Fail 12: Safety last...
Exactly how much shite can one man buy on ebay? A newsletter to find out.
Do you remember the Darwinistic thrill of children's playgrounds when you were young? The rock hard concrete floor. Chain link fences. The sense of mortal danger hovering over every piece of rusty painted metal play equipment. Then there were those precarious steps up to a slide which began at roughly the cruising altitude of a passenger jet. You'd get to the top, and have to choose between searing your bare legs like a raw steak on the molten-hot metal as you friction-burned your way to the bottom, or chickening out and having to shamefully backtrack past a queue of bigger boys waiting on the steps. All this whilst also running the risk of plummeting to your death onto asphalt from great height. Ah, the heady days of childhood!
Anyway, it must have been these early eighties levels of jeopardy that Lee had in mind when I arrived home to find him staring at a large pile of sharp metal.
There was thick iron-grey wire. Large pointy metal clamps. Twisty vicious looking metal springs. And the look glinting in his eyes of a man about to embark on an idiotic project which by now I should have learned to recognise as cause for alarm.
What's this then? I asked calmly, already knowing that the answer was probably not going to be "On its way to the scrap metal dealer" like any reasonable person would hope.
There's a pause as Lee squints up at the large tree at one end of the garden.
"It's bloody brilliant is what it is" he announced with relish, pacing the length of the garden, to the other large tree.
Oh god.
Me: "No, but actually, what are you doing?"
He looks at me, bemused. "I'm just measuring it all up!" he beamed. As if it should be obvious.
It was not obvious.
Lee: (A beat of silence. An encouraging nod.) "For the zipwire?"
Now everybody knows that children love a zipwire. What I also knew was that any zipwire created by Lee would not necessarily be subject to the stringent health and safety protocol you'd ideally need to ensure your precious child was not delivered shrieking, at speed, into the extremely unyielding tree trunk he was currently fixing one end of the wire to.
I mean, I think we've probably all read enough of these newsletters now to understand that no amount of persuading on my part was going to deter him from his dream of stringing what amounted to a horizontal guillotine across the better part of our garden. He listened to my concerns. He really heard them. And then he carried on assembling the zipwire like he'd never had a better idea in his life.
Now if you've seen zipwires in commercial parks, you'll know that however steep the pitch of the line, there will usually be some sort of buffer zone at the end to slow and eventually stop the motion. This is so when you/a child/your six foot tall husband finishes whizzing, there's some way of absorbing the impact and slowing them down. Perhaps even a gentle swing forward with the momentum, but that's all part of the fun.
Our zipwire ended with a coiled metal spring along the line, a large knot in the wire, and a beanbag positioned in front of the tree - for "safety". Unfortunately, not one of these safety devices actually prevented the whiplash which occured when stopping a body flying across our lawn at such a velocity.
Likewise, if you were to visit a children's play equipment provider, they'd tell you that the part of the zipping mechanism which actually rolls down the wire should not really be accessible to the touch. You'd maybe encase it all in plastic. Or even just purchase a professionally ready-made zip-wire from them, instead of assembling a child finger-removing device so effective I'm thinking of selling it to a murderous political regime.
Now this wouldn't have been so much of an issue if the zipwire had been installed at great height. Unfortuntely, it was positioned at exactly the right height to take my head off my neck every time I walked across the garden without really paying attention, which did get tiring. Our children quickly learned by our panicked yells that they should NEVER TOUCH THE WIRE! but there were a few close calls when people came round to play and we blithely assumed our own children might pass on their knowledge of the mortal peril involved. But mostly, they didn't. I ruined quite a few meals by having to sprint outside to chest-punch someone else's child to a place of safety.
Needless to say, the children absolutely loved it. They think Lee is brilliant! The best dad! So fun! Especially when he set up a ladder to get up to the start (not dissimilar to those eighties playground slide steps come to think of it) so they could use it COMPLETELY UNSUPERVISED too.
Also, much like the eighties.
The zipwire is gone now. As the children grew bigger, the line grew slacker and slacker, the trees wobbling alarmingly under the strain. Like my sense of what's normal, really. Tally-ho!!
What’s cooking (other than ourselves, in a heatwave) this week
Hi to all new subscribers, especially those who found me through either my article in June’s Good Housekeeping magazine, or on the radio as part of BBC Upload. Here’s where I share some stuff I’ve been enjoying in case you might like it too. It’s always great to get readers’ recommendations, so if you see, hear or read something good, you can reply to me via this email and I can include it in the next newsletter.
Lockdown has meant that the TV schedule looks like it’s high on glue, which is how I came to find myself watching An Audience With Billy Connolly from 1985 the other night. It made me honk with laughter, and is well worth a watch, especially to spot all the celebrities in the audience looking extremely young. I can’t find a TV link, but if you want to watch online it’s this one
While I think about TV, it’s definitely not ‘comedy’ but I May Destroy You by Michaela Coel is incredible TV. It’s on Iplayer, catch it here.
For anyone with a healthy sense of the ridiculous, you will probably enjoy these classified adverts
I enjoy a picture of someone else’s house in instagram as much as the next person, but the best thing I’ve seen on there recently is Daisy Cooper’s feed (aka Kerry Mucklowe from This Country). It’s the antidote to airbrushed perfection. You’ll probably need to scroll right down to get to the start, but she’s been posting screengrabs of her trolling conversations with a ‘sea captain’ who tried to scam her, and their burgeoning romance. She’s brilliant.
While we’re on Insta, if you haven’t already come across Celeste Barber, do you even exist???
If you too think the USA is a literal bin fire at the moment, you might enjoy Sarah Cooper on twitter. She’s a brilliant comedian who does lots of these incredible lipsync videos parodying Trump.
Finally, just to say I know I’m really late with this newsletter. The aim is still to get it out once a fortnight, but somehow I’m not really sure where June went! After months of literally not leaving my village, I’ve managed to have days out to see my parents and my sister (who all live quite far away) and also get drunk in my friends’ gardens a few times. This. Is. Living.
I also made my radio debut talking about this very newsletter - you can hear it here (from 1hr43mins in) if you don’t know me and want to hear what my awkward ‘I’m on the radio’ voice sounds like in real life!
Recording the newsletter for BBC Upload got me thinking about whether I could make a podcast of #TheWhatNow too - what do you think, readers? Would you listen?! Let me know, and what you’d like to hear if so.
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Who am I anyway?
I'm Lindsay. Bit of a dickhead, freelance writer for money, author of And Other Idiots and other internet shite for kicks. This newsletter will be a short story of some idiotic exploits from quite close to home, for no other reason than to make you smile every two weeks. Exactly how much shit can one man buy on Ebay? I intend to find out.
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