Weird Things I Say, And Why I Say Them: #2

"Birch bark and charcoal."
This was something my A-Level Physics teacher used to say when describing how we could hand in our course work, to express that he was format-friendly. Almost every lesson, when handing out homework, he'd say something like, "It can be typed or handwritten, on floppy disk, paper, or birch bark and charcoal." (This was before e-mail had really hit the mainstream.)

That physics teacher has since died, I heard, and I find I'm struggling to remember his name. I recall his face quite distinctly, and his determined opinion that "birch bark and charcoal" was definitely the funniest thing that any teacher could say. So in his memory I roll it out occasionally when I want to say that something is deeply, deeply outdated.

EDIT: Lambert!  Mr Lambert.

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