented in all state secondary schools in England until the late seventies, when it started to fall out of fashion, though apparently, it has come back into fashion again in recent years. The head of house, be it the housemaster or housemistress, would be the responsible party for anything concerning you that related to the school and was not the concern of a specific teacher, e.g. head of English. So, when I wanted to get a place in the bike sheds for my bike, it was my housemaster I had to talk to about it and he sorted it out for me. Again when I had a problem with the overall level of homework I was having to do on a specific night I again took this up with my housemaster. The important thing about the head of house was that they stayed the same for your whole period at the school. Your form teacher and your subject teachers changed each year. As such, they got to know you quite well and you got to know them well. The house system works well where you have continuity of head of house over extended periods and the size of the houses is reasonable. At my school, each head of house was dealing with about one hundred students. That is manageable. The comprehensive which is local to me now uses the house system but each house has over five hundred pupils in it. There is no way that can work. The important thing about the system, whether you call the units houses, pod or any other term, is that it breaks large student bodies down into smaller, socially manageable units.

Actually, there was very little bullying. I have to say I was probably one of the most likely targets when it came to bullying. I was, until my 4th year, one of the smallest boys in my year, I came from out of the area, so had not gone to primary school with any of the other boys there, and I had few real friends in the school. To make matters worse I was extremely not athletic and seen as something of a teachers' pet as I was constantly in the top three academically in each of the academic subjects for the year. The final nail in the coffin for me to be a potential victim was that I excused the two vocational classes we had (woodwork and metalwork) so that I could do typing, a class I had to go over to the girls' school for. However, in my four years at the school, I can only remember one incident where I was a victim of bullying and that took place outside of the school. Even though I did not report it, the Headmaster knew about it the next day and the other boys involved were paraded in front of the school assembly and made to feel like right idiots. One thing was that we had to wear a school uniform and the local community was very quick to phone up the school and report any incidents they saw which concerned anyone in the school uniform. The other important factor was that there were not the unsupervised spaces in the school where bullying could take place. Any area where a pupil might go was patrolled either by a teacher or a prefect.