Introduction to the mud pit.
Posted by Kayne on July 14, 2021 at 09:35:52
Today (Wednesday) we got to school at 8:30 as usual and were told it was our turn for a Covid test. One of the girls in our set tested positive and despite a second confirmatory test showing negative, at 9am we were all told to go home and not come back until next term starts on 6th September, so we will miss the last day of term tomorrow and the fun of seeing off the leavers with the usual wet or messy mayhem.
My new friend Ali came to mine yesterday afternoon for a study session on a project we are doing for school. We finish for the summer holidays on Thursday and have to have finished it by then but as we’ve done all the hard work on it already we just had an hour’s work to proof-read and double check we had not made any silly mistakes, so by 3pm we were done.
I had suggested beforehand to Ali that he bring a change of clothes as we would have plenty of time for a swim, so we both changed out of the smart stuff we wear to school and donned jeans and tees; Ali in well faded blue denim jeans, an orange tee with a tiger head print and orange canvas shoes with blue socks (and boxer-briefs, as I saw in the showers later), me in my favourite 501 jeans, a bottle green tee and some old trainers along with blue socks and my usual M&S boxer-briefs. What I had not told him was that I planned to show him the obstacle course and the mud pit. Ali is happy about swimming in his clothes; I think I mentioned before that he grew up largely in Australia and he and his friends always wore jeans and tees for swimming as sun protection. (Hadn’t thought about this before, but do black guys get sun-burnt easily in the same way that some white guys do? I suppose they must, but maybe not so easily. Just a random thought.)
Having changed, we jumped in the pool and splashed about for a bit.
“Hey, Ali, after you’ve dived in again, I’ll take you outside to show you something else.” I called to him as he hauled himself out of the water and headed for the diving board.
“OK – I’ll make this my last one for the time being.” Ali called back.
As we walked down the track to the woods we went past the mud-slide that Chris and Tom had started that runs down the slope to the side of the garages and pool. It was still looking fairly damp and muddy after all the rain we had last weekend.
“That looks like fun – can we have a go?” Ali asked “Doesn’t matter if we get muddy does it?”
“Of course we can – it works better if we’re in wet clothes anyway.” I said and with that Ali threw himself head first down the slope, sliding to the very bottom and splashing into the muddy puddle at the bottom. He stood aside and watched me follow him. Freshly soaked and looking decidedly brown now we had another few slides down it each, getting muddier each time.
“Was this what you were going to show me?” Ali asked as we climbed back to the top trying not to slip up.
“No not really. But now I know you are happy to get muddy, we may as well go on and finish the job properly……..” I said, Ali looked puzzled “…….. there’s a mud pit and obstacle course in the woods that my older cousins built when they first moved here.”
“Would that be Chris who I met last time I was here?” Ali asked.
“Yes, that’s him. The other cousin was my uncle Dan’s son, Jamie. Sadly he died in 2019, he was the same age as Chris and they grew up together and went to our school as well. In fact it’s because uncle Dan pays for me to go that I’m even there at all.”
“Was Jamie involved in an accident or something?” Ali asked.
“No. It was a brain tumour and cancer.” I replied “He and Chris grew up together really, they were like brothers. One of Chris’ twin boys is named after Jamie.”
“That’s nice. I was named after an uncle who was shot dead in cross-fire during one of the many terrorist attacks back home, he was only ten when it happened. One of many kids killed, sadly.”
“Would you like to go back to Ethiopia sometime?” I asked.
“As a tourist maybe – it is supposed to be very beautiful in places and has a long, long history ……... but to live? No. We moved to Australia when I was almost two and I have an Aussie passport and dad works for a government agency, so he and mum are never going back.” Ali said.
“You don’t have an Aussie accent?” I grinned.
Ali laughed “I can have one if you like, cobber!” he replied in broad Aussie mode “But it doesn’t really fit the look, does it?”
“I suppose not …….” I laughed.
By then we were approaching the first obstacle, the muddy ditch crawl. It had been muddy when I did it the other day with Kevin but after more rain yesterday and overnight it really was sloppy and wet this time.
“Oh my God – I have always wanted to do an obstacle course like this.” Ali shouted when he saw it “And you lucky b*****d have one in your back garden!!”
“Off you go then …… get as muddy as you like!” I laughed.
And he did just that. Now, I thought I knew how to get very, very muddy very, very quickly but Ali had barely crawled a couple of body lengths before he was as one with the mud – I swear if he had stopped moving, he would have been invisible! He crawled along on his front, rolled over as he crawled, ducked his head and face into the mud and genuinely seemed to enjoy every moment. When we stood up at the end the only visible parts that were not muddy brown were his gleaming teeth and the whites of his eyes.
Ali looked down at himself “I hope this washes off OK!” he laughed “My mum would have a fit if she saw me in this state ……..”
“What would your dad say?” I asked.
“He’d be laughing his head off …… and then he’d probably join in.” Ali grinned.
“That’s exactly what my uncles here would do ….. jump straight in and try to beat us on each obstacle.”
We went on to the hanging bars after that and Ali aced that as well, swinging across with ease from one bar to the next before landing gracefully on the far platform. He watched my less graceful efforts and when I slipped one bar from the end and splashed into the muddy water below, he jumped in and joined me. We splashed around and washed a lot of the mud off ourselves before clambering out and moving on to the next obstacle, the water-filled trench with logs across.
“OK. This is what you do here. Go under the logs that are at water level or below and over the logs that are at head height or above. Simple.” I said.
“Says you.” Ali grinned “……….. I didn’t expect it to be this deep, mate …..” Ali said as he waded through the almost chin deep water. The trench had really filled up since Kevin and I did it and I was struggling to keep my mouth above water in places.
“Nor did I.” I replied “You are allowed to swim along instead of wading through.”
It was a real struggle to reach up and get over the higher logs and after the first two we gave up and just swam to the end, diving under the low logs. We both collapsed, breathless, on the grass after crawling out at the end.
“That was hard work.” I said as I rolled onto my back and stretched out.
“How often do you do this?” Ali asked.
“My brother and I did it over the weekend but before that it had been a while. I’m a bit out of shape after missing exercise after my appendix burst and I was in hospital for a bit. I only had the final dressings removed last week.” I explained “We do have an early morning swim session in the pool – proper exercise doing lengths, not just splashing around – every morning. My uncles and cousins all join in – only the men though. We do an hour or 45 minutes depending how everyone feels on the day.”
“I had my appendix removed when I was seven along with my tonsils, not sure why. Your exercise regime is very disciplined. My dad and I go running at the weekends but apart from going to the gym and doing sports at school that’s it for me.” Ali said.
“You look very fit though.” I said “It obviously works for you.”
“That’s genetics. My mum and dad and grandparents are all the same.” Ali said.
“Where do your grandparents life?” I asked “Do you se them often?”
“Mum’s parents are still in Addis Ababa, dad’s live in Perth along with my older sister. We speak on Skype or WhatsApp regularly and go back each summer if we can. My sister is training to be a doctor. What about you? You’ve never mentioned your parents or grandparents?”
“No ……… mum died last October from Covid – it was very sudden – and I’ve never known who my dad was; neither have Kevin or Katie – all the men in mum’s life seem to have got her pregnant and then disappeared; the only one’s who didn’t were the abusive ones who stayed and made our lives a misery until she threw them out. And then we moved here around Christmas 2017 when mum’s distant cousin found out her circumstances and everyone offered for us to move in. I was thirteen. I never met mum’s parents, they died before I was born.”
“Sorry, I’d no idea about your mum – sorry I asked.” Ali said.
“That’s OK. We don’t talk about her much really – probably not enough. She was kind and loving but too soft a touch for the men she hung out with, one of those women who got pregnant too young and never could get away from that cycle of dependency and not coping well with life.” I said “Shall we get on to the next obstacle ……. before I start crying or something!”
“Yeah, OK – wouldn’t want to see that!” Ali said as he patted me on the shoulder and stood up “By the way, do you get a boner from getting wet and muddy?”
I wasn’t expecting that. “Yes, I do actually.” I replied.
“Thank God, I was thinking it was just me being weird ……” he laughed.
That rather broke the awkward moment and we both burst out laughing as we grabbed our boners through our wet clothes and made adjustments before laughing even more. After that we finished the other obstacles quite quickly and then headed to the mud pit. After all the water we’d waded and swum through we were soaking wet rather than caked in mud and we both had fairly obvious boners trying to tent out the crotches of our jeans and we had both seen each other taking a good look, so that was fine.
“How deep is that mud?” Ali asked as we approached the mud pit.
“It varies from knee deep to chest deep and different areas have different depths. Jump in and see what happens. If you’d like deeper mud then step to another area and see what happens.” I said.
“Wow, that is mint, mate!!” Ali shouted as he jumped in and sank to his waist immediately. The mud was sloppy and splashed up around him as he sank in. “I love this, it even seeps into your jeans if you tug at the waist …….. oh wait, and your undies as well. Oh God – it’s soaking my balls now ……” and I could see his hands busily moving under the mud.
I jumped in and joined him, I hit the mud a few feet to his left and immediately sank to my chest, splashing Ali with mud as I landed so that he was completely covered again. He stepped towards me and we both ducked under the mud again. We spent a while splashing and fooling around in the mud and then we headed back to the house after washing a lot of the mud off in the flooded trench as we passed it.
We hosed each other down in the garage yard and then went inside for a warm shower, stripping off down to our underwear before having a hot shower. I laughed when I saw that his boxer-briefs were branded Comfyballs! I asked him about them and he said his dad had bought him a few pairs as a joke after he complained he could never get truly at ease in the ones he had. Great move dad. I asked if they were truly as advertised by the name and he said they were; might be worth trying them out myself.
As we were showering uncle Dan walked in from the pool in his normal swim-shorts.
“Hey, boys, how you both doing?” he asked and after I had introduced him to Ali he continued “I’m doing a BBQ tonight, are you staying for that as well, Ali, you’d be most welcome.”
“Well, I was expected home soon, sir.” Ali said.
“Why not give your parents a ring and see if they would like to join us – I’ll happily speak to them if that helps.” uncle Dan said “And drop the ‘sir’ business, I’m just Dan to all of Kayne’s friends.”
So that was sorted and an hour later Ali’s parents arrived. Like Ali his dad was a handsome chap, tall and slim with a graceful almost slow-motion way of moving around and like Ali he had an Afro hair style, just a bit longer all over than his son. His mother was a stunner – probably the most beautiful and elegant lady I have ever seen. Uncle Dan’s mouth fell open when he was introduced at the front door and everyone else seemed pretty much the same as she walked into the pool area and then out onto the terrace. They were both dressed ready to go for a swim, Alijoh in yellow swim-shorts and a jungle print tee, and Joella in a one-piece orange and yellow flame pattern swimsuit with a flowing tropical print wrap fastened around her waist. Even I could see that they made a stunning couple.
Ali had borrowed a pair of yellow and black striped swim-shorts from our bin of spares. We had a great evening and Ali and his parents were great company, Ali seemed to lose his shyness as the evening progressed and he and they mixed with everyone as if they had known each other for years.
- Re: Introduction to the mud pit. Zonie 16:08:12 7/14/2021
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- Re: Introduction to the mud pit. Kayne 16:17:13 7/14/2021
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- Re: Introduction to the mud pit. Kayne 16:17:13 7/14/2021
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