Underwood’s Got Radioactivity

I remember an incident at School in about 1961, when I would have been 9 years old. We were being shown the back of the science labs by the Head of the Science Department, “Mad” Mike. The school had a narrow shaft, which contained a small amount of radioactive material, no doubt long since removed under layers of health and safety.

Our excitement at the sound of the Geiger counter clicking was matched by our subsequent hysteria on hearing, in the afternoon, that Underwood had been taken ill. “Underwood’s got radioactivity”, we all squawked, like a noisy herd of geese. I am not sure whether our emotions were more of excitement than fear, but very vivid and noisy it was.

The reality was more banal. Underwood had had his holiday typhoid jab that morning, or whatever it was that was injected in those days and had the common reaction to this.

I was inspired down this trip through memory lane by yesterday’s headlines on the Financial Times (Wednesday 26th May). “Fears over Eurozone banks”; “Markets take pounding”; “Korea tension rise” and then in big and bold capitals: “INVESTORS FLEE RISKY ASSETS”.

Oh no! It’s time to panic and run round the class screaming, like Chicken Licken. “The sky’s fallen in”. Like everyone who does not know where to turn, we spin in circles. The world, or at least the world that we know, is coming to. We had better tell the King.

If the gods wanted to destroy us and send us mad, then they could worse than create, well, I was going to say, the Financial Times, but that would not be fair. But certainly create people to write these headlines. (But they do sell newspapers, which is the headline writer’s job.)

All of this is predictable for avid readers of Deuteronomy (the fifth book of the Bible, i.e. the near the front). It explains how God tries to get the message home. Pretty harsh stuff. Chapter 28 verse 20 talks about God sending confusion and frustration. Why all this has happened to us, is not a question that I see posed in the newspapers. But it would not sell newspapers.

What does God say through the panic? That’s what you have to work out.