Every couple of years my TV bosses send me and others on a residential course to cope with working in a war zone. It was noteworthy that this month’s refresher contained a module looking at how to survive a terror attack in Britain.
It was presented by a former Royal Marine. He had no time for the current, official Metropolitan Police guidance on what to do when confronted by an armed extremist. “Don’t run, don’t hide,” he said, “your best chance is to do this.” At which point he demonstrated what looked like the front crawl, a series of haymakers designed to make a knife-wielding assailant flinch.
You might expect opinion to be divided on what, ultimately, amounts to a deeply personal contingency. There are arguments for flight and for fight. More surprising was what our trainers told us about first aid. How do we do CPR? Should we use a tourniquet? These are some of the fundamental questions faced by first responders and they were not settled, as you might imagine, by Florence Nightingale.
For when it comes to keeping people alive in the moments after a traumatic event, the canon is far from closed. On previous courses I accepted the explanation of evolving practice on how to stop “big bleeds”. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where soldiers survived the loss of multiple limbs thanks to the early application of tourniquets and the rapid intervention of cutting-edge medicine, made sense of the idea that some treatments could still be modernised or contradicted. But the number and speed of chest compressions? The importance of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? The received wisdom seems to alter every few years.
It’s the kind of thing that has cynics at the back of the class gurning. Does first aid have a producer interest, which induces contractors to keep coming up with new material? Surely not.
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Before heading off to Lourdes, my daughter Edith had her 18th birthday party, in the field opposite our house. There were about 25 guests, none of whom smoked and several of whom reviled alcohol with puritanical conviction.
So far, so Generation Snowflake. Except that listening to them exchange “bants” (banter) and chanting their paean to Jeremy Corbyn, it was hard not to recognise the unchanging vigour of youthful idealism crafted by sharp brains as yet undimmed by failure or ennui.
Best of all, my anxiety about an invasion by hundreds of demented teens was groundless. Our eldest daughter had used social media to invite guests, but only via closed networks. That tabloid staple – the suburban home trashed by a Facebook-inspired horde – is, it seems, now very Noughties.
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I have been channelling my inner Jacob Rees-Mogg recently. This involves flying in the face of conventional sartorial wisdom. The proximate cause of this eccentricity was the open day at the school on whose books four of my children find themselves.
The pupils looked immaculate in their blazers. The male teachers, in spite of the sapping heat, donned suits. However, the parents, the men particularly, looked as if they had misread their invitations. Most of them were ready for a beach party. Flip-flops and shorts, T-shirts and tats.
A handful of us stood dressed as you might for a summer wedding, jackets and ties, sweaty and self-conscious, and perhaps a little sanctimonious too. After all, right was on our side. How can you expect the kids and tutors to wear full fig while looking like an extra from Miami Vice yourself?
The answer to that question may involve the “c” word, and I’m not referring to cheeky Jon Bercow’s recent pronouncements on the necessity, or otherwise, of the necktie. “Choice” is the thing. The school attended by four of my children is fee-paying. Of my other two children, one is about to start and the other has just left the local grammar school.
I have no way of proving this, but I have a hunch that if the grammar school stipulated – as the fee-paying school did – that parents should look the part for open day, then more parental ties would have been on show. That’s because mums and dads at the grammar school, in my experience, are more biddable. They are getting a top-flight education for their offspring without having to cough up. That sense of gratitude is missing in some parts of the independent sector.
“I’ve chosen to pay, I’ll dress how I like,” seems to be the emerging unspoken rule.
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