1. There used to be such a thing as white dog shit. You don’t see it so much now but in the 70′s and 80′s it was a common occurrence. There was a certain aura about white dog shit which kids of today won’t be able to appreciate. As a result, I want my son (and our new arrival in July) to know of this extinct species of toly. I later discovered (through the wondrous pages of FHM) that the decline in white dog shit is directly related to the decline in the tradition of giving dogs a bone to chew. Apparently it was the calcium that turned the shit white as opposed to our long held belief that it had just dried out in the high noon sun of Scotland.
2. If you park your car in a street where there are pubs, the law of averages dictates that eventually some drunk will piss on your car door handle. I’ve seen it done. Sometimes deliberate, sometimes not. Some of the boyos I’ve seen pissing on motors are so drunk that they wouldn’t know whether they were urinating against a BMW or the Berlin Wall. It happens people. Think about that the next time you open your car door.
3. It’s not clever to hurdle picnic tables. A lesson which I personally learned the hard way (see yesterdays post). Smashing your leg to smithereens is not particularly enjoyable. Neither is the 2 weeks in hospital which results from such endeavours. I still get twinges in the really cold weather which is actually quite cool because I actually have a pain which falls into the general category of ‘gyp’.
4. Swans can break your arm. A timeless classic. No childhood is complete without this complete load of twaddle being drummed into any child. A rite of passage which drums in a lifelong respect and fear of one of the most beautiful creatures in the animal kingdom. I would feel that my children’s childhood would not be complete without this.
5. You will never ever meet anyone who had their arm broken by a swan. Directly related to 4 above. You could trawl the ends of the earth for your whole life. Like Grasshopper in ‘Kung fu’ and never meet anyone who had suffered a broken arm at the hands (wings?) of a swan.

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