Oh dear!
I just stumbled across this while looking for some local news.
In Summary
Hecklers urge on car park jumper
Police have condemned hecklers who urged a man to “get on with it” as he threatened to jump off the top of a multi-storey car park.
A crowd gathered as the 21-year-old was perched on the eight-storey building in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, while officers tried to calm him down.But some onlookers started shouting at the man, urging him to jump.
Trained negotiators later arrived at the scene near the town centre and persuaded the man to come down. He was later reunited with his family and given counselling.
Police said about 50 people had gathered at the scene in John Street on 22 February and about half a dozen started telling the man to jump.
Pc Mark Dyson, of South Yorkshire Police, said: “It was incredibly frustrating to see this happening when we were just trying to help the guy. “It might have been a bit easier to understand if it was teenagers messing about but these were adults shouting things like ‘jump’ and ‘get on with it.” “When you’ve also got people shouting things like this out of vans driving past it’s terrible really.” “What would these people have thought if it was one of their relatives up there?”
Oh the shame! You see, Mexborough is the town I grew up in. Thankfully, my formative years were not too damaged by contact with these idiots!
Actually, this reminds me that aged about 15, I was able to borrow a Derek & Clive LP from the Public Library. Its absolute filth of course and I shouldnt have been allowed near it until at least, um, 16.
If I recall correctly there is a song on the LP that goes something like this…
“As I was walking down the street one day, I saw a man at a window…” Then he sings “JUMP, you F****er, Jump”
Perhaps all those onlookers had also been members of the Library audio section?
If they were, then they were lucky! I recall how hard it was to get in! I kid you not, it was a right rigmarole.
Let me take you back……
This is the dawn of time as far as Doncaster Library Service is concerned. They are still using paper for everything. I’ve probably got more computing power in my bedroom at 15 than the whole of Doncaster council has. For those of you under 30, I’ll explain.
Every item in the Library has a 3cm x 8cm piece of card on which all its details are typed, and I mean typed, not printed. This piece of card sits in a little pouch in the front of the book or attached to the record sleeve. When you borrow an item, they take the item card out and stamp on the pouch the date you should return the item. They take one of your library cards (which is also a sort of pouch thing), and put the item card into it, then they file it awaiting return.
So anyway, getting tickets for borrowing books is easy, childs play, in fact they do give them to children. Imagine that!
Getting tickets to borrow “Cassettes”, is similarly easy.
Now LP’s, obviously this is before CD’s, Lp’s are a different matter all together. They make it a condition of getting “Record” tickets, that you have to bring your stylus into the Library! Thats right you have to dismantle your “Music Centre” and take it to the library. Some Parents didnt allow this and so, I swear, at my school there was a bigger boy that would rent you a stylus, in exchange for one of those lovely new pound coins we had just been introduced to.
When you go to apply, the Head Librarian must be there too, for he is the only one worthy of checking your stylus. He actually puts it under a microscope to check that it has a diamond tip. He would then offer his advice and verdict, “could do with a clean, but it’ll do.”
Dont know why they bothered really, the state of some of the records was appalling, jumping and hissing and scratchey, and this is years before hip-hop got big.
Mentioning the Head Librarian, brought other memories flooding back, so excuse me while I reminisce. His name was, I think, Mr MacDonald or MacSomething, anyway he had a beard. His wife was one of my Teachers at school and we used to have a weekly trip down there to take our books back and choose new ones. That’s if you had a library card, some Parents werent as bothered as mine and those kids had to stay behind and make do with the school Library.
After returning old and choosing new books, we all sat down in story corner (this is baby school!) and one of the the Librarians would read us a story. Head Librarian and Teacher would disappear, a nice little set up for them really, an hour off together.
At the time we used to whisper that they had gone for a snog *cue giggles*
Now I realise they probably just went to do a bit of shopping!
Why cant we keep the fun, giggley childs view of the world?
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