"Daft I call it"
Calling all readers of “The Dandy” or “The Beano”… or was it the “Knockout”
… does anyone remember which character said this all the time?
Well, looking on a couple of webpages on Google (aka the Delphic Oracle) …
http://www.comicsuk.co.uk/Links/DenisGiffordObituary.asp
http://www.sagazone.co.uk/forums/thread/34319/
... I found out that it was the Knockout - one of its strips called “Our Ernie”,
where the dad always ended the story by saying: “Daft I call it”! Something
that always made me laugh, as a young lad.
And “daft I call it” is what I think of some of the advice my mum used to
give me ….
“Wash behind your ears!” she’d say when my sister and I were at the
bathroom sink, first thing in the morning. What was the point of that
piece of advice, unless she thought the school / nit nurse, would report
anyone with dirt behind their ears to the headteacher?
Another thing is that she showed me how to tie my shoe-laces, which worked
very well. However several people, including Mrs C, have told me over the
years, that I tie them up in mirror-image fashion to everyone else. How
odd is that?
I was also very keen as a child on brushing my teeth correctly, once or
twice a day. I couldn’t understand why folk including teachers, brushed
their teeth up and down, instead of from side to side, as I did. “This is
the way we brush our teeth, brush our teeth, brush our teeth …”
My mum got that wrong too.
A dentist friend of mine put me right, when I was about 19 … after 19
years of masses of dentistry. You’d think one of my dentists would have
asked me about brushing technique a bit earlier … with having to scrape
out bits of food between my teeth, during my dental visits?
Isn’t it strange how we accept as children what our parents tell us as
the gospel truth, and that it’s not until later in life that we find out
that they’re wrong. But then they’re not infallible like the Pope, are
they?
If my mum were still alive, I’d be asking her: “Hey, Mum, do I have to
wash behind my ears?”
… does anyone remember which character said this all the time?
Well, looking on a couple of webpages on Google (aka the Delphic Oracle) …
http://www.comicsuk.co.uk/Links/DenisGiffordObituary.asp
http://www.sagazone.co.uk/forums/thread/34319/
... I found out that it was the Knockout - one of its strips called “Our Ernie”,
where the dad always ended the story by saying: “Daft I call it”! Something
that always made me laugh, as a young lad.
And “daft I call it” is what I think of some of the advice my mum used to
give me ….
“Wash behind your ears!” she’d say when my sister and I were at the
bathroom sink, first thing in the morning. What was the point of that
piece of advice, unless she thought the school / nit nurse, would report
anyone with dirt behind their ears to the headteacher?
Another thing is that she showed me how to tie my shoe-laces, which worked
very well. However several people, including Mrs C, have told me over the
years, that I tie them up in mirror-image fashion to everyone else. How
odd is that?
I was also very keen as a child on brushing my teeth correctly, once or
twice a day. I couldn’t understand why folk including teachers, brushed
their teeth up and down, instead of from side to side, as I did. “This is
the way we brush our teeth, brush our teeth, brush our teeth …”
My mum got that wrong too.
A dentist friend of mine put me right, when I was about 19 … after 19
years of masses of dentistry. You’d think one of my dentists would have
asked me about brushing technique a bit earlier … with having to scrape
out bits of food between my teeth, during my dental visits?
Isn’t it strange how we accept as children what our parents tell us as
the gospel truth, and that it’s not until later in life that we find out
that they’re wrong. But then they’re not infallible like the Pope, are
they?
If my mum were still alive, I’d be asking her: “Hey, Mum, do I have to
wash behind my ears?”
posted by justin at 7:26 am
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6 Comments:
The Knockout, now there's a blast from the past
I'm too young to remember the Knockout. *tongue in cheek*
I remember the Beano, used to share a copy with a near neighbour's kids. The 'Bash Street Kids' and 'Q Bikes' were my favourites.
Myself I had 'Valiant', then at aged about 11 it was 'Look and Learn' (along with the periodicals that made up the 'Knowledge' encyclopaedia), then it was on to 'Practical Wireless' at aged 13, then the 'Shortwave Magazine' at aged 15.
On brushing teeth, I don't actually remember ever being taught as a child. I seem to have always done the up-down and side-to-side for each of the inside-top-outside as far back as I can remember. Maybe it was instinct? Or maybe it was my grandmother's insistence that "if a job's needed to be done, it's worth doing properly!"
Justin, check back through your comment replies to your recent posts. I've just seen a V***ra spam in there.
Thanks for your comments, everyone.
Keith: I thought you might be too young to remember this comic.
Kevin: what adult reading material, to be reading as a teenager! We didn't have such magazines in our house. The Listener, The TLS, The Gramophone, & Good Housekeeping were the sort of reading material we had around. Thrilling stuff.
Yes, I had spotted the spam. I'll see if I can get rid of it.
Yes I suppose it would seem relatively adult, but as we were so short of money my Dad always insisted that any weeklies/monthlies us kids had contained at least as much educational content as comic content. It may even be due to him having passed the 11Plus but his parents couldn't afford to send him to Grammar School, so he left at age 14. Thus, in his eyes, at aged 14 you were a young adult.
You'd also have to bear in mind my lifelong fascination for things technical. At aged 7 I took my Mum's bicycle lamp apart to find out how it worked, at aged 8 I had a basic 'Electric Set' project kit (including 6V battery)for xmas, at aged 11 or 12 for xmas was a transistorised electronics project kit which included (amongst other projects) a simple LW/MW/SW receiver. And this is how my very first interests in the hobby of Amateur Radio actually started.
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