THE SECRET of success lies in cold showers. At least, it does if you want to enter the Tough Guy competition, an annual mudfest whose entrants this year included 300 police officers. Police Review (Feb 1) says that the competition – more Deranged Guy than Tough Guy – involves crawling through mud and under barbed wire, swimming through a freezing tunnel and hauling yourself over a straw-bale wall. Competitors then wade through a swamp and scale 40ft A-frames. Sergeant Neil Brown recommends cold showers in the run-up to the event and four warmer ones afterwards “to get the mud out of you”.
Another putative tough guy features in Police Professional (Jan 31), which reports on the success of “puppy blog”, an online training diary about an as-yet-unnamed police pup. The mutt is only six weeks old and is one of seven born as part of a new dog-breeding programme set up by Lothian and Borders police. With its own page on the force’s website, the dog is attracting fan mail from around the world.
Catering for those on the other side of the judicial divide is Inside Time (Feb), the national newspaper for prisoners. Its regular “Do you know?” feature comprises dozens of little-known facts that will keep its captive audience entertained for hours. For example, “do you know” that Britons’ expenditure on ukuleles has doubled in the past four years; or that half a million UK car crashes each year are caused by insects? More pertinently, only one in 58 police officers is on the beat at any one time, which must be a major grievance if you got nicked by one.
Next, to the delightfully named “Miss Bliss”, a former teacher who has posted on her blog what The Times Educational Supplement (Feb 1) calls a “spot-on parody” of the Government’s “Use your head – teach” adverts. Miss Bliss’s version prefers the slogan “Use your head – leave” and substitutes pupils with rapt expressions with “a pair of hoodies and a group of boys beating each other up in the playground”. “Work in the least respected profession,” the mock ad says. “You’ll soon have a personal insight into feeling undervalued, overworked, unappreciated and vilified.”
No danger of tap water being unappreciated, according to Nursing Times (Jan 29). Researchers have found that the stuff that comes up through the pipes is as safe as normal saline in cleaning wounds. There are a few provisos, however, including the quality of the tap water, the nature of the wound and the patient’s general condition. So not that safe then.