I strolled over the hill to Rottingdene to the cottage where the kids and Pam now live, in order to help with the setting up of the new trampoline.
A beast of a thing, full 12 feet across.
Much head scratching from me, the holding the plans upside down, then, the traditional neurosis, a bout of flat pack panic!
Jousting poles, screws, tarpaulin, star washers and a zillion silver springs
A few huge burly heave hos, to get it into position, some fiddly threading, a lot of dratt and double dratting, spring tightening, a dose of soothing herbal tea and hey presto! 3 hours later I’d done it! a ramshackle assembly but the thing was up and in bounce fine fettle.
The kids major contribution was to bound onto it at every stage of it’s construction, ‘is it ready?’, else to squabble over who got to hold exactly which bit.
On they leapt! What fun. Twang prang colliding in mid air like flying sumo wrestlers, before belly flopping to the floor.
I stood back to admire the trampoline, it’s huge, nearly the size of the Millennium Dome.
Nope not that, but exactly the size of Stone Henge, did you know that the circumference of the dome of St Pauls is precisely the size of Stone Henge.. and that, on Salisbury Plain, graffiti scored chisel deep into the stones says “Christopher Wren woz ‘ere”. Fact. Hmm Giant space astrological super computer, Poppycock, ‘tis blatantly the holding structure for some sort of prehistoric trampoline!
I join the kids on the mat, we leap and giggle and holler.
Exuberant Tellytubbies. Hurrah!
Finn shows me how to do a somersault landing on his back.
I practice a few mighty boings, the kids stand still and the earthquake rumble of my landing skittles them to the floor.
Jelly baby wobble knees.
It really is brilliant, my dreads bounce with me, flapping up, then flopping back down
Jon Bon Jovi, Lenny kravitz, eat yer heart out!
I can see up and over the garden fence, to the next garden and then the next, there a really rather beautiful woman is hanging out the washing. mmm
I smile and on my next up surge manage to salute.
It is impossible to be unhappy on a trampoline.
Reach for the stars!
1 – 2- 3, higher and higher …. higher … and higher, from up there I can see away, away, down the hill, above the village and there .. beyond.
The turquoise majesty of the Ocean.
