My Perfect Cousin
There is a path through life with cousins. All of mine lived some distance away so the early years were when the whole family of uncle, aunt and siblings came to stay for Christmas, Easter or for part of the summer holidays.
If you got on, you then went through a stage from about ten year’s old going to stay alone with your favourite cousin. The relationship eventually peters out when girlfriends come on the scene and then you only see each other at family bun fights.
One of my cousin’s was my best friend and we shared an obsession for football. When he came to my house we played for hours in the garden, just the two of us, taking turns in goal.
We played until it was dark and then turned on all the lights in the front of the house and put torches in the two trees we used for a goal.
When I stayed at his house we had a lot more players to hand and I lived out some of the best days of my life.
There is a path through life with cousins. All of mine lived some distance away so the early years were when the whole family of uncle, aunt and siblings came to stay for Christmas, Easter or for part of the summer holidays.
If you got on, you then went through a stage from about ten year’s old going to stay alone with your favourite cousin. The relationship eventually peters out when girlfriends come on the scene and then you only see each other at family bun fights.
One of my cousin’s was my best friend and we shared an obsession for football. When he came to my house we played for hours in the garden, just the two of us, taking turns in goal.
We played until it was dark and then turned on all the lights in the front of the house and put torches in the two trees we used for a goal.
When I stayed at his house we had a lot more players to hand and I lived out some of the best days of my life.
A bunch of us from my cousin’s road whooped and yelped as we rode our bikes. I shared one with my cousin or borrowed his friend’s little sister’s bicycle, which was pink with a basket on the front. Our destination in this sleepy seaside town was the legendry Dial Hill, the meeting place for footy mad kids in the town. There was always a game at Dial Hill and it could have been Holland or China with the amount of bikes.
There were normally two groups, an older one made up of teenagers and a younger group. Depending on numbers the two groups either stayed separate or mixed together. The older group always chose the flatter area with short grass.
The football was intense and full on. After a marathon session the Armada of bikes set off home for tea. It was up hill all the way, which was tiring on the legs, covered in bumps, lumps and bruises as no quarter was ever given on Dial Hill.
There were normally two groups, an older one made up of teenagers and a younger group. Depending on numbers the two groups either stayed separate or mixed together. The older group always chose the flatter area with short grass.
The football was intense and full on. After a marathon session the Armada of bikes set off home for tea. It was up hill all the way, which was tiring on the legs, covered in bumps, lumps and bruises as no quarter was ever given on Dial Hill.
After tea we would race down to our football nirvana, always trying to beat our record time of six minutes and twenty six seconds.
The evening sessions in summer were the best, but the time flew by and in no time we were peering through the dusk trying to make out the ball.
These were the very best of times and something you presumed would last forever.
We spent every holiday we could together and had a very similar sense of humour. When we were not playing football, we played Subutteo, Copit and modelled Airfix kits.
My perfect cousin was just that, except for a tiny flaw, the strange way he spent a penny.
I am not sure when I progressed from taking a pee with my trousers and pants around my ankles to unzipping my fly and peeing the conventional way, but the simple fact that I can only remember the later points to a healthy, natural evolution.
My cousin was normal in every aspect except for always leaving the toilet door wide open and standing, with his shorts and y-fronts, not just half way down his legs, but always hugging his sneakers.
He was still doing this at ten, which I thought odd, and was shocked some twenty years later at a family wedding when I caught him doing the same.
What did he do at work? Standing next to the boss at the urinals while discussing last month’s sales figures, did he yank down on his suit trousers and boxers until there were lapping around his brogues and carry on chatting as if it was the most normal thing in the world?
I never had any toilet trouble and had very few accidents apart from a disastrous school trip to the Tower of London when I was sick over a nun and followed through simultaneously.
I have never been a good traveller and got a little cocky on the train journey from Exeter to London and had a fateful sandwich swap with Patrick Babb, one of my no nonsense cheese sandwiches for his pilchard and banana combo.
The English back then were so conservative when it came to food, all except sandwiches, when it was open season. Kids who would have run screaming from an avocado pear would happily wolf down some kind of fish filled monstrosity with shiny silver scales, bones and staring eyes.
Other people’s toilet troubles plagued me through school and a lot of it had to do with nuns.
For some unknown reason I went to a convent. We were not even Catholic, but it had a reputation for being a good school.
In the first and second year of infants, at the end of each day, a nun would read us a story.
Within minutes a high pressure hose sound would interrupt the tale and a red faced pupil would sit upright as a puddle formed on the floor by their feet.
It was more often girls, who were well catered for with a big cupboard stacked with navy blue knickers and brown paper bags. The offender was whisked off by one of the nuns to get cleaned up and changed while a second nun busied herself with a bucket of pine disinfectant and a mop.
No one missed any of the stories and the whole saga would last no longer than five minutes.
If it was a boy who had a misdemeanour, then it was a very different story. Girl’s water flow had more of an uninterrupted path, while boys had the added problem of grey flannel shorts which acted as a sponge like barrier.
The nuns could never entertain being involved in a boy wetting himself, other than mopping up the offending spillage from the floor. Willies did not exist at Stella Maris.
For some unknown reason, probably because my dad was a doctor, I became solely responsible for sorting out the aftermath of such a debacle.
“Paul, be a good boy and accompany Crispin to the lavatory so that he can finish.” He finished emptying his bladder two minutes before and what she was really saying was, “I know you are only five years old, but I will say fifty Hail Mary’s tonight for your dear kind soul if you can just please take this problem away!”
I had no training for this – There was no ‘Janet and John clean up Pete the piddler’ stories to circum guess what to do in such a crisis.
I was on my own and I made sure I never got my hands wet, so to speak, but gave a commentary which basically was for the poor chap to wrap a couple of toilet rolls around each arm and keep padding away until at least some of the wetness was soaked up. The next stage was to wring the sopping shorts and regulation white y-fronts out into the sink.
If that wasn’t bad enough, when we got back to the classroom, it was a scene of tranquil serenity -all wide eyes and sucking thumbs. We had missed most of the story as no nun was involved in male toilet action.
You had to grow up fast on pee patrol.
My relationship with nuns never recovered and it reached a new low when we entered year five. The grumpy old nun who was to be our form teacher sat us down and said she had a question to ask us all.
We were expecting something along the lines of, ‘did you have a lovely summer holidays,’ or what we would be doing in the school year? But no – with eyes glaring she hissed, “Who still believes in Father Christmas?”
I had received a double whammy, when on a trip to the beach, mum’s old van broke down, and as she went to find a phone to call the garage, my older brother and his mate Nick Blight told me that Santa was a myth and the facts of life in three horror filled minutes.
I don’t know which was worse, no St Nick to deliver on the Christmas Eve or the thought of my father doing those terrible things to my mother.
When half the class put their hand, she blurted out, “Well he doesn’t exist,” and began the register
A few months later and we went on another school trip to Barnstaple to see the Sound of Music
This time I made sure I didn’t swap my cheddar on white for any of Babb’s tempting pickled Halibut and lemon curd sarnies.
By the end of the film when Julie Andrews had chucked her habit and was ready to get down and dirty with My Von Trappe, all the nuns were blubbing. Presumably for what might have been? I sat stony faced and unmoved. “Who believes in fairy tales now?”
The evening sessions in summer were the best, but the time flew by and in no time we were peering through the dusk trying to make out the ball.
These were the very best of times and something you presumed would last forever.
We spent every holiday we could together and had a very similar sense of humour. When we were not playing football, we played Subutteo, Copit and modelled Airfix kits.
My perfect cousin was just that, except for a tiny flaw, the strange way he spent a penny.
I am not sure when I progressed from taking a pee with my trousers and pants around my ankles to unzipping my fly and peeing the conventional way, but the simple fact that I can only remember the later points to a healthy, natural evolution.
My cousin was normal in every aspect except for always leaving the toilet door wide open and standing, with his shorts and y-fronts, not just half way down his legs, but always hugging his sneakers.
He was still doing this at ten, which I thought odd, and was shocked some twenty years later at a family wedding when I caught him doing the same.
What did he do at work? Standing next to the boss at the urinals while discussing last month’s sales figures, did he yank down on his suit trousers and boxers until there were lapping around his brogues and carry on chatting as if it was the most normal thing in the world?
I never had any toilet trouble and had very few accidents apart from a disastrous school trip to the Tower of London when I was sick over a nun and followed through simultaneously.
I have never been a good traveller and got a little cocky on the train journey from Exeter to London and had a fateful sandwich swap with Patrick Babb, one of my no nonsense cheese sandwiches for his pilchard and banana combo.
The English back then were so conservative when it came to food, all except sandwiches, when it was open season. Kids who would have run screaming from an avocado pear would happily wolf down some kind of fish filled monstrosity with shiny silver scales, bones and staring eyes.
Other people’s toilet troubles plagued me through school and a lot of it had to do with nuns.
For some unknown reason I went to a convent. We were not even Catholic, but it had a reputation for being a good school.
In the first and second year of infants, at the end of each day, a nun would read us a story.
Within minutes a high pressure hose sound would interrupt the tale and a red faced pupil would sit upright as a puddle formed on the floor by their feet.
It was more often girls, who were well catered for with a big cupboard stacked with navy blue knickers and brown paper bags. The offender was whisked off by one of the nuns to get cleaned up and changed while a second nun busied herself with a bucket of pine disinfectant and a mop.
No one missed any of the stories and the whole saga would last no longer than five minutes.
If it was a boy who had a misdemeanour, then it was a very different story. Girl’s water flow had more of an uninterrupted path, while boys had the added problem of grey flannel shorts which acted as a sponge like barrier.
The nuns could never entertain being involved in a boy wetting himself, other than mopping up the offending spillage from the floor. Willies did not exist at Stella Maris.
For some unknown reason, probably because my dad was a doctor, I became solely responsible for sorting out the aftermath of such a debacle.
“Paul, be a good boy and accompany Crispin to the lavatory so that he can finish.” He finished emptying his bladder two minutes before and what she was really saying was, “I know you are only five years old, but I will say fifty Hail Mary’s tonight for your dear kind soul if you can just please take this problem away!”
I had no training for this – There was no ‘Janet and John clean up Pete the piddler’ stories to circum guess what to do in such a crisis.
I was on my own and I made sure I never got my hands wet, so to speak, but gave a commentary which basically was for the poor chap to wrap a couple of toilet rolls around each arm and keep padding away until at least some of the wetness was soaked up. The next stage was to wring the sopping shorts and regulation white y-fronts out into the sink.
If that wasn’t bad enough, when we got back to the classroom, it was a scene of tranquil serenity -all wide eyes and sucking thumbs. We had missed most of the story as no nun was involved in male toilet action.
You had to grow up fast on pee patrol.
My relationship with nuns never recovered and it reached a new low when we entered year five. The grumpy old nun who was to be our form teacher sat us down and said she had a question to ask us all.
We were expecting something along the lines of, ‘did you have a lovely summer holidays,’ or what we would be doing in the school year? But no – with eyes glaring she hissed, “Who still believes in Father Christmas?”
I had received a double whammy, when on a trip to the beach, mum’s old van broke down, and as she went to find a phone to call the garage, my older brother and his mate Nick Blight told me that Santa was a myth and the facts of life in three horror filled minutes.
I don’t know which was worse, no St Nick to deliver on the Christmas Eve or the thought of my father doing those terrible things to my mother.
When half the class put their hand, she blurted out, “Well he doesn’t exist,” and began the register
A few months later and we went on another school trip to Barnstaple to see the Sound of Music
This time I made sure I didn’t swap my cheddar on white for any of Babb’s tempting pickled Halibut and lemon curd sarnies.
By the end of the film when Julie Andrews had chucked her habit and was ready to get down and dirty with My Von Trappe, all the nuns were blubbing. Presumably for what might have been? I sat stony faced and unmoved. “Who believes in fairy tales now?”
Paul Cooper
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