Dung Beetles, Coal Mines & Sporting VIPs!

This week, as always at this time of the year,  we have our two granddaughters staying with us so each day is taken up entertaining a ten year old and an eight year old. Fortunately the weather is good so we are able to get out and about. On Monday we popped over to Leicester to enjoy a wonderful day at the National Space Centre and  on Wednesday we spent a long day at the Snibston Discovery Museum in Coalville, Leicestershire. Snibston is a super day out – science, technology and local industry come together to provide children (and adults!) with lots of things to enjoy, learn and discover. The girls did scientific experiments, made a compost maker in an old plastic bottle, looked at displays of local industry and technology  ranging from fashion to coal mining to transport and everything in between. Neither they nor we wanted to come home!

Enjoying one of the many science
tests at Snibston

One of the things that we especially enjoyed was a tour of the coal mine – the discovery museum is built on the site of a disused mine – once part of Leicestershire’s industrial base. We were taken round by a retired miner who was wonderful in the stories that he told, the information that he gave and “picture” he so skilfully painted of what life was like deep underground both when he was working there and in the distant past. It was a salutary reminder of the grim life that these men led and which we all took for granted. There were about twenty of us in the group that went round the site – visiting the various places that defined the miner’s day and by the time that we reached the end of the tour no-one – young or old (and there were many children) were in any doubt about the harsh reality of the coal miner’s life. What came over to was not only the conditions that these men worked in day in day out, not just the fact of descending deep into the dark bowels of the earth for several hours  each day, not only the sheer hard grinding physical  toil but something else. It was the discipline of the whole thing – both personal and professional. Time after time we were reminded – for example, as we sat looking and listening in the  explosives room or the surgery or the room where helmets, lights and batteries were collected and handed in each day that the miners had to adhere to a strict code for the good of everyone and themselves. Each man had to be totally reliable and disciplined both for himself and his colleagues. We looked at the banned items – things that could not be taken down the mine – innocuous, everyday things such as a bar of chocolate, a torch battery, a sweet wrapper or a personal  item. And the reason – unlikely though it might seem - these could unknowingly or accidentally bring danger a thousand feet underground in what were already dangerous and difficult working environment.

We heard and saw how the miner would use his face mask in the event of fire and how, if he was lucky, it might give him a few extra minutes before smoke and carbon monoxide overtook him – but this at a price. The wearing of the mask was painful, uncomfortable and overbearing, but the alternative was a quick death. Again – discipline and strength of character – both to submit to the rules unquestionably and apply them yourself for your own safety and that of your colleagues.

The leader of our tour commented that one of the questions that he often gets asked especially when showing children/school groups around the mine is “Where did the miners go to the toilet when they were far underground”. His answer was, they couldn’t – you made sure that you went before descending, but if you had to go then there was no alternative but to doing it in public. Of course all the children squirmed and went “Yuk” – a perfectly normal reaction - and the miner commented that the men didn’t like it either so did everything in their power to ensure that it didn’t happen.

Ready for the coal mine tour

It would not be untrue to say that even though many of us, I am sure, knew much about the life of a miner and the conditions that they worked under we were all in places a bit lost for words. To the children it must have seemed a far distant planet.

As I sat listening I thought back to a brief conversation we had had with Ellie our eight year old granddaughter that morning. As we all lay in bed together talking about what we were going to do during the day Ellie asked what time we were going out. Pat told her and Ellie very seriously told us that she couldn’t go out that early since “My dung beetle is giving birth just then”. Pat and I looked at her in amazement – what was she talking about? Ellie quickly explained she has a game on her computer tablet and she has to “look after” a virtual reality dung beetle. There you go then! As I sat listening to the tales of the coal mine I wondered – seriously – how that, the “caring for a digital dung beetle - fits into the great scheme of things. Only 150 years ago children younger than Ellie were already working and dying in the mines. To Ellie the biggest problem she had was a virtual reality dung beetle. I can’t escape the conclusion that we have gone wrong somewhere – not in banning child labour in mines but in developing a world where, it seems to me, our young are increasingly losing all sense of the realities of the real world -  all is increasingly trivial and of the moment. They are continually living in a play world, unwilling and increasingly unexpected to develop basic life skills and responsibilities of adulthood. A play world might be fine for an eight year old but it increasingly seems to me that it extends further and further into what should be adulthood with young people having, perhaps, a misguided sense of reality and increasingly inhabiting a world bereft of responsibility.

I was still pondering this depressing (but I believe true) thought as the tour ended and we made our way to the cafe for lunch. We sat enjoying our sandwiches and as we did so I checked my smartphone for any e-mails. I glanced at the BBC news and read to my disgust of the behaviour of the England Cricket star Monty Panesar. Panesar is one of the foremost cricketers of the world -  a hugely paid and celebrated sportsman. Earlier this week he was convicted of urinating on some doormen at a night club. Apparently, he was celebrating at a club in Brighton and a number of young women complained that he was harassing them. I understand that he was asked to leave, a dispute broke out and he was ejected from the club. He then urinated on the doormen who chased him and caught him cowering in a shop. Police were called and the rest, as they say is history. A poor kind of history and a sad indictment on the man and his celebrity status!

Of course, having been convicted apologised for his behaviour – except he didn’t – it was “his spokesman” who apologised on his behalf. He wasn’t even man enough to appear himself – in  my view,  what a sad and despicable man.  I read that apparently this gentleman has been of increasing concern to his club and his country by his behaviour of late – but of course, he is a sportsman so is forgiven everything that any normal person would be expected to comply with and his celebrity status guarantees that despite his actions he will still be lauded and drooled over – and, of course forgiven. Apart from the obvious totally unacceptable crime of urinating on another person (one would severely chastise a three year old for that!) one might also ask what he was doing at a night club at 3 a.m. in the middle of the high point of international cricket an Ashes test series in which he was involved. Not a lot of discipline there either personal or professional. 

The delightful Mr Panesar - a man
so shallow that he cannot even apologise
personally for his offensive behaviour

As I sat reading this I thought of the miners we had just been hearing about and their self and professional discipline. Poorly paid men who in this day and age might well have questioned some of the rules they had to obey or that they imposed upon themselves. Would they have urinated on someone?  Maybe - I don’t know – but if they had then I’m pretty sure they would not have run away and then not been man enough to stand up and admit it. They wouldn’t have had “a spokesman” to do it on their behalf.

This morning I read a letter in the Guardian from a lady in a pleasant village just down the road from me – she sadly commented upon the skills that the young men of her village are developing in this modern age. It was gratifying, she ironically commented, that young men are learning how to “multi-task” – she had just observed a young man drawing cash out of the local ATM in the village market square and at the same time urinating against the wall. Well, there you go then. No miner’s discipline there then! Maybe the young man concerned was a pal of Monty Panesar. Maybe they were both VIP members of this superclub utilising the life skills that only VIPs have!

But back to the cafe! Having read about the unacceptable antics of one of our top cricketers I looked further at my smartphone and read that the continuing, soul destroying tale of the Liverpool footballer Luis Suarez grinds on and on. The headlines said that Suarez is adamant that he will leave Liverpool for another club because he says at his age “I have to think of my career first”. Errrrr – no, age or career has nothing to do with it. What should be his priority is the contractual promises and obligations that he made to Liverpool and for which he is paid huge amounts. His contract has not expired – he simply sees greener grass elsewhere. This is the man who has received a number of bans for amongst other things biting a fellow player, making racist remarks to fellow players and cheating on the field of play. At every point Liverpool stood stoutly (and wrongly) by him but now when he sees more money on the horizon so he wants off. Of course, he will probably get what he wants in the end – Liverpool cannot have a discontented player who disrupts the team – and young fans will, therefore, see him get waht he wants and  assume this appropriate behaviour from a man who is idolised. No thought here of his responsibilities and the fact that he is paid huge amounts of money to play a game for just 90 minutes each week. No thoughts here that, just maybe, having signed a contract and been paid the sort of money in one week that a miner would have to work back breakingly hard almost for life to earn he might have some moral, let alone legal, obligation to the club and the fans who pay his wages.

Suarez - make sure that you don't enter into any
kind of contract with him - he'll walk away from it since
his needs, he confesses, are more important than
the commitments he has made to his employers and
and his team mates

It is perhaps not insignificant that this week Saurez has been made to train away from the rest of the team because of the effect he is having on his team mates. Panesar, too, is under scrutiny by his County team because of his “negative attitude” and the effect that it is having on the squad. Both of these situations I guess would have been quite unrecognisable to a miner who knew that his everyday health and well being depended upon being able to be good team member, obeying the rules for the good of all, being able to rely on your friends and they in turn being able to rely upon you

Clearly both these young men live in a parallel universe totally oblivious to the accepted codes of behaviour and moral response. The world in which they live is like that of my granddaughter’s dung beetle totally unreal – and yet, the tragic part is that millions throughout the world think that this is alright!  Sadly these fans will continue to mindlessly applaud their sporting celebrity heroes – their every transgression forgiven and “understood”  all because they are sportsmen (allegedly) and celebrities. Millions, it seems, are happy that their heroes can get away with this – things that if they behaved in a similar fashion then their own employer would almost certainly  show them the door and society would almost certainly be much less forgiving of their actions. We live in an increasingly strange world!

Keeping the ball in the air without touching it -
science again at Snibston

And this is the world that my grandchildren are growing into. Already they are living for part of the time in a virtual reality world – a place removed from reality were a digital dung beetle is seen as important. That, of course, is only a game but as I get older I  question more and more what the young will increasingly see as an acceptable world. In the face of virtual dung beetles, “VIP superclubs” and celebrity sportsmen with huge cult followings who live a life devoid of and oblivious to many of the basic human codes and responsibilities I think parents today should be very, very afraid. Sadly, I don’t think that they are because in the end it’s not seen as important any more – life is just there to be enjoyed seems to be the modern credo. Maybe Mr Panesar and Mr Suarez need a few shifts down a mine to alter their perspective on life and, sad to say, just maybe we need to expect more of our young so that they learn to discriminate the world of virtual dung beetles and celebrities from the real world – but somehow I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon.