Bulldog Mentality.

When I was a younger chap I liked nothing better than sport. Be it football, rugby, golf, cricket, it did not really matter as long as it was full contact and win at all costs. In those halcyon days healthy competition was positively encouraged. In fact you could tell a chaps social standing by how long it took him to get picked for a side in our favourite pastime of playground football.1

Playground football was of course a close blood relative of association football, only played with a tennis ball and minus the rules. Oss had been instrumental in our school banning the use of full size footballs due to his uncanny knack of being able to break any pain of glass within his vicinity when armed with a size five mitre. 2

Then it happened that warm spring morning at the arse end of April 1980. Nimble had just returned from the Easter holidays, staying with his auntie and uncle in Bodewryd, located in deepest darkest Wales. 3

On a side note, people from the isle of Anglesey must be kept on a short leash. This is partly in fact due to their predispositions for binge drinking, fighting in the street, having unhealthy relationships with their sisters and in most cases being the proprietors/operators of ramshackle fun fair rides.4

One good thing did come out of the village of the dammed that Easter holiday. That one thing being the game Nimble had learnt while on holiday. Enter in to the tale the playground marvel that is British Bulldogs. Now for those of you not familiar with the game and the rules pertaining to it’s success here is a brief synopsis.5

· The game has a tig-based format with the bulldogs or players that are “It” standing in the live or in play area of the field. 6

· The players/combatants stand in one of the “safe” areas located at either end of said field of play. 7

· The name of the game is to get from one safe area to the other without being caught/beaten up by a bulldog.8

· If you are caught then you to become a bulldog and therefore honour bound to try and kick the crap out of the remaining competitors.9

· Last man standing wins and is top chap.10

For reasons clearly apparent, Mr. Dell our primary schools demon headmaster took a dim view of our new favourite pastime and promptly banned it from the schools grounds. In hindsight it was probably a good thing, as Keith The Thief had taken the roughhouse nature of the game a stage to far, his tactic on being caught and becoming a bulldog?11

Simplicity itself, he would then proceed to kick everyone who tried to rush passed him in the bollocks as hard as he could.12

Step forward one Barry “Bazza” Stewart, whom during an especially violent round of the aforementioned game, found himself on the wrong end of Keith The Thief’s size four Doctor Martin boot. The poor bastard had to be rushed to hospital and on his return to school a few days later he was greeted by his new nickname. The very cruel but, it has to be said, highly amusing “Oddball”. 13

Yes old Barry “Onenut” must have been extremely relieved when the calendar crawled round to mid July and the school broke up for our annual six week long summer holidays.14

Being a manly sort of a fellow I had signed up for a two week long boys club camping trip. The camps location half way up a local glen, next to a river, at the arse end of fucknowswhere. My mother must have been delighted, two weeks without my good self keeping her on her toes. Now that this was 1980, I was ten years old, The Health & Safety Executive had not yet been set free to run amuck through every aspect of everyone’s lives and a young chap could actually have fun.15

A boys club camping trip in 1980 involved a collection of musty old twelve man tents, toilet facilities that would make the public toilets in Cairo look like the shithouses at the Ritz and a daily diet of campfire scorched sausages accompanied by luke warm baked beans. The food standards agency would have had a field day, but unlike today’s mollycoddled spoilt bastards no one developed the dreaded lurgy and to the best of my knowledge nobody was even remotely close to being killed to death.16

Then came the daily activities programme. Firstly we were taught how to build a rudimentary bivouac by an overgrown boy scout type chappy, whom looking back was a first rate candidate for being a seasoned kiddie fiddler. Then a local gamekeeper type took it upon himself to teach us how to dispatch rabbits, skin them, butcher them and cook them up in what appeared to be a miniature witch’s cauldron. 17

The lesson thought that is my abiding memory of what I learnt on the trip was taught to us by Dave’s father, who for reasons known only to himself kept a selection of reptiles aka snakes. Dave’s old man then proceeded to get all manner of hissy venomous looking vicious bastards out for us to and I quote “Handle!” Fuck that I thought to myself as he approached me with one of his yellow and green chums. He then proceeded to put the frighteners on us by dropping into his lecture that and I quote “There is only one venomous snake in the British Isles. The adder easily identified due to its distinctive black colouration with green diamond pattern. Found mainly in its preferred natural environment in which you are camping!”18

Oh spoons!19

That was it, no a winks sleep did any of us that night get, as from that moment on we were all convinced we could hear perpetual hissing from the pitch black of the night outside our laced up the front tent. I for one huddled in my sleeping bag fully clothed hoping that if Hissing Sid and his cohorts did slither upon us in the dead of the night I could show them a clean pair of heels.20

Keith The Thief being half pikey took a more robust view and had purloined the small shovel used to keep the campfire in check. “If one of those slippery buggers pokes his head in here I’ll twat it with this!” Said our sticky fingered classmate, holding up and waving his latest acquisition in a forlorn attempt to reassure us.21

Roll the clock forward to three thirty in the morning; outside the tent it was pitch black and pissing it down with rain. Nervous tension and days of being over excited had taken its toll as most of the chaps in our tent had eventually dropped off to sleep.22

Not so fortunate though was Dave’s old dad as he popped his head under the tent flap to check we were all all right.23

Boing!24

Went Keith The Thief’s shovel as he put the flat side of said coal shovel to good use and twatted poor, poor and now sadly concussed Dave’s dad round the side of his impressively side burned head.25

That taught him for his reptilian scare mongering tactics.26

As for Keith The Thief he was sent home to his parents for summary execution, blissfully I did not see him again until school reconvened in early September.27