Thursday, April 21, 2016

Whistle While You Work

People don't go around whistling like they used to, do they? This sad truth came to my mind the other day when wandering back late in the evening after checking on an English Language course we run for our foreign scholars I crossed the path of one of our girls, presumably making her way home, and, unexpectedly, whistling to herself most tunefully as she did so. She didn't break off, I'm pleased to say, whilst passing me as I don't think she saw me coming and probably didn't realise I was a teacher, dressed as I was in my civilian clothes for the evening. Her tunefulness is, I'm afraid, the exception that proves the rule, hence my taking such notice of it.

When I was working in a factory back in the 70's there were any number of whistlers happy to vie with the Radio 2 shlock that was piped into the workplace. (How much I loathed that station then!) Was this a working class thing, the whistling, I mean? Do guys on the factory floor still maintain their humanity in this way? I hope so.

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