My headmaster’s cutting remark

TO MARK the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, all schoolgirls in Sheffield were given a pair of scissors and every schoolboy a penknife, made from Sheffield steel, of course. An ancient law, possibly Viking, forbade the gifting of steel blades — money had to change hands. So the boys’ parents were charged a token price of halfpence per knife. Some parents complained: if the scissors were free, why not the penknives? The following day, many boys, including myself, went to school with bandaged fingers, accidentally sliced on the razorsharp knives. The headmaster of Abbeydale Road Secondary School addressed each morning assembly resplendent in mortarboard cap and gown. His health-and-safety advice on that day was: ‘I would remind the stupid boys with bandaged hands — and we can all see who the silly ones are — that the penknives are for sharpening pencils, not fingers.’ He grinned at his own humour before swishing off back to his office. J. Roberts, Church Crookham, Hants.