Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Crash and burn

So Patrick saves up all his money so to send his boy to a good school so he can learn stuff he never did. Better himself, and not be in a dead end job like his dad.
So eventually he gets his boy into a good school and at the end of the first day he takes his boy aside and asks "What did you learn today boy?"
"Well Da' today I learnt Pi R square."
"That's rubbish." said Patrick "I've wasted all my money. Your teachers know nothing. Everyone knows Pies are round and loaves are square."#

When I was small like most other boys of my age we made airfix models of second world war planes. I made Spitfires, Hurricanes and Lancaster bombers I even made a Junkers JU88. I compared models with my best friend Sean. But it wasn't exciting enough to just build the planes and hang them from the ceiling and let them drift about in the breeze. No we had to do more. So we built an aerial runway for our creations that went from Seans bedroom down to his dads shed at the bottom of the garden. We glued wire hangers on to the tops of the planes so they'd glide down the wire in a dive. We soon bored of that. So Sean decided that if they were going to dive down to earth they'd be much more exciting if they dived down in flames. So in construction we crammed the next plane with cotton wool balls stolen from his big sisters make up bag. On the day the cotton wool was soaked in petrol taken from the Jerry can in the back garden. We leant out of his bedroom window and readied our plane. "Red leader. Red leader. I've been hit. I'm going down."
Sean lit a match and ignited the plane as we sent it down the wire. Spectacular. The Lancaster burst into flames and plummeted towards earth guided by the wire. For less than ten seconds we watched with absolute delight as our creation crashed and burned as befitted a second world war aircraft. Unfortunately it crashed and burned right into Seans dads shed. Setting fire to it. Now allowing for two minutes of utter panic where we didn't know what to do. Then another minute where we ran downstairs to the garden. Followed by a few more minutes or our nine year old minds trying to think what to do, the fire was bigger than either of us. So we did what all nine year olds would sensibly do. Run away. We knew we were powerless to stop the inferno that was enveloping Seans Dads shed. We tried pretending we were playing with Donald (who was totally oblivious to our panic) but the tell tale plumes of smoke rising from Seans back garden kept distracting us.
Donald was saying "I'll be the General and you are my men and we're going to....."
But we didn't we kept looking back to Seans house where by now neighbours were running ab0ut screaming and shouting and fetching buckets of water.
Sean was late home for tea that night. We never heard any more about it other than warnings on local BFBS* broadcasts that in summer everything was tinder dry and we had to be very careful.

*British Forces Broadcasting Service. We got two way family favourites and everything. Even the Clithero Kid.

Rock on dudes

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