Fairground Contraption

So it's Ekkatime again.

This year, we went along with some other folks, and the extra adults enabled us to visit Sideshow Alley and the worryingly gravity-defying machines of fear without merely looking.

Eloise, now tall enough to go on the little roller-coaster, was keen to do so, and I went on there with her.

It was only a tiddler, and pretty lame by comparision with some of the other catapults of doom, so I was pretty confident.

But it must be ten years since I went on my last one (I can't even remember it) so when the inevitable chasm of freefall opened beneath us, yes, I squealed like a baby along with the others in our little spinny tea-pot.

Sam, one of our companions, was determined that we should sample the joys of one of the Mangonels of Mirth and we reluctantly acceded. She chose one for us which was like a counterweighted industrial catapult with a centrifugal pin wheel on one end which in turn had three arms upon which were mounted the seats of torture.

As we were strapped into our seats Nicole and I looked at one another as if to say -well, this is a bad idea, but it's too late to turn back now... and as the motors kicked in and we started moving I began to express my predicament colourfully.

I remember a moment when we were hanging upside down fifty metres up in the air, looking up/down at the carpark with the tiny figures beneath us, and experiencing a moment of clarity where any doubts about the mechanical integrity of this ludicrous machine that we had actually parted with money to be strapped to disappeared and the only sensible thing to do was to just enjoy it. Or endure it.

And as the wind started and my cheeks were pulled back past my ears and my legs clung on for dear life and my arms decided they should really be somewhere else and the carpark approached mercilessly and inexorably I just groaned.