Page 39 - 1966

THE SACRIFICE
"WILL NO ONE RID US OF THIS PESTIL TIAL CAP"
Twenty-nine
\ I
And so the Cap de es the times and yet remains with us-scru y, expensive, hazardous and purposeless. Let us instead go bareheaded, proud to display Nature's intended top piece, our hands on the handlebars, our money invested in education, freer, safer and wiser!
-P.R.P. U6A
He bore the cross upon his back, right up to Calvary, The purple robe upon his body was torn as it could be; And on his head a crown of thorns replaced a crown
For he had sold his righteous life for the 5inners, so that they
They nailed his body to the cross, upon the hill that day; Then twixt two thieves they stood it up, its pity to
They had an auction for his clothes, and mocked the man there dying;
on properly. It comes o with quite monotonous regu­ larity, often without any provocation. Indeed S.B.H.S. pupils are characterised more through' cycling with one harid xed to their heads than they are through actually wearing their Caps. The thicker the tra c, the more persistently the Cap comes o . The usual explanation for this phenomenon is that the rider has removed his hand from his head to avoid wandering all over the road-leaving his Cap undefended against marauding breezes. It is both embarrassing and hazardous to leap o a bicycle to salvage a stray Cap from the middle of the road. And as only our most dedicated patriots wear Caps under such conditions, we are needlessly jeopardising the very cream of the School!
of gold:
Might live again in peace on earth, and to their Father pray.
display.
For they forgot 'twas the Son of God that they were crucifying.
On this sombre note I must leave these purely prac­ tical considerations and proceed to the economic side of the Cap-and, after all, to many of us money is every­ thing-
A sudden darkness blocked all light for miles and miles around;
pecunia est omnis.
The people were so terri ed that they bowed their heads to the ground.
(As far as I know, no Roman did actually say this, and quite frankly, I do not care-it was worth saying any­ way.) In any case, according to a usually well-informed source, the School is approximately £4,900 short of cash. Now by dint of much personal e ort I have estimated that each pupil spends an average of 3.716 years in the School and buys 2.135 caps. The cost of a regulation-style cap is 17/11 and the number of pupils present .at the School is 680. A quick mental calculation will reveal that in the course of one year £360/15/10 is spent on the Cap. Let us consider what could have been bought for this money:
While thunder and lightning lled the air with such a clamorous sound;
Then as sudden as it had started, the sun came back again.
But when the people cast their eyes upon the holy cross, The man who they had nailed there was a limp and
lifeless mass.
So Jesus Christ, he gave that day his life, to all mankind; For many men upon this earth, to evils they are blind. Upon the cross he died for them, and also, I must tell, That now we have a chance of life in heaven, instead
Any of the following list:- 3.47 Mettler balances
of hell.
-A.D., U6A
8.02 Calculating machines 3.61 h meters 6.01Demonstration computers 8.03 Stereo microscopes
In recent weeks the Cap has vied with Viet Nam and Conscription as a topic of contention as it, too, probes deeply into our social and moral structures. As most people are unsure of their stand on this vital issue there is a need for someone to quell our mental anguish by establishing order from this chaos of con icting opinions. As personal prejudice on such topics is un­ avoidable it is with considerable reluctance that I have volunteered for this task. May I explain why I consider the Cap an unnecessary evil.
3.60 Overhead projectors
Firstly, I must dismiss any arguments based on tradition. Static tradition is merely an impediment to our reasoning. That the Cap was worn in the past is not in the least relevant. Many worthwhile traditions in the School have disappeared through a re ection of current trends, be they good or bad. There is no longer a school choir or orchestra; basketball and soccer are displacing rugby; Barracks Week has succumbed to reason. For the present, at least, hats have had their day. Virtually no-one in our age grOU wears a hat of any kind now­ except the eccentrics. This is, of course, indirectly su i­ cient reason for abolishing the Ca[. Nevertheless, allow me to assess the alleged practica value of this public school relic.
The nal argument left for me to demolish is that "the Cap looks good". I have reckoned that the life of the rst Cap is 2 years 47 days (allowing for the ten days' amnesty in which to buy or borrow a new one). This is the working life, but the time for which the Cap is respectable is considerably less. Indeed this "half-life " is normally restricted to three showers of rain, twenty hours of sunlight, or one washing in luke­ warm soapy water. By this time the colours have merged to a 1.tniform blue-grey, and the Cap bears little of its original shape. In any case, as with all aesthetics, our mode of dress should be dictated by our personal
It fails miserably in the function it purports to serve. It does protect the hair admirably, but, according to my medical knowledge, this is a relatively hardy part of the anatomy. But what about the eyes and the ears, our most delicate and valuable sensory apparatus. These are a orded no protection whatsoever Admittedly there is nothing to stop us coming to school with goggles over our eyes and cotton-wool in our ears, but surely the Cap should provide us with this essential protection from the elements? The thing, moreover, does not even stay
taste- de gustibus non est disputandum
(a genuine quotation, I believe, coined in the heydey of Ancient Rome indubitably by a hatless Roman and potent to this very day. For the sake of the 700-odd illiterate people in our midst, this means "You can't argue about matters of taste ".) In spite of all this, the nal distinction between tidiness and scru ness is in the wearer and not in the clothes. Indeed, we can't avoid the sneaking suspicion that it would probably be to the
2.41 Tape recorders
6.03 Horizontal bars
1.21 Gestetner electronic printers 0.26 Tractors and trailers
School's advantage that we should travel incognito.