Thanks Mike.
My favourite subjects at school were Maths, English & lunch break.
In English classes i was introduced to a range of classic books which in the most part i thoroughly enjoyed.
Once i left school & got a job, there was little time or inclination for reading books as other activities which always involved girls, parties & drinking took precedence.
It was only in the early eighties when i found books again & that was primarily due to my career which involved working a lot of overnight shifts.
The overnight shift ( the dog watch ) was from 10pm to 6am & because i was a junior i would cop weeks of them in succession.
In those days the night shift was usually pretty quiet between midnight & 4am but you still had to be alert for anything unexpected so the biggest challenge was how to stay awake & alert during these quiet hours.
My solution was to bring into work with me a magazine called " The Post "
It is true that the cover featured a beautiful model in a bikini with more pictures of her promised in the centerfold & i know that Ozzyjack & Hobbit will not believe this but the main reason that i bought this particular magazine was because on their last page was a full size " mega " crossword.
The magazine only came out once a week so my initial target was to complete this massive crossword before the next edition came out.
It took many months of trying but i was eventually able to achieve this feat.
Before too long i was able to complete the crossword within a couple of nights which created a new problem, how am i now going to keep myself awake & alert for the rest of my shifts?
So i would bring in a book to read.
It was usually something comedic, a crime novel, an intriguing mystery or science fiction but definitely never anything from the Victorian era which surely would have put me to sleep.
I do appreciate just how well read mkenuk & many others on the forum are.
Mike points out that dunning was replaced years ago with bailiffs & heavies.
Having had my share of encounters with both, i am definitely familiar with those terms but i maintain that to continue to class dunning as common is not realistic for the majority of players.
