The Word Cloud

It is two-fer day you lucky people...

Enjoy;

I had a summer job once... well twice, in truth, though how on earth I got a second season I will never know... at a local theme park which shall remain nameless. Bearing in mind I was only young, about 16-17, I shall undoubtedly be chastised for my antics. I am fairly sure the following events  actually occurred to me, by me, or at me and I’m hoping everyone believes it to be neither dangerous or litigious...

The first year started well. I sat amongst peers nervously awaiting the first “interview”, filling in the application form. Not far away a lad completed his and passed it round, as we all did, to make sure it was going to be ok. Surname; Hurley. First Name: Andrew Hurley. Forever after called Andrew Hurley-Hurley...

From here I am in complete confusion of order and/or accuracy...

There was this one time on the giant old plastic slide... A seventies monstrosity of six or eight parallel, undulating, gaudy-coloured slides nailed to a large open metal frame that towered at least, oh, I don’t know, thirty? Forty feet high? Down the slide would come child (sometimes accompanied by adults) sat upon sacks of finest ratty old hessian.

Now, it is important to note that for the slide to work it must be polished. To achieve this, a highly specialist, dedicated and expensive waxing substance must be applied to the ride every morning without fail. I think they ran out of that stuff about ten years before I got there so we used spray cans of pledge instead. Kneeling backwards on the hessian sack, a tin in each hand we’d empty the lot on the way down and polish it off on a second run.

What one should understand about the difference between pledge and wax is that wax is predominantly hydrophobic and therefore on a rainy day causes no pain. Pledge, on the other hand...

So come with me to a rainy day; or “drizzle” as the management chose to call it. I knew we were going to have a bad day when, on the first polishing run I had picked up enough speed to skip the middle two humps completely and slammed down on the lowest part of the slide, jarring my arms, head and back until tumbling arse over tit at the dead stop that was the large coir mat at the bottom. Lying on my back, winded, offered me the opportunity to examine drizzle as it floated down from God’s urinal and a ticking off from the area manager for “fucking about”.

Despite my misgivings the ride duly opened and all went relatively well whilst children alone took the plunge. The trouble began when a heavyweight father, despite my protestations, decided he would accompany his offspring. Remarkably, having also missed the middle two slide and dip combinations whilst bicycling majestically through the air, the father managed to avoid crushing said child on their speedy reconciliation. Sadly, however, whilst the child shuddered to a sudden stop at the bottom, father’s feet were so placed as to grip the coir solidly and his velocity of such extent that he was duly launched, with cart-wheeling arms and failing-to-connect legs, onwards. Consequently nutting one woman out of the way before hugging the cross-hatched security fence twenty feet from the bottom of the slide... at speed.

It is my duty to inform you that scarlet skin and fierce white scars in a square, tartan-like, pattern are not a good look to have. Oh, and never use the words “I told you it was a bad idea...” either as it does not seem to be helpful in any way.

Instead of closing the ride down management agreed to add the words “Super Fast” over the name of the slide and we continued the day in the same way but mostly to teenagers and the odd (very odd) adult.

Before we move on from this ride I have one more, true, tale.

This was a dry day, so it is safe to assume that such shenanigans as mentioned above are out of the question. No, for this tale I bring you back to the coir mat and, dutifully, guide you through its reson d’être. It is the soft braking mechanism to gently reduce forward momentum, bringing your child to a safe stop. Once forward motion has ceased, please rise as vertically as possible from the hessian rag provided and move swiftly away from the slide, not to the left or to the right, but directly away from the slide. Once off the mat, if you have another go, then... have another go, otherwise hand your tatty ex-tatty sack to me and fuck off.

The coir braking mat is not by any means a small item. It is easily ten feet long by eight foot wide (and, at least it was when it was new and “pert”, a good two inches tall. Now... not so much so; I would imagine it is the same mat as in my day only worn thin and shiny from thirty years of wear and tear. Which reminds me... I must go back there on a rainy day. Musn’t forget my video camera or Harry Hills email address...).

The golden rule is singular and simple. Stay the fuck away from the mat unless you’ve just arrived there at speed from the slide. How hard is that to remember? Hmm? How hard?

So there was this one day...  we’re talking early eighties... and this very very proud father. I knew he was a very proud father because he had two, very large and very expensive looking camera’s which were virtually permanently trained upon his toddling daughter.

You get a couple of goes for your ticket on this ride, but on a slow day, and with a bored and friendly “operator” you can probably just keep going round and round until hell freezes over or your child becomes sick from pledge burns whichever is the sooner.

Our doting daddy is ready to take photo’s and the little girl is heading downslide. She is in the middle set of eight slides and daddy is slowly encroaching across onto the mat to take his photo. I call him up on this and he duly steps off. It’s not a real problem, they’re pretty much alone on there, there is only one other little one doing the rounds and the sliding is fairly infrequent due to the long and exhausting climb up to the top.

Three or four turns late and he’s only stepping across onto the mat again isn’t he? Told him again, and he backs off again.

It’s the time I thought “fuck it, I can’t be arsed to have another go at him” that really stands out in my mind...

The other little chap has changed lanes. He’s now in the lane before the little girl and he’s off before she gets settled and nudged on her way. Across comes daddy, again, camera glued to one eye and focussing intently on his darling daughter, creeping further and further across the “no twat zone” mat. He’s so intent on his girl he doesn’t see the little boy, way ahead and heading towards him. Daddy’s stand is a perfect, strong A-frame, legs wide, proffering a low stance that keeps the camera steady. The little boy panics and leans back as he hits the last hump and piece of the slide. Now I reckon even a little lad like him must be travelling easily 10 – 15 MPH when he hits the braking mat. Amazingly he slides right into the gap between doting daddy’s legs. Absolutely amazing.

Well... up to a point. See, as I‘ve already mentioned the slide is a stickler for physics. So the little boys mat duly stops quickly, the laws of physics kick in and up comes the little boys head...

Half a fucking hour I had to close that ride whilst “daddy” remained foetal and refusing to move or speak save the occasional, barely incomprehensible, squeak .

It took me all that time to find most of the big bits of his bloody camera too.

It is testament to the British people, though, that all through that time there were still people coming up to me, glancing sidelong at the prostrate man seeking a replacement prostate, asking “is it still three tickets for a slide, mate?” And I swear to this day that I had more customers once the ambulance crew had stretchered him away than I did any other day that season.

God I miss those days.

Ez