When I were I young lad.... We used to play out on the street, in gangs of kids, doing quite physical and sometimes risky things. By that I mean we used to climb onto the roofs of buildings, up trees, set the occasional fire and run away from the odd angry grown up who wanted to spoil our fun.
Gangs of kids these days tend to spend their time doing drugs, assaulting random members of the public and vandalising property. The adults now give them a wide berth, unless they happen to be the local psycho nutters who spent their own youth chasing people down with knives and stealing cars. The new gangs tend to know who the nutters are and are afraid of physical pain so they in turn show 'respect' to them. Well, that is how it goes in my mind. I have not seen this in Belgium, where I live in a world where the crime rate appears, at least, to be a bit lower. I may be deluded of course.
Anyway, I digress. The point of my post is actually to talk about my recent bathroom installation course where I learnt how to, funny old thing, install a bathroom! I turn to the title of this post, Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy, which is a slightly cleaner way of saying that something is easy to do. In this case, once I had practised fitting a few pipes together, I gained the confidence that I was somehow competent and that I would not experience the dreaded leaks and floods. The course I attended was very good, I learnt how to install: a shower, a radiator, a bath, a toilet, a basin and all of the associated pipework. I did have a few minor leaks which were quickly rectified.
I now cast my 'expert' eye over pipework and heating systems and am able to identify the parts and assess how it is put together. I already have a number of projects that I would like to undertake, being eager to try my new found skills out! During the course we learnt about compression joints, soldering pipes and 'push fit' plastic pipes. It really is quite straightforward. More to the point I was shown the necessary tools for the job, what a difference that makes, having the right kit!
Going back to my childhood and days spent throwing lumps of soil at each other as we fought battles in the public spaces of the local park. The council gardeners would come round and turn over the soil which would form 'grenades' of soil that would burst spectacularly on the footpaths and the heads of unlucky kids as we fought pitched battles. We used to divide the gang into two teams and fight for each end of the shrubbery and planted areas. The passing adults would give us hell for making such a mess and the battle was often halted as someone took a serious hit to the head and eye, as I did on at least one occasion. We were lucky not to be blinded.
Bringing me back to the phrase Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy, as kids this was more of a taunt, ie you can easily jump that gap between the garage roofs, it is easy peasy lemon squeezy, kind of a challenge that you could not back down to, not if you wanted to retain any ranking and credibility in the gang. Usually such a taunt then led to a challenge being undertaken and either a trip to casualty or a victory lap. Of course, once one of you had done it the rest had to follow up and heaven help you if you were the last or most reluctant to break your neck, it was usually me. I can honestly say that I spent less time in casualty than my brother who was and still is more of a risk taker than I.
I was thinking recently about some of the games we used to play and one of them that sprang to mind was when we used to go to the baths or swimming pool as posh people would call it. We usually went as a gang of at least 4 and often when it was raining outside, so not really great for playing out. One of the games was to stand on the edge of the pool and see who could pretend to die in the most theatrical way, being shot, stabbed etc. The idea was you fall into the pool as you are 'killed'. I related this game to a friend of mine aboard a ship one day and he just had to take it a bit too far... He started saying 'so did you douse yourself in petrol and then set fire to yourself before then leaping into the water?' Stokers eh? Funny old crowd. My mind then went to rather more radical forms such as suicide bombing, but then how would you simulate that? We did used to play tuggy, which was a kind of tag game where you would be on until you managed to brave the deep end and potential drowning to tag another player. Often you would get out of the pool to 'run' along the side to catch up, which then meant the lifeguard would shout at you. Occasionally we would get thrown out if he had had a bad day and was hung over... We did feign drowning but it never worked, no matter how lifeless you floated beneath the lifeguard, years of experience at spotting fraudulent casualties no doubt. Every now and again we would try and get into the baby's pool, which was considerably warmer than the main one, if only to defrost for a while.
Anyway, this has gone a bit random. Nothing much to do with Belgium here this time!
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