School Sports DayAt some point in the distant past, someone at my school had built a large concrete tank behind the sheds and called it a swimming pool. Proud of this, they had a "Swimming Sports Day" in which everyone had to participate, even those who couldn't swim (they got to walk across the shallow end of the tank).
This would probably have been OK if the pool hadn't turned a deep opaque green the night before due to lack of maintainance. Even the school sports stars didn't want to go near the gloopy mess in the pool. We were practically pushed in. I'm sure some of the younger kids never surfaced again and the non-swimmers looked petrified.
Tell us your sports day horrors.
(
chthonic, Thu 30 Mar 2006, 11:13)
« Go Back
I'd rather be somewhere elseSports days were always a waste of time as far as I was concerned. I was never going to get picked for anything because of my dreadful athletic ability and complete lack of concern for the actual process of performing in the largely pointless competitions we were set. so, the last sports day at my school, i wasn't there. I went to a shooting match for classic arms instead, borrowed a .45 automatic pistol and a .38 revolver and happily pounded the crap out of boer war through to world war two era targets in the shape of germans, cossacks and the like. Happy days! if only they'd had combat pistolry down as a sports day activity. Which would you rather do on a hot day - run around in a revolting yellow vest, or blow multitudes of big holes in a cardboard cossack?
The other, even less savoury sub-sports-day was an annual whole-school cross country match. there were two versions of the course, a short one for the juniors and a longer one for the seniors. I'd been caught out at one point and actually ended up running the entire three-mile length of the course. You'll already know me as a lazy oaf, and you'll smell a scheme brewing, oh yes. i considered the alternatives to fair play that my colleagues had dreamed up. these included:
- Walking the course instead of running it, as a sort of protest (too public, I dislike derision)
- taking good amounts of ganja with them to lessen the pain (not my bag, at least not then)
- smuggling in drink (considered risky from a disciplinary standpoint)
My plan was even more idle. on previous runs I'd spotted a ditch some four feet deep and forty or fifty yards long. I wore a smelly old CCF poncho to keep the cold wind out, which helpfully also concealed a 58-pattern webbing belt that supported a set of mess tins, water bottle and hexy stove (gotta love the CCF, the kit we had was all older than half our parents). last in line as usual, and out of sight of the staff, I doubled back, hopped into the ditch and sat there for the next hour happily brewing coffee and contemplating the mysteries of the universe. I rejoined the run as they returned, coming in last of course, just to keep up appearances.
Go me. but only when it suits me.
(, Sun 2 Apr 2006, 0:40, Reply)
« Go Back