Monday, August 9, 2010

he was hoping to be forever blowing bubbles - dedicated to shane jesse christnasstime

There was no crime in supporting West Ham United – still isn't unfortunately, as Luiz himself had once done before wee Georgie shashayed into his life. Yes, Luiz was a hammer, all for Moore, Hurst, Peters, even Greaves at one time. He had the shirt because he liked the colours, which complimented his Celtic complexion. Often, in his formative days of languid evenings spent with claret and blue shirt tail trailing in his wake, you could find Luiz seriously involved in a game of fifty-a-side football on the local rec.
The kid had talent, but alas, like so many of his heroes, he had an attitude to go right along with it, and a bad one at that. Even though he had trained diligently with the school football squad, which was after all rightly renowned and feared across the home counties as a team to be reckoned with, Luiz's continual backchatting of the coaches invariably led to him not being selected. Luiz, as was his wont, took this rejection well and merely continued playing and training, often alone, in all weather conditions – which were, this being England, mainly sodden. Luiz's break came in a match he played one summer holidays for a local team called the Golden Shots during an all-day tournament. Luiz, not adverse to a spell wearing the colours of Wolverhampton Wanderers, scored two startling second half goals, the second a lob of some thirty-yards executed with the audacity of wee Georgie himself, which not only took the Shots into the culminating final, but also caught the eye of the new school coach Mr. Bremner, a wily Scotsman with no time for sideways passes and a stagnant back four. In that final, played in the twilight of a glorious summer's evening as the swallows swooped and the bugs flitted around gaily, Luiz went on a dribble which began just outside his own penalty area and ended on the opposing goalline, eluding seven of the opposing team's players in-between.
It was to be alas his finest football moment, though of course he would not have known this as he over celebrated by the public toilets. Mr. Bremner, pipe in mouth, was thus suitably enamoured with the silky foot skills of the red-headed claymore zipping down the right wing time and again, and invited Luiz to the next squad session.

Perhaps, in hindsight, only a Scotsman could handle a fireball like Luiz, a man in the ilk of Stein, Busby, or Docherty, men renowned for their cunning and guile in coaching the best out of the wayward geniuses in their mileu. So, as the training sessions progressed, Mr. Bremner spent time yanking his enigmatic charge from the practice pitch, his face crimson with anger, his neck veins like swollen leeches feasting on bloated corpses in the Clyde, lambarding Luiz for continually ignoring explicit game plans and technical instructions. Luiz took all of this in the spirit in which it was intended and time and again would return to the practice pitch – skin the last defender and decide not to cross the ball for his strikers but instead go for the ultimate glory himself. In the world of football, be it schoolboy practice on a boggy field or at the Estadio do Maracana, River Plate or Olympic Stadium Berlin, players who continually flout the team rules, get canned. So it was with Luiz, who, erring one too many times to the side of individuality, found himself not only fallen from grace with god, but more importantly, with Mr. Bremner too, a god in his own sphere of activity.

Banished to the reseves, Luiz spent a good half a season under the watchful eye of Mr. Jordan, another Scotsman with a crude mouth and an eye for burgeoning talent. Finally, beaten down by team rules, the ugly 4-4-2 system, and the national team's debacle in world cup failure after world cup failure, Luiz finally sucked-up the message and leaned how to cross a ball from the bi-line. Having spent hours in his own back yard wearing a football boot on his left foot and a slipper on his right to force himself to play left-footed as well as right, his natural inclination, by season's end with yet another flu epidemic sweeping England and the school first team squad all but decimated by illness, Luiz was finally called back up to the firsts to participate in the then ongoing, counties cup.

That of course, was where the scouts from professional clubs hung around looking for promising schoolboys, or indeed a scoolboy with promise . A school team wins its own county knock-out cup and thus goes on the following season to represent its county in a national competition against all of the schools across England who, the preceding year, had won the right to represent their county. No small deal indeed, a deal in point of fact which included many in-school training hours which negated the needs to learn such useless skills as woodwork or science and where the heated school gym became, for several months at least, the sole domain of Mr. Bremner and his collection of county-representing schoolboys. Yes, they were a happy crew. Feted, well-fed, well-trained, worked like thoroughbred racehorses day and afternoon and three evenings a week too to achieve and maintain peak physical fitness and mental awareness. Virtually isolated from the remainder of the sniffing and coughing school body, the football squad took on an aura of gladitorial status. One confirmed and enforced by their crushing, over two-legs, of the team from Hampshire, who were despatched in ruthless fashion on their own ground. Yes, travelling to away fixtures on a heated coach was also a bonus the glorious young heroes of Luiz's school football team were enjoying, while the wild ride continued.

For his part, Luiz had been confined to the occassional on-field stint as a late second half substitute, thrown on when the game was all but won and the result in no doubt or when Mr. Bremner thought it prudent to rest a better player for the hard yards that lay ahead. As the team cruised through the first and second rounds, all but crushing teams from nearby counties in the local pool, expectation grew to fever pitch in the school, the town, and wider county beyond. Parents were sent dietry notices, curfew sheets and instructions on how the boys ought to be cotton-woolled when outside of Mr. Bremner's absolute care. No point was overlooked, no pebble left unturned, no exclamation point omitted from the end of a sentence; the home pitch was mown so carefully and precicely by a professional groundskeeper brought in from Brighton and Hove Albion that it resembled the Aztec stadium itself. Then the school were given permission to play their home matches at the ground of their semi-professional town team, where there were floodlights, stands and removable corner flags. As they neared qualification for the national knock-out round, where by virtue of random luck they might have to play anywhere in England, the winter cold season struck with a particular vengeance and no amount of half-time oranges could remedy it. On top of this the weather turned spiteful, pitches were frozen solid and games were abandoned and re-scheduled across the country, and much to Mr. Bremner's chagrin, his charges had to travel to the foot of the country because it was mild and the frost hadn't bitten, to play the team representing Cornwall. It was a vindictive affair from woe to go, a game full of unnecessary stoppages, sideline abuse, players snapping at one and other's heels and jaws, and the occassional stray sheep wandering onto a pitch which looked as if it hadn't been mown since the Romans had quit England in disgust. It was to be however, a game remembered for a late goal from a young Cornishboy who stood about six-three and headed in from about thirty-eight yards. Luiz did not serve any pitch time and the team, vanquished at last, travelled home in a mournful state to consider how best to deal with a return leg a fortnight hence. Mr. Bremner, dour as he was, nonetheless devised a game plan which mitigated defending against a six-foot cyclops and instead was built around attack after attack. Wingers were needed, and Luiz, to his good fortune, found himself one of only two deemed fit enough to play.

The authorities, in the guise of Mr. Bremner, the selection committee, the PTA and the mayoral brigade, decided, behind closed doors, to make the return fixture a night time affair, something as then unprecedented in schoolboy football. Naturally the Cornish team was far from happy, many of their stars came from farming folks and most of the boys were expected to be up at five the following morning for milking, but despite appeals, the ruling body ruled that the match would be an interesting experiment and should thus proceed as planned. Luiz's school team trained at night on the floodlit pitch - playing games against local sides so that the canny Mr. Bremner could perfect his flying wing philosophy much like bomber command had done during WWII.
The night of the match drew around, it was a slick-frosted night, leading to more pre kick off dramas in respect of ball selection, studs, tackles, substitutes; the whole nine-yards. Finally, playing with a luminous orange ball which bounced higher than the regulation ball, the two teams squared off in front of a full grandstand and a plethora of sideline-stalking old men in raincoats and cloth caps yelling contrary advice while walking the numerous breeds of the isles.
That orange ball skidded and jumped about mercilessly, causing all manner of pre-game nerves to grow more nervous, culminating in a remarkable own goal by Luiz's team. A back pass which skidded straight through the legs of the goalkeeper as he stood arguing with a rogue granddad. A hush fell upon the ground, not a reverent hush, a hush of complete dismay. The Cornish had been gift-wrapped an away goal within five minutes. The mountain Luiz and his comrades-in-arms now had to climb, ice-slicked as it was, had begun to take on a Herculean aura. Undaunted, Luiz's team when back to the task at hand, and three-minutes before the half-time break netted an equaliser. At one apiece, and one down from the first game, and facing an away goals count double rule, the equation was straightforward and no one needed the math's teacher's advice. Luiz's school had to score twice more within normal time, any other score was null and void. Two goals on a pitch getting slipperier by the minute, without conceding on a counter attack, or the dream would be over.
Seventeen minutes into the second period Luiz found himself unmarked in the opposing penalty area as the orange ball came skidding into the box, and deftly he side-footed the ball into the gaping goal. There were cries of “offside” but to no avail. The miracle was beginning to look feasible. And so it was, as in all great heroic dramas, that Luiz the hero, should, moments after he had re-inforced that hero status with a spontaneous volley out of nothing to score his tean's third goal of the night, become almost instantly, the villain. On what ought to have been his most memorable night, Luiz found himself hacked crudely to the ice by a rugged Cornish boy with legs like fence posts. His game would have been over anyhow, had schoolboy football have had proper medical attention available instead of a half-cut school nurse, but instead Luiz finally got back up and then became embroiled in a series of tit-for-tat retaliations. Cautioned by the match referee, Luiz was seen, via the vapour clouds emanating from his mouth, to utter something to the referee who then, much to everyone's astonishment, dismissed him. Luiz, head bowed, still muttering and being goaded by ruddy-cheeked Cornish boys, left the pitch. He was thinking, he says now, of Georgie Best's then recently-announced decision to quit Manchester United to instead lay on a Spanish beach all day drinking sangria and de-frocking a procession of Miss Worlds. Luiz understood why, then.

His team triumphed, but the triumph was soured. Luiz, forced to make a report of his words and actions, finally stated that he had in fact said to the referee: “Who the fuck do you think you are, Clive Thomas?” He was subsequently summarily banned for five matches. A harsh punishment indeed at any level of association football.
Earlier that fateful week, we have to report for accuracy, George Best had been dismissed in a league fixture by the professional referee Clive Thomas, for calling him a wanker.
Luiz's school eventually capitulated in the counties cup to a team representing Cheshire, Luiz did not play again. A few weeks after that fateful appearance however Luiz received a letter, it was postmarked East London and carried the emblem of West Ham United on the envelope. Luiz studied the still-sealed missive a while and then opened it. Due to his exploits in the counties cup he had been selected for a schoolboy trial at Upton Park, once home to England's very own world cup winning captain Bobby Moore. There were directions with the letter, and Luiz followed them precisely, arriving at the ground two-weeks later some hour and a half beforehand to savour the atmosphere. Boys from all over South-East England loitered around nervously, for them, just like for Luiz, this was the window of opportunity ever so slightly ajar.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

AIN'T THE TOWN FAYRE ROUND HERE

It went through the windscreen of Delia's Datsun and straight out the rear window clean as a whistle. No detours, took the head and all of the left shoulder with it. Farewell Delia. They held a small memorial service down by the river. She always liked it there, especially after what happened to her sister.
And then Larry went down to the cemetary five-days later to lay a bouquet he'd stolen from the drug store – and there wasn't even a plot. He told me this sitting in the cemetary picking the petals from the flowers . . . told me that I could believe it or fucking not but there wasn't even a FUCKING GRAVE MAN and how the FUCK could that be and don't fucking say she was CREE-MATED because he knew for a gooddamned fact she hadn't been. I never saw Larry again. His line was dead.
Craven, the truck driver, who got wiped out on Highway 4 three-months previously, after something shot through his windscreen and took everything down to the belt, didn't have a grave either. Lou Ellen found that out, because she works in the library. After she told me that, and swore me to secrecy, I went to meet her down at River and Blackwood and all I found there were shadows. You couldn't fucking drive anywhere, if you had a brain and wanted to keep it where it was. Bess and Ryan Jenkins had hitched, out through Anderson, over the old postal track cum lovers lane, and they didn't just walk out of town, they walked right out of existence. People stopped driving, in or out, even the authorities. They sent a chopper in two-days ago to drop supplies, it smashed into Jeb Manner's hay loft and there weren't no body and it hadn't been FUCKING IN-SIN-ERATED! So don't tell me it had.
People stay indoors. They brick up fireplaces and board the windows, slat the door at night, because whatever it is comes through . . . the holes. Up at the hikking hut on the Last Pass four kids, three of whom I knew, spent eleven-hours having something small but invisible hit them until the youngest, nine-year old Braden Lurkey got hit so hard his spleen burst. Only two of the kids came back and one of them Jordan David he's in ICU in a room with the windows steel-barred – while there's still a hospital to be I suppose. People are getting hit all the time in here, in this vacuum, and a lot are going crazy. Sempkins shot his neighbour of thirty-three years dead the day before yesterday . . . claimed it was an offering.

Whatever it is goes clean through. Or if it's smaller it just hits you. It FUCKING hurts when it hits you and Dwight says it's bad souls but Lewis says fuck that man it's super-fucking-UNNATURAL, and Lewis was most likely right because he died this morning when something shot up out of his toilet bowl and took most of his jaw with it to wherever it was on it's way to. You can't live inside you can't go outside and you can't fucking RUN and you can't fucking DRIVE.
We got no tv now either. Like we, or the rest, don't even exist. School's closed, library too, even the drug store. Main Street is empty bar the things that howl up and down it most nights from dusk until dawn sounding like the tearaway kids used to when they dragged cars up and down it on a saturday night. All the tearaways got torn way to some place else. The cars are still here, those left won't even dare sit in any of them. Bits of houses are going missing too, like the whole FUCKING town is made of LEGO and something's taking whole chunks for it's own collection. The church and bakery have almost already gone. Cemetary went a good while back, just a field now, hospital too and the David kid right along with it. What the FUCK is happening here and why isn't anyone doing something to fucking HELP us? The less of us there are left and what with the buildings going and Main Street possessed to all hell the more likely it is I'll go soon. Only I ain't never been hit yet – I just heard from others that it hurt like FUCK. I think I'm the only one who's seen them too because everyone else says they're invisible but they're FUCKING not! I see them ripping up and down Main Street and they look like folks in those old depression photographs they used to have down at the museum only that's all but gone now to . . . old timers . . . and too young timers . . .

They stop and stare at me and holler only the holler is silent. But I KNOW why they're FUCKING hollering only I can't tell no one because there ain't hardly anyone here TO TELL. So I'll tell you. They're hollering at me because they can't hit me and that's making them madder than all hell. That's what I thought two-days ago anyhow, until it suddenly dawned on me when I was down in all that was left of the library rummaging through old sepia photographs of this damned town when I found a photo of a picnic and I was in the fucking PHOTO-GRAPH sitting on a tree stump smiling at whoever took it with a REAL BAD SMILE.
That was when I realized why they're hollering at me – because I won't play their games with them. And ain't no one coming to help because ain't no one can help, because anyone who tries sometime just gets hit and hollered at or just plain left out of all the games. That's always been the way they've been, as I recall it now – ANGRY.

Note: this is a rejected story - ha!

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

it aint workin (song lyrics)

the real politik makes me sic
the central bureau is a lie
its a federal mess a federal shame
so dont smoke pot n dont quit ya job/ coz theyr to blame

labours never workin
the coalitions jerkin
i feel green n i feel unseen
i hate election time
i hate question time
bcoz nothins workin
nothins workin
up on the hill up on the hill

compuslory votin is a communist joke
2 party preferred is the peoples yoke
the big debate creates more emissions
a bloke a woman in the binary session/ n theyr to blame

its time for change its time for war
go kill a whale n cut down a tree
bcoz bloody strip mining is killin me
n carbon tradin is knockin on my door/ n theyr to blame

too much government is to blame
theres too much gst n theres too much slack
theres fibre optic cables n theres heart attacks
theres abbott n costello n obesity / n theyr to blame


n theyr killin me
n labours never workin
n the coaltions shirkin
n theyr killin me
bcoz nothins workin bar hypocricy
hypocricy

n jill lives on her hill
n she takes the fckn pill
n shes all for status quo
n forgetting the pink vote
n shes killin me
n shes killin me
bcoz nothins workin
nothins workin
nothins workin
bar hypocricy – ee ee ee ee ee

Sunday, July 25, 2010

A Concise History Of The West

your cataclysms & catechisms
rebound from obliques
creep around the crypts
of martyrdom

as age seeps
into the pores of herstory
you watch valentino
pilot the vessel to anchorage

on the deck moments before
the fetid stench
of the blueberg
arrives at its destination

no one cries nor wails
in the silence of depravity
or under the lash
of the barbarian hordes

innocence is mutilated
around a flaming cross
watching bigotry flirt tempestuously
with fascism

the axis of impartiality
tilts in your favour once more
as garbo spits in the face
of farcical royalty

on a boulevard of decayed dreams
behind drawn shades
lying amongst glittering opiates
lays the naked queen

tarnished & jaded
in the travelling show
you swallow snakes & swords
nurturing the infidels

the man with forked tongue
rides the chariot across the plain
laughing gaily
as he slaughters tapestry

& on the spectacular night
you triumph again reborn
a star set in lava
as pompeii rains supreme

Philosophies Of A Leper In Many Small Parts

back into the mausoleum
you step
tears about to give liquid life
to no meaning at all


exchanging pleasantries
is the most insinuous
form of biological warfare


count all the bad things iv done
all the lives iv trampled
put them on your tally board
reckon where i kneel
in the cuntbastards sweepstakes


that smell isnt at all like death
its more like life routinely bleeding
away


i am rotten to the core
all disease
becomes inherent to me


i feel as if iv given you a life sentence
in a well-provisioned cell
perhaps you should grow your hair longer?


when will misery
cease being your mistress


nothing evolves bar shadows
which draw longer
as oxygen is strangled
all days end – nights continue


ties broken remain unhealed
as time sidesteps your bad grace & inadequate posturing


where the light does not fall
is where you grow


electrical tape wont bind that incision


invariably my eyes always turn up
where i last saw them
staring at me murderously


the pioneers stole
so that they could reap before theyd sown


i volunteered to be god for a day yesterday
but at the station it turned out
id forgotten my cross

Friday, July 16, 2010

queen vic knives

teri louise kelly wandered into literature much the same way lee marvin used to wander into saloons. she came looking for a brawl. a self-taught anti-classroom heretic with a long and illustrious heritage stretching back to conquistadors and gypsies and she has invaded many lands and infected many species with her bad seed. the author of two memoirs and one poetry anthology - her latest book 'American Blow Job' is due for release by Paroxysm Press (Australia) as soon as its publisher is released from rehabilitation after taking a mandatory plea bargain over a failed urine sample at the Big Day Out. she refutes all knowledge of ever actually offering her work for publication and condones the use of happy hours as a remedial cure for everything from writer's block to the mother of all hangovers. she can be found therein regularly at 5.30pm waxing lyrical on the states of regression depression and consumption. she also plays bass guitar and has been known to ride a unicycle on occasion.

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Tuesday, July 13, 2010

learn how to swim (but not at Luiz's school)

The brave new world of comprehensive nee amalgamated schooling came so quickly, that one minute the kids at Luiz's school had a know-everyone environment, and the next, an asphalt jungle - full of all manner of kids from thirty-odd other schools. Naturally, the pickings grew rich. It was a time of plenty, and in such a times, as young Mr. Attenborough will attest to, only the very weakest and very stupid found themselves a viable target. Predators grew fat and lazy when the going was easy. And given that Luiz was both weak and stupid, but not veryish in either trait, he enjoyed a golden age of hassle-free schooling and unmolested journeying. With all that dough rolling in the school elders decided that the great miniature unwashed should have a swimming pool. So before you knew it, it became a do-gooders frenzy of charitible activities while the brawny brainless kids from the tech blocks were given shovels and told to get busy digging under the watchful eyes of Alsation dogs. (Not German Shepherds).
Luiz had never eaten so much cake, even Mrs. Beeton herself would have admired his cake-gorging ability. Everywhere you looked, there was cake. The good ladies of Luiz's town were buying up flour wholesale. Odd that they would induce kids to gorge on cake, but maybe the fact they were building a very large swimming pool: indoor, heated, high boards, foot dips, meant that a few hundred chubby kids rendered docile on Victoria sandwich, made the whole kooky idea necessary to those higher up the cash river. Those who controlled the fiscal sluice gates of educationary budgets as it were. So the tech boys kept digging their way to China, the ladies kept their ovens on day and night, and in amongst the fetes and jamborees and beer and skittles nights they raised enough cash to not only commence building the best school swimming pool in the Union, but probably what they saw as the best damned swimming pool this side of the moon. Everyone was proud, even Luiz, though he seriously doubted it would ever be anything but a fifty-foot hole in the ground which would fill with muddy water eight-months of the year and claim about two-dozen lives per annum.
The English are not raised to be optimists.

And then Luiz fell out of a tree. Probably a result of eating all that cake as he'd never fallen out of one before. When he got home his mum told him that worse things happened at sea. Maybe if they'd lived at sea she would have said that worse things happen in trees. They say naff stuff like that because Englanders live on an island, an island with a population that from which, only about five percent even so much as dip a toe in the brine once a year. Trees however rarely get a rush on. Plus they can be chopped down. All of that aside, Luiz fell out of a tree onto a rubbish dump – from a tree that had maybe stood since before the first English king got executed or syphlitic and was now surounded by old electrical appliances, rusting bed frames, and rolled-up carpets. Have some cake his mum said, we've got plenty.

It'll all end in tears, or another polio epidemic his mum said later over yet more cake. She always fell onto the pessimistic side of the coin of the realm. Not Luiz's dad however, he was always on the practical side, proved adequately enough when he said: well, at least the boy'll get a wash twice a week, save on the goddamned electric bill here at least. There were the usual dissenters about the pool, but strangely, not about a tree being surrounded by discarded household waste. Naturally given that every town has it's 'anti-progress' movement there was a small floatilla of geriatric petitioners who believed that tin baths were good enough for them, so why not for modern kids, and they thus began a 'no pool' lobby group. Them aside, work pushed on with a gusto, and by the following autumn, low and behold, Luiz's school was the proud owner of a swimming pool that fair reeked of chlorine and the blood, sweat and tears of an army of sponge cakers, oh, and not forgetting the manual labour of fifty-odd retarded kids with long criminal careers and plenty of ditch digging ahead of them.

Even Luiz got into the swing of things, and not only him, a whole cement mixer full of other boys too, who all suddenly realised that it was the dawn of a new era of seeing girls all but naked. Then came the lists. Lists that all those parents who had supported the pool, now found highly inconvenient; shit like personal hygiene, cold sores, tinea, correct urination procedures, towels and bathers with name tags - disclosure and liability forms, swimming caps, goggles, floaties, the whole kit 'n' kaboodle associated with educational swimming facilities. Jesus, Luiz's dad groaned, all this stuff'll end up bankrupting me. Off everyone traipsed to the opening gala, where the great pool was to be officially opened by some ex-Commonwealth swimmer who'd once finished fifth in the Commonwealth games of 1848 or something. All the town's dignitaries and signatories were in attendance, along with parents and teachers, everyone in point of fact who was anyone, and naturally some people who weren't anyone at all but thought they ought to be.
After the opening ceremony there was to be an open lesson, the inaugral dip and all the years and classes had gone into a tombola and the winning class from a year two below Luiz's had prevailed. As they lined up on the pool deck most were fear laden. The closest most of them had been to water was a tin bath in front of their nan's fire. They were a ghastly sight - pale white sickroom specimens with ashen faces, like a swim team from Transylvania. The swim coach, Mr. Spitz was proudly walking around in way tight trunks that left less than little to even the most infertile imagination, proudly blowing on his whistle while a couple of hundred horny housewives sucked in big ones. Not too many fathers had turned up, despite there being
an armada of illegal flesh hardly attired at all. There were a lot of speeches, too many speeches, and after the speeches, the riff raff, namely the rest of the pupils, were quickly ushered away to classrooms a long way from the action. Their day would soon arrive, or maybe not, as not long after they were safely ensconced in temporary outbuildings being ridiculed by temporary teachers everyone could hear were whistles and screaming.

It was chaos out in the playground after the kids finally broke loose from their inadequate moorings. No one knew what had actually happened, although, from the look of the teachers and the parents - it was something pretty shitty. Word filtered through the great pond of school life; some boy had drowned, he was dead, no more exams, no more worries about tinea and communal showering, his worrying days were over. No one believed it, death was an alien thing but to have to die in a school swimming pool, seemed the most pitiful of deaths. Unjust. Corrupt even. They held a ceremony for him three-days later in the assembly hall. Luiz knew him vaguely, in a vague way. It later transpired that no one had thought to add 'no chewing gum' to the 'dos' and 'donts' list and the kid had gotten his gum wedged in his throat under water. No one had seen him due to all the excitement and broo har har, until it was way too late.
The pool stood forlorn and ghostly for many months, like a big grinning death machine. No kid wanted to go swim in water where one of their own had been taken. Luiz never did swim in the pool, as after that it became a voluntary and not mandatory part of the progrom. Luiz learned that far worse things didn't just happen at sea - they happened in school swimming pools too.