Not me, but like Max Boyce, "I was there"
Playing "Pirates" in school PE was a special treat. Nobody had to die for at least a month before we were allowed Pirates. All the gym equipment came out, and it would stay out for a whole week, such was its popularlity. Best not played straight after lunch break, mind.

Andy Collins climbed a rope, all the way to the ceiling of the gymnasium - some twenty feet up - and by looping the rope around his leg managed to stay there. It took more effort that it looked, because he soon sweating like Alex Ferguson in front of an FA committee and looking decidedly peaky.

We hated Andy, the bastard, the king of the double portion in the dinner hall. The shape of a cigarette, he could eat anything and not put on an ounce of weight. God knows where it went, but today it wasn't going to stay there.

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARCH!!!!!!" he said.

Double sausage, beans and chips followed by sponge pudding and pink custard rained down onto the panicked ranks of pirates below, who slipped, fell and crashed into each other like the Keystone Cops Mud Wrestling Spectacular that never quite made it to cinema screens. Puke. Diced carrots. Green goo. And as heads collided in blind panic, blood, blood, endless blood!

Mr Prince freaked. His brand new PE mats looked like an entry for the Turner Prize, and would probably have won if entered as an allegory on human frailty. His best vaulting box would have to be burnt, and three basketballs were subsequently deemed a danger to human health and formed part of a government dossier on chemical weapons.

The vomit and blood-soaked hoardes huddled together in the corner of the gym, swearing death on the miscreant Collins.

"Sorry," he said.

Oh, that's alright then.

We never played Pirates again.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 19 Aug 2004, 21:25, Reply)