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Yes! I'm quite interested in death in a kind of morbid way. Erm.
Which goes together. Well, death just happens.
Boom and vmph, and that's just it. There.
Erm, confusing beast.
Some people have the life force. My gran had it, she just would not check out.
She had three strokes and was paralysed down the left-hand side.
She was still in there, "I'm sticking here."
The Grim Reaper must have been on her shoulder. "Come, old lady, it is your time.
"We go to the Land of the Dead.
"Come, we will travel across the River Styx on my boat.
"Two, please.
"One and one OAP.
"What? Are you coming?"
My gran's still at home. "No, I'm not coming.
"Got stuff to do. I've got to sit around and talk weird for a couple of years."
Which was the unfortunate downside of the stroke thing.
I kept visiting her and I was her mother-in-law, her daughter-in-law,
her brother's son, it shuffled around.
She was a very energetic woman.
You know, at a certain age, you get the gran's coat that they go round in
and the cake on the head type thing.
"20 Rothmans, please. Thank you."
That was me gran.
The Grim Reaper must have a tough time because women don't die, they go on.
Men just go, 65, boom.
"Come on, where's your stamina? Ah."
# "Bom-bom-bom. I am a gran, I live forever" #
The Grim Reaper, "I could not get the women, they would not come.
"I got the men, the men are all lined up."
"Yes, thank you, we're ready for bed.
"Can we get pyjamas, please?"
"No pyjamas in the Land of the Dead." "I was told pyjamas in the brochure."
"I don't think..." "Yes, pyjamas..." "No..."
"But..." "No..." "Ooh!" "Ooh!"
"Oh, I've got your scythe, I'm sorry. I don't know what's going on."
"It was a mime problem.
"There's a baboon here, what's he doing here?"
"I don't know, someone was punching me, I'm just in the line."
God is there in the Land of the Dead,
"Grim Reaper, you could not get the women?"
Sorry, in my James Mason voice,
"You could not get the women? What was the problem?
"Didn't you reap them with your grim reaping equipment?"
"I tried that. But the women, they all know hopscotch.
"And they leapt over."
They did and it's a secret, religious, weird,
ceremonial rite of passage for girls that women know.
Hopscotch was bizarre for boys because boys never played.
As a boy I was behind walls going, "What happens? What do they do?
"What do they do here?" And they had a track laid out with mystic numbers -
one, five, seven, eight, you know.
A bit of a broken doll there.
Some girl keeping lookout with a skipping rope.
In case the clergy came by - "Run, run, it's the clergy!
"Run, it's the Pope and everyone."
They do that skipping stuff, don't they?
Young girls and huge ***-off boxers are the two groups of people
that have a joining line.
"Jam, elephants, peanuts, elephant and dung, jumping up and down...
"Change!"
And huge ***-off boxers are doing the same thing - "One, elephant..."
Boom.
I've never seen young girls and big ***-off boxers do it at the same time.
The impressions here are kind of sketchy.
"You have a very high voice for a boxer."
"Yes, I do."
"I have a very deep voice for a girl."
Sorry, I was talking about hopscotch.
Hopscotch, this strange religious experience.
All the numbers and there was one girl on the course, they go girl by girl.
# Frére Jacques, Frére Jacques, dormez-vous? #
I think that was training for this with the leg stuff.
# Sonnez les matines #
And at some point she'd go, "Oh, no, I *** it up. Oh."
And boys watching would go, "What? Did what wrong?
"*** up what? What did they do right? It makes no sense."
And they'd all drift off and boys would walk over the course -
"What happened here? We should do an archaeolo... loshical dig."
