Muddy fun

As a child, one of the biggest crimes I could commit was getting muddy.


In retrospect, that strikes me as a bit sad -- there's an immense amount of fun to be had in playing around with mud.


Then again, in the days of the hard labour of hand- rather than machine-washing, you could understand the forcefulness with which the rule was expressed.


Or maybe it was some sort of deep-rooted Freudian idea that the mud was, in fact, a symbol of poo, which suggested some sort of dirty/sexual (maybe even sexual=dirty) feeling. And anything sexual was a taboo notion in my family.


Yeah, looking back, that all seems to me to be a great pity (er... not the sex taboo/family thing. Er... no. I meant the "no mud" thing. Just wanted to be clear).