At the Gym

Hi there

My friend J and I were at the gym this week watching a young woman doing a sort of upside-down swing from some high parallel bars.

I wasn't impressed.  "I did that when I was a kid on the jungle gym at Bell Block School," I said to J.

"But she's so good at it."  J was truly impressed.

"Bell Block School," I repeated, with a wave of dismissal at the woman on the high bars.  "I was great on their jungle gym."

"We never had a jungle gym at Mora Road Primary," said J.   And, gooodness, did I see my friend wiping  away a sad tear as she thought back to her British upbringing? 

"Oh,you poor thing," I commiserated.  A school without a jungle gym was surely the playground from hell.

J brightened.  "We had a maypole!"

And it was then that I had a vision of every kiwi kid in the country gratefully thanking the Gods of the Playground that they never had to dance around a maypole with their little mitts tightly clutching multi-coloured dangling streamers...

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