Who sells chalk?

[Malcolm]

Or, as I was told (to be politically correct) Chalkboard paint

[Andy Hall]

Tell me you're joking.....

[Phil L]

You can use small pieces of plasterboard, which is just gypsum, or go out and try to find purpose made 'chalk', which is also just gypsum.

[John Stumbles]

There's chalk. You can find firkin great lumps of it lying around in the countryside in areas of, er, chalky soil.

[Owain]

[dmc]

Heh,

I've a big stack of it sat right behind me at the moment - results of taking a 7 year old fossil hunting at samphire hoe

Easy to break off a bit suitable for marking up with (if you don't mind the odd fossilised sea urchin in it :))

Darren

[mike]

So is there a new name for whiteboards as well?

[Rod]

No - but anything described as "flesh" colour, or "nude" (which to me, seemed pretty much the same thing), ...

[Arfa Daily]

I didn't say it wasn't. It still writes on rough walls though ...

Arfa

[Arfa Daily]

IIRC, gypsum is predominantly calcium sulphate, whereas blackboard chalk, or natural chalk, is fundamentally calcium carbonate, so not quite the same thing, although agreed, plasterboard does write on walls ok.

Arfa

[mike]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm sure I'll track some down now.

To all the people who said "my local post office", I've just tried my local post office and they said they've never sold chalk ;-)

[John Rumm]

Although blackboard does kind of imply a colour, whereas chalkboard doesn't.

Dry wipe board...? (or white dry wipe board!)

[Bob Mannix]

Blackboard chalk used to be natural chalk but is now mostly compressed gypsum anyway.

[soup]

Yup (in places were this sort of stuff matters) it is termed marker board.

[Arfa Daily]

Better report then straight to the government then as one of the ones not serving the public needs profitably. They will have them shut down in no time. Never sold chalk indeed ! How dare they be so useless !!?? :-)

Arfa

[dennis]

There are no places it matters.

To imply that someone's colour matters is racist, so you can't say the colour of an object matters as that implies racism by the one that says it matters.

So IMNSHO whomever came up with that cr@p is a racist, they might not think they are, but ,they are.

[soup]

Thought the bracketed /in places were this sort of stuff matters/ conveyed my disdain at what is and isn't considered racist and those who consider this[1] stuff important.

[1] Not real racism, those who think blackboard is racist along with ba-ba black sheep etc.

[dennis]

Those that think like that *are* really racist, they just think they aren't.

[geoff]

As with "biro"

Nobo board

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Malcolm saying something like:

PC ridiculousness. The term 'Politically Correct' is mostly misused, in this case by the person who told you that.

Fwiw, I have never, ever thought of black people when I saw a blackboard. Black cars will be PC'd out next in case it gives offence to somebody. That somebody will be a white middle-class sociology student, I've no doubt.