The not so damp squid

I saw an old schoolmate the other day, apart from ageing forty years he didn’t look any different. He still had his usual hang dog look, he still licked his comb before flicking his lank blonde hair back, although he was now flicking it from nearer the middle of his head than he used to. Nothing much was said, we just exchanged a few embarrassed pleasantries then went our respective ways.

I'm almost sure the jacket he was wearing was the same one he had at school, buttons missing, sleeve stitched from the outside, school dinner down the front, it even had a dark area on the breast pocket where the school badge would have been. He was so tight that he would buy ten cigarettes then put each fag in its own packet, so he could get them out and not have to pass them round, "sorry lads, last one" he did that ten times a day and thought we wouldn’t catch on. I wonder if he still does it now.

We had many a laugh at his expense, like the time we dared him to put a banger (Explosive firework Maddy) in a still warm and steaming dog turd, we were spending our afternoon dinner break on the old army camp just across from school. He took the bait, to be honest I don’t know how he could get that close to it and not heave, the smell was atrocious. The banger was called "The Colossus" it was big in every way, it looked like a stick of dynamite, and sounded like one too when it exploded.

Our hero made a big show of inserting the banger into the unsuspecting turd, making sure that it was completely covered apart from the fuse. He did this almost lovingly, I suppose it was the showman in him coming out, this was to be a spectacle worthy of the two and six (that’s 12p in new money) he had spent on the colossus banger. We watched from a safe distance smoking the fags that had dropped from his pocket when he took out the banger. He had his back to us and was hunched over the turd making his preparations, presently there was a wisp of blue smoke, and he unhunched himself and scuttled over to where we were. We all waited with bated breath, but nothing happened, "Damp squid, Damp squid" we taunted him. The banger was a dud. Determined that he wouldn’t be done out of his money, he advanced on the turd, which now sported several flies, all of whom were oblivious to the imminent danger they were in.

What happened next was another of those slow motion scenes, imagine it. Our hero lights another match and slowly brings it nearer to the fuse. Cut to friends looking horrified and screaming but no sound comes from their mouths. Cut back to close up of hero looking puzzled, cut to the fuse which spits a spark out of the end, cut back to hero's face contorted with the realisation that he has made a major mistake, cut to flies going into warp drive. Then cue sound and BANG, that turd was spread across two counties, but most of it peppered our hero in smelly, sticky, slightly burnt orange shit. His hair was blown out from his head in Einstein fashion, his eyebrows had disappeared, his nose was burnt, and the poor bugger couldn’t catch his breath. He kept blowing out his cheeks in an effort to breath, all of this gave him the appearance of Orville the duck, add to that the crazy dance he was doing, it was a bizarre sight.

We couldn’t stop laughing, we were in pain with laughter, and we laughed even harder when he came out of shock and started barfing from the stench. Things got worse for him when in desperation he threw himself in the little stream that ran through the camp in an effort to rid himself of the shit. Someone had dumped engine oil in the stream, it covered the bank where he jumped in and rolled around. Now instead of looking like Orville the duck he had transformed himself into one of the black and white minstrels. This was the one and only time I have ever relieved myself in my pants, I was ill with laughing, gasping for breath and making sucking sounds, I thought I would die.

It was impossible to go back to school. We followed (At a safe distance) our hapless friend home and watched, with not a little shame as he slowly cleaned himself up in the kitchen sink and tried to make some sense of his wild hair that refused to do as it was told. For many years after that day, those events would pop into my head for no reason and I would laugh out loud, and seeing him again brought it all back.