Who would have thought a £99.00 bargain trampoline from Argos could create so much mayhem on a hot afternoon? Me, for a start. Having turned up my talons with the hospital virus doing the rounds, I'd retired to the cooler, more comforting back bedroom in the Nest for a rest of my vital organs. As gastroenterology bugs tend to wreak havoc with their hosts, I'd felt awful for 24 hours and bloody awful for the following 48 hours too, and so stayed home to recover my equilibrium. Except the little ones two doors down weren't about to let anyone in a five mile radius rest. Back to the trampoline for a moment.
Their loving parents have recently bought the house and decided to level what was left of a mature but overgrown garden back to its original post-war formation. Okay, so the previous pensioner owners wouldn't have won a gold at Chelsea but they were trying with the 'two lawns and a veg patch either side of a concrete path’ scenario. Viewers on Escape to the Country would kill for this much land. After a frantic weekend of 24 hour assault by one man with a digger, the apple tree had gone along with mature shrubs and a luscious bramble and been replaced by wooden panel fencing akin to The Berlin Wall, thus creating a safe haven for their little ones. Except the 'children vs trampoline' scenario had started to unravel as I observed out of the closed window, wearing earmuffs.
The little boy had learned the subtle art of bullying his much smaller sister at an early age. They'd been sealed inside the trampoline net for safety I'm guessing and every time the younger girl took a bounce on the rubber tramp, her brother gave her a shove and so she screamed "Mummy!" at the top of her tiny lungs. Such fun! It rapidly descended to full-on cage fighting for tiny tots and I was utterly enthralled. I'd grown up in an era of the Moors Murders and Mum instilled into us that 'screaming is a Bad Thing To Do' unless of course we were being abducted. She actually meant 'kidnapped' because the word 'abduction' heavily relies on the presence of an alien spaceship, a lonely road and very bright lights paralysing the subject from above.
Having an older brother, I was conflicted about 'the screaming thing' as he was the main source of my childhood anguish. He was rapidly gathering the scars to prove it so Dad took time off polishing the Triumph Herald and sitting me gently on the trendy white vinyl sofa he explained about 'Crying Wolf'. Okay, so no screaming then unless we were being properly killed? Understood. By now, the children in the trampoline were obviously about to die so I shouted out the window.
"Oi! Which one of you two is being murdered?" This stopped the bouncing.
"We're not being murdered." The boy felt he had the upper hand. "And you're making a lot of noise."
"I'm only SHOUTING because you're being a nuisance." Still he felt he had maleness on his side.
"My Dad will come round and tell you off." Idiot.
"Your Dad had better bring friends because I'm not bothered. Besides he's shorter than me and his command of English is nowhere near as rich as mine." I could hear other neighbours sniggering in the undergrowth.
"I'm not being naughty."
"True ... but you are being very loud and annoying and I fear for your sister's life unless you leave her alone." This was a perfect moment because he pulled her up to standing and poked her in the stomach. Screaming properly this time, she threw up all over him and so karma was rebalanced, at least until the next time. In my weakened state, I had to throw up too but am now on the road to recovery.
The next time I woke up, I heard gales of manly laughter coming from the office and stumbling downstairs in search of nourishment I found Alphonse doubled up and howling, with tears rolling down his cheeks. The source of his hilarity was a YouTube classic episode of Space Patrol, an animated sci-fi story from 1963 called 'The Swamps of Jupiter'. If you're too young to remember it then I should warn you it's the forerunner of Fireball XL-5, Thunderbirds and possibly Alien. I've watched it through this morning and feel the creators hadn't read a Ladybird book on simple astronomy. Fundamentally, the reason they couldn't contact Jupiter was because they'd got it upside down. Any aspiring space cadet would know this. My favourite characters was the moonwalking robot and then there was Marla, the commander's secretary. Now Marla was a full-bottle-peroxide-blonde but whoever had carved her face knew a thing or two about messing up plastic surgery. Those cheekbones were sharper than my beak!
Tip of the Beak: I'm not sure if I mentioned my resignation from the hospital's secretarial pool after deciding I’m too hipster, rock-n-roll and totally science fiction for the new regime? If not, I apologise as it seems a long stretch since 13th May 2016. And having had a few days off with this gastro-bug I was reluctant to return to the fray. Princess Valkyrie is being quite nice to me possibly because I'm no longer a threat to her authority or grand plans for the department, although I never was. You see, I worked for her once before in the 1980s and she doesn’t remember me. She was the office manager in sole charge of the new word processing machine when we gels were stuck with electronic typewriters with only enough memory for one line at a time. She gave me an audio tape to transcribe only once; it was her shopping list and the offending dictation was returned with a curt note saying 'Do This Yourself'. As I'm still working my notice, unable to move on or apply for another role as they can't find a suitable replacement for me, I felt unusually annoyed at the Hospital Director who sent out his usual doom & gloom email last week then rocked up the next day in an Aston Martin. It beggars belief.
