Before I start, I'm not one of those Diet Coke warriors. I like the stuff. In fact I love it. I could easily drink 2 or 3 litres a day of 'black gold', as it's affectionately known in my house. And that's despite knowing it causes osteoporosis and toothrot and all that other horrible stuff.
Seems there's another thing "Doke" isn't very good for.
Sperm.
That's right, boffins have tested 'Coke douches' (popular in 1950s America, presumably replaced by the equally inconvenient but slightly less sticky rubber johnny).
The results, published in New Scientist and read over someone's shoulder on the Tube this very morning, are astonishing. Coke itself was not a great spermicide, killing only 41 per cent of sperm on contact.
Diet Coke, however, that waistline-friendly invention of body-conscious 1982, actually stopped in its tracks ALL of the sperm that was unfortunate enough to wiggle into that particular test tube.
Crikey.
Don't rush to try it though.
The scientists also said that once the sperm make it to the cervical canal (which takes only seconds), the Doke doesn't have much effect. Drat. You'd have to be pretty speedy to shake, aim and spritz in those few quick seconds.
If you do decide to go for it, look out for my next public service post, coming soon and entitled "Coat hanger abortions: the definitive guide".
Friday, 10 October 2008
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times...
Lord Low of Dalston, 63, is chairman of the RNIB and was appointed a People’s Peer in 2006. Born partially sighted, he lost all his sight by the age of three. He underwent counselling at a time when his marriage was having problems, which revealed traumatic memories of an austere childhood in a Scottish school for the blind.
The forties were not a very good decade, and nothing very much that was good happened then, as far as I was concerned. I was sent to school when I was three, and it was a nursery department of a national school for blind children in Edinburgh. My mother sent me there and I boarded there on a weekly basis. In middle life I suddenly recaptured memories of crying myself to sleep in a little iron cot in a cold, bare room full of other children. I wasn’t very happy there, I missed my Mummy I suppose.
On the other hand I remember feeling lucky, because I was only there during the week, and a lot of the children were there on a termly basis.
From the age of five to seven, I went to an RNIB school in England, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but when I was seven I was forced, much against my will, to go back to the primary department of the boarding school in Scotland, because the RNIB school couldn’t make provision for me.
Again, I wasn’t very happy then. Culturally, I was rather posh and middle class, and it was mainly working class kids. They were very rough. I don’t think I could say I was bullied. I don’t think I was bullied systematically. I quickly had to learn to speak how the kids spoke there, because I was the odd one out.
The staff weren’t very nice at all actually. They employed quite young teenagers as maids, as they were called, to look after us, and they were a bit rough as well, I think.
I can remember once when one of these young girls said - I think my mother had complained about how they hit us - and this young girl, she couldn’t have been more than 16 or 17, she said to us one day, “We’ve got permission to hit youse”.
They’d hit us with their hands, and you know, if sometimes two kids were fighting or scrapping, they might bang their heads together. That’s a terrible thing to do with blind kids. Not only does it shock them terribly because they can’t see it coming, but kids who suffer from detached retinas and things like that, a bang on the head can easily affect their sight. So that wasn’t very good.
I do have to say though that although I wasn’t very happy at this Scottish school, I have always been very grateful for the education that I got – a Scottish primary education, which was very good. I learned proper grammar, as well as Braille, so I got a good education which has stood me in good stead ever since.
My home circumstances were a bit upheaved at that time, my mother was ill in hospital so I went home in the holidays and stayed with some elderly aunts who lived together, my mother’s aunts. I was well looked after, but the circumstances were a bit disrupted.
My father died in the Second World War, and I never met him, so I never had any relationship with him. That meant that my mother was widowed and she had a rather tough time bringing me up on her own, and that didn’t do her health any good really.
I think I have missed the presence of a male figure in my early life, but I’ve done not too badly anyway, so I’m not crying over spilt milk, as it were.
The forties were not a very good decade, and nothing very much that was good happened then, as far as I was concerned. I was sent to school when I was three, and it was a nursery department of a national school for blind children in Edinburgh. My mother sent me there and I boarded there on a weekly basis. In middle life I suddenly recaptured memories of crying myself to sleep in a little iron cot in a cold, bare room full of other children. I wasn’t very happy there, I missed my Mummy I suppose.
On the other hand I remember feeling lucky, because I was only there during the week, and a lot of the children were there on a termly basis.
From the age of five to seven, I went to an RNIB school in England, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but when I was seven I was forced, much against my will, to go back to the primary department of the boarding school in Scotland, because the RNIB school couldn’t make provision for me.
Again, I wasn’t very happy then. Culturally, I was rather posh and middle class, and it was mainly working class kids. They were very rough. I don’t think I could say I was bullied. I don’t think I was bullied systematically. I quickly had to learn to speak how the kids spoke there, because I was the odd one out.
The staff weren’t very nice at all actually. They employed quite young teenagers as maids, as they were called, to look after us, and they were a bit rough as well, I think.
I can remember once when one of these young girls said - I think my mother had complained about how they hit us - and this young girl, she couldn’t have been more than 16 or 17, she said to us one day, “We’ve got permission to hit youse”.
They’d hit us with their hands, and you know, if sometimes two kids were fighting or scrapping, they might bang their heads together. That’s a terrible thing to do with blind kids. Not only does it shock them terribly because they can’t see it coming, but kids who suffer from detached retinas and things like that, a bang on the head can easily affect their sight. So that wasn’t very good.
I do have to say though that although I wasn’t very happy at this Scottish school, I have always been very grateful for the education that I got – a Scottish primary education, which was very good. I learned proper grammar, as well as Braille, so I got a good education which has stood me in good stead ever since.
My home circumstances were a bit upheaved at that time, my mother was ill in hospital so I went home in the holidays and stayed with some elderly aunts who lived together, my mother’s aunts. I was well looked after, but the circumstances were a bit disrupted.
My father died in the Second World War, and I never met him, so I never had any relationship with him. That meant that my mother was widowed and she had a rather tough time bringing me up on her own, and that didn’t do her health any good really.
I think I have missed the presence of a male figure in my early life, but I’ve done not too badly anyway, so I’m not crying over spilt milk, as it were.
Coming soon...
(Mostly) female-fronted progressive metal
Philip Roth: tenderness and loss
Trains, planes, automobiles and boats: East London
Philip Roth: tenderness and loss
Trains, planes, automobiles and boats: East London
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
