See Emily play.

I was thinking about my school days today and I remembered some of the games we used to play. Mostly I remember a game called Piss Flaps. Not the most ingratiating of names for a game you may think, and you'd be right. Especially when you find out the intricacies of the game itself.

The whole point of the game was to shout "Piss Flaps!" and finish the yell with the term, "No slugs."

Should you fail to say "No slugs" before someone else said "Slugs" they got to hit you on the arm as hard as they wanted.

This was the structure of the game itself until someone came up with an additional rule, which meant that if you said something that sounded like Piss Flaps, i.e, Fish Plaps, Piss Flops, Puss Flags, and someone called Slugs incorrectly you got to hit them on the arm.

Looking back, I wonder why we got so much fun out of Piss Flaps. But when you're young you do stuff like that don't you? I did anyway. And so did most people; Ok, then most guys, at my school.

It may have been a male bonding thing, it may have been a weeding out the chaff thing, it may have been little more than an excuse to beat seven shades of shite out of each other. Who knows? Not me. For an answer to that question you'd need to go speak to a socio-cultural anthropologist, or some other overpaid dickhead who drank his way through college and did less work than a Council workman.

While I was casting my mind back into the fug of yesteryear it occurred to me why didn't we play Cowboys and Indians or Cops and Robbers when we were in school. And then I remembered that it was because if you had suggested anything like that and you weren't a teacher you'd have got the shit knocked out of you.

And you wouldn't have to say Piss Flaps.