december 28, 2003

WELL, my little puddings of delight, my faith in the Internet took a real knock this week. "Why's that, Oh Great One?" I hear you both ask.

Because, my children, after finding websites devoted to squirrel fishing, belt-sander racing and sex-doll rafting, there's nothing on the net devoted to the oldest form of warfare in the world. No, not Doom, but snowball fighting.

There are some news pages with stories on how lawyers the world over are rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of lawsuits after little Johnny gets hit in the eye with an ice-and-gravel special. How times have changed. In my day, if you did that, little Johnny's big brother sorted you out. Nowadays he just runs away shouting: "I'll get my solicitor to contact yours!" ("In my day"? My God, I'm only 31 and I sound like my Dad...) I did manage to find a couple of blog pages devoted to the rules of snowball fighting.

Rules? RULES? The only rule I seem to remember was that it was mandatory to cause as much pain as possible to the person you were aiming at. If this meant going for a direct hit down the front of the snorkel, then so be it. To the victor would go the spoils of war, which took the form of being serenaded into double maths by the school choir while the teachers threw rose petals in your path.

To the loser went the stinging pain and rivers of tears. Are you reading this, Alan Davies? HAHAHA.

Sick of throwing the stuff? Try a piledriver. Ingredients: a large snowdrift and the smallest first-year in the playground. Bets were then taken on when the sprog would be reported missing and in which month he'd be found.

See the fun you can have with the white stuff of the non-Colombian persuasion? But there's no world snowballing championship site. No site on how to make the best snowballs. Not even a single page to instruct the neophyte on which types of slush will make a good missile and which will simply disintegrate on its way to the back of the school bully's head.

It's a travesty, but not as big a one as writing an Internet column that doesn't feature a single Internet site.

AS I love you all so very, very much (or at least to the extent the law allows) here's a picture of Miss Norway.