One Christmas school holidays I remember well as a total gutter experience. No, not with the negative connotation that you may be jumping to. See for us the gutter was actually a place of great excitement and much creative fun. The particular gutter in question lay opposite our house at the Gap on the steep side of the hill that adjoined our neighbour’s front yards and footpaths. Well, it was at one of our regular street cricket matches that David, whilst retrieving a well hit ball, slipped on some heavy green slime that had built up along the sides of our neighbour’s gutter. The cricket game soon disbanded to make time for the much more threatening pastime of Gutter Skiing. Now, this activity involved running at some pace up to the start of the green chase and then with a combination of careful body balance and a carefree outlook, one could experience some of the exhilaration of downhill skiing. Oh sure, there was the usual comical bum sat smack, tumble roll spin and the all fours gallop but no falling disaster seemed to dampen our want for more. Finally, David reasoned that with a supporting running mate he may well be able to ski all the way to the end of the green track the metal storm water grate at the bottom of the hill. Tom give us your shoulder for balance says David as he steadies himself by grabbing Tom’s shirt at the start-gate and readies himself for the full downhill run experience. Well it worked. So whilst David’s acceleration was at the typical gravity induced meters per second squared rate, Tom’s more flat line linear speed graph had plateaued soon after the first bend. Sensing the loss of his flagging support, David took the evasive action of a quick jump and a fast run followed by a tumble roll on the grassy footpath, but not before Tom had experienced first hand that ancient lesson of never jump to the bitumen from a galloping horse why? cause it’s going to hurt. Ask him nicely today, and he will show you the sergeant’s stripe scar on his left knee where the black tarred pebble embedded road took a bite of Tom’s flesh on that fateful day. So now by mutual agreement, coupled with a few stern words from Mum, a complete change of activity – but not venue – was ushered in. Poor Tom was just sitting there in the gutter with his strapped up knee lamenting the end of his physical involvement for the day. He decided to start rolling things down the steep gutter and wistfully watch as they crashed into the metal gate at the bottom. Not long into his lament he created a structured pre-historic roller wheel from the dense clay he found in the eroded and exposed parts of the footpath nearby. Well the boy’s competition was rejuvenated. Let’s see who can make the fastest downhill roller from this available clay resource was the challenging cry. There was Pip’s tall skinny attempt that never made the turn due to its high centre of gravity (a concept luckily foreign to him at the time). Tom’s short fat early model certainly showed promise but his impatience to wait for the appropriate drying period saw his entry go pear (even sausage) shaped before the finish line could be crossed. By some quirk of nature, I happened to design a perfect model of clay roller in both width and height completely suited to this particular course. It was named peanut due to what looked like a nut embedded into its side. It may well have been true, given that I slipped the soft clay roller under mum’s Sunday (nut flavoured) Roast to ensure a racing hard entry. Peanut saw off any pretender to the crown of F1 Gutter King until David decided enough winning by me was enough. At the start line one afternoon for the umpteenth time Peanut lined up against the brother’s newly finished designed. David chose not to reveal his winged keel secret weapon for the next race and stood in a position behind our crouched over bodies. GO! – and the race was on between Peanut and Pip and Tom’s entry. Well before the first bend was negotiated we were all overtaken by David’s new entry. Now when I say over taken I am not meaning around I mean overtaken, as in over the top. See David had created a huge juicy soft slushy clay entry which he had launched after the starters gun, and it simply devoured in it’s tracks all our competing racing vehicles. David loudly claimed a mighty victory as his clay roller with its embedded competitors impaled itself on the metal grate. His celebration was only cut short by the meekly inquiring feminine voice of our neighbour who asked now that the race has finally been decided, do you boys mind if I pull the plug on the bath which I had this morning.
