Ttbn,

In the roll of OLO posters, we each play our role

I am married into a family of teachers. Imagine the fun they have with me! Mind you some of them are so naive they believe the gw fantasy so its hard to take them serious.

Re petard. In the olden windjammer days seaman normally had long hair.
This could be dangerous with blocks and lines being everywhere,
So they tied their hair into a single tail like rope hanging down past
their collar. However if it got caught in some tackle he could be
"hoist by his own petard".

Just remembered more detail.
The end of the petard was made into a ball of hair and it looked like
a small bomb used in those days known as a petard.
So it was called a petard.

Schooling was pretty much a total waste of time for most kids in my grouping.
And wasn't helped by a teacher who's escape from Hungry came with a hatred of mankind.
But in his own way was a tragic figure, which even us morons managed to respect him all the more for, in his lonely existence, that we sometimes crossed in the cinema, and other odd public places. But always alone.

As he scrawled his incomprehensible attempt at English across the blackboard, his message was not contained in those words.
It took years to learn what his message really was.

Dan

Re Blocks and lines. Lines could be held taut by being chocked (wedges) on blocks (pulleys). Hence the old naval saying ‘chock a block’. Nowadays the term means something else.