I've Been Remembering

I remembered, in the week, a thing I and my friends used to do in primary school. When it happened I wondered to myself whether or not the remembering process was the same one that Peter Kay goes through when he unearths his gold from the gas-filled mine of his memory. It occurred to me as I saw kids engaging in an activity that was needlessly foolish, not naughty or dangerous, just slightly annoying in a "WHY!?" sort of way. I can't remember what exactly they were doing which triggered my recollection, which is partly why I am unable to engage in observational comedy, I am too ignorant.

During playtime, when we'd got to the age where we were taking our own bottles of pop (fizz/soda/etc) in our bags, we'd all gather round and conduct what seems now to have been some sort of communistic experiment. Between us we would have amassed quite an array of various pops, from the simplistic blank sheet of lemonade, to the refined dandelion and burdock, to the more extreme limeade, the absinthe of the ffisibop world.

A huddle would occur, where the bottles were opened, and the tops traded around chaotically, before we began the haphazard, messy experiment. A dash of limeade would turn the lemonade a weak green, raspberry and strawberry would combine without changing colour, but making both flavours bizarre. The frantic yet meticulous exchange of liquid from differently sized bottles through dissimilar necks would ensure that most bottles were inevitably covered in the sticky sheen of spilt pop. The thoughtless, joyous experimentation would end with the floor awash with spilt specks, the bottles drained from wastage, and the remaining pop in every bottle reduced to a vague, mucky brown, regardless of the original base content. Simple fun.

Perhaps tellingly, the only other time in my life where reckless mixing of drinks was involved heavily in fun was during University, where an ill-advised punch often coagulated in an ad-hoc manner. This potent brew also invariably ended up a fetid brown colour. This is probably down to the marketing genius of Ian Coca-Cola, leading to the drink being unavoidable in daily life.

This fluid-mixing-based memory led me on to another similar remembrance. As far as I can remember I have always loved bathing. I use the time primarily to read, with having a wash becoming a handy side-effect of the process. As technology advanced and I became more reckless with it, I began factoring gameboys (that is the handheld gaming console, not young males who were up for it) into the bathing experience. This morphed into the DS and PSP, which I occasionally take in, should I be addicted to a game, to the chagrin and frustration of people who understand the cost of a pound. In all my years of taking things into the bath, I have only ever dropped something in once, it was a book. Someone else's. I put it on the radiator afterwards and it dried out (badly). Apologies can be worth $7.99RRP between siblings. I used to have a more expensive bathtime hobby, though I couldn't have realised it at the time.
I used to use shower gels, shampoos and whichever other lotions live on the bathroom shelves as the ingredients for my amateur bathtime alchemy. I very much enjoyed mixing the clear green of Timotei with the reluctant viscosity of conditioner. I probably wasted a hell of a lot of product. And, of course, I never discovered gold or the secret of eternal life. But my hands were always soft and clean.

A friend of mine came home briefly as he had finished his Uni course, and I went to visit him, in the process taking a walk I took often a number of years ago. It was easy, on autopilot, to regress to feeling like the jittery teenager I had been when we used to hang out most of the time. I was delightfully brought up to date by a trampolining child at the end of my street. The pavement goes right past a garden, which the trampolining child, and the trampoline, were in. Not taking a gap from his bouncing, the small boy, possibly around 6, piped up; "Hello". "Hello", I replied. "Hello, old man", spake the child.


Now, a jittery teenager I may no longer be, but I would like to this that my occasionally haggard and bearded visage still holds the glow of youth. I suppose to a child of 6 I might have looked like an ancient giant of olde, traipsing the land in search of the bloode of an Englisheman. Either that or he was a little shit.

Either way, I was amused and gently smiling to myself as I went on my way.

The path that leads to my friends house is overhung with trees, and was heavily overgrown in the olde days whither I did wander to his abode, overgrown both with the trees and with the pickies and stingies. The council have, in the intervening time, laid a wider concrete path there, and trim the encroaching growth back from time to time. I vaguely remember hearing that something dreadful happened to someone in there (some form of assault probably) and so they took steps to make the path less dreadful in the night. It hasn't really worked. The path is devoid of electric lighting, and so if it is nay a night where the moon is fat then it is in complete darkness. 'Mor tywyll a glo' (as dark as coal), we would've written in Welsh, as we lazily avoided using our imaginations to concoct fresh similes. You genuinely cannot see your hand if you hold it up to your face in such circumstances, which I delight in telling people.

The path overlooks a park, which has had most of its appendages switches since I yobbed around there as a vagrant teen. Gone are the simplistic features; the slide, the swings, the roundabout, the see-saw and the frankly dangerous rocket ship which a bigger kid pushed back and forth and the little kids flew backwards and forwards in the middle crushing themselves against the dividing bars and sustaining severe rib injuries. In place of these classics there are shiny multifaceted items, colourful pieces which are a slide, swings and monkey bars all in one, and as fun as none of them by themselves. If you take out the classic, simple, plain swings, then where oh where are nervous teenagers going to hang around in the night and have their first clueless cackhanded pseudo-sexual experiences? SELFISH COUNCIL! Just because the kids don't have a vote! It's immoral etc.

Behind another, larger, fence, there is an outdoor swimming pool, which I think actually does open during the summer, but to me will always be an empty circle filled with discarded strongbow cans (not mine, I hasten to add). I have a hazy memory of a time where, after a day spent playing football in the adjoining rugby field, a group of us spent the night in our pants playing water polo in the pool after hours. I was fairly certain of this, as I walked the path, but the memory is distant, and my first thought was of how cold is must have been, which in my sensible jumper, seemed an insurmountable issue with late-night water polo.

There is no place in my memory of that night for the cold, only the irreverent fun of the moment, and the probable bollocking I received when I got home. And yet as I walked and remembered, my first thought was for the cold, focusing on the reasons against, rather than the reasons for, getting involved in such a silly thing.

"Hello, old man", indeed.