How to waste time, by the true experts
Let me explain to you a sequence of events.
Step 1: At the start of Senior 1, I meet a young chap by the name of Samuel Stafford.
Step 2: Years later, he gets me to start a podcast with him. I agree.
Step 3: That podcast is rarely updated over a long period of time and both of us become frustrated at this.
Step 4: Sam suggests that, due to my crappy internet connection, we try to record the podcast not over Skype, but at my house.
Step 5: Sam arrives at my house. He, my little sister, Erin, and myself watch Remembrance of the Daleks.
Step 6: Sam notices a small device lying on my shelf. It's one of those little things where you pull a string out quickly and the disc on top goes flying off. He fools around with it and decides to take it downstairs.
Step 7: We all play Excite Truck. The room is too warm so we open the patio doors.
Step 8: My parents leave for Glasgow, my Mum tells us not to do anything stupid. We let Sam go outside. At the time, we didn't realise just how stupid that was. He takes the flying disc.
Step 9: We play with the flying disc device outside and, for fear of it landing on the roof in the wind, I suggest we go round to the front garden. Stupid.
Step 10: After a few successful tries around the front, Erin manages to get the disc lodged in a tree.
From here on in, the tale becomes much more convoluted but it ends up with this:
We couldn't get the disc down by shaking the tree so we brainstormed for other ideas. While Sam and I tried to get the hose to jet water up high enough (about 30 feet, needless to say it didn't work), Erin went to the sheds and begins construction on an insane contraption formed from Sellotape and garden canes. Our idea having failed, and Erin being scary when she's mad, Sam and I get drafted in.
We discover that the one cane after another approach won't work so we begin the long process of taping on more and more canes to the lower sections in order to make them stable enough for the height we needed. At this point, we moved from in front of the sheds to into the front drive. Given the final size of Citizen Cane, this proved to be a wise choice.
Sam wielding the masking tape, Erin the Sello variety and myself armed with two rolls of duct, we proceeded to spend several, I jest not, hours taping together canes, lifting them to test for structural strength and generally wondering whether we're ever going to get that disc out of the tree. Before my parents come home.
At one point, we even acquired an onlooker, who was walking through the field on the other side of the road. We say hello and continue to try to position this most unwieldy of pointing devices in such a way that it reaches and knocks the branch that the disc is on, hoping to make it fall out.
We succeed.
In knocking it on to another tree.
This tree, while lower down, is still to high for us to reach and too sturdy for us to shake down. However, it is closer so that the precision engineering that went into calculating the length of Citizen Cane (as it had by then been named) no longer worked. Further fiddling with the position of the base, which may or may not affect the position of the top, got the disc down a second time, and there was much rejoicing.
There was also much running around as my parents were expected back from Glasgow with my brother and we needed to tidy up all the tools and remaining canes (there weren't many) before they arrived. Curiously, we weren't all that concerned about how to conceal The Colossus of Troon. We ended up sticking it in my brother's window as far as it would go and leaving it for my parents to find. We dashed inside and only a few minutes later, the car pulled in the drive.
Many explanations and “looks-on-faces-that-you-really-should-have-seen” later, we got the cane down and stashed it more or less on top of the sheds at the back of the garden. Current long term plans include touring the country with it (Sam), religious worship of it (Erin) and poking things with it (me).
Ladies and gentlemen, I present Citizen Cane, 933cm of garden canes, sticky tape and passionate stupidity.
More photos and a woodle on the way tomorrow. Bear with me. Sam's still here. He's trying to juggle behind me. It's gonna be a long night.
Step 1: At the start of Senior 1, I meet a young chap by the name of Samuel Stafford.
Step 2: Years later, he gets me to start a podcast with him. I agree.
Step 3: That podcast is rarely updated over a long period of time and both of us become frustrated at this.
Step 4: Sam suggests that, due to my crappy internet connection, we try to record the podcast not over Skype, but at my house.
Step 5: Sam arrives at my house. He, my little sister, Erin, and myself watch Remembrance of the Daleks.
Step 6: Sam notices a small device lying on my shelf. It's one of those little things where you pull a string out quickly and the disc on top goes flying off. He fools around with it and decides to take it downstairs.
Step 7: We all play Excite Truck. The room is too warm so we open the patio doors.
Step 8: My parents leave for Glasgow, my Mum tells us not to do anything stupid. We let Sam go outside. At the time, we didn't realise just how stupid that was. He takes the flying disc.
Step 9: We play with the flying disc device outside and, for fear of it landing on the roof in the wind, I suggest we go round to the front garden. Stupid.
Step 10: After a few successful tries around the front, Erin manages to get the disc lodged in a tree.
From here on in, the tale becomes much more convoluted but it ends up with this:
We couldn't get the disc down by shaking the tree so we brainstormed for other ideas. While Sam and I tried to get the hose to jet water up high enough (about 30 feet, needless to say it didn't work), Erin went to the sheds and begins construction on an insane contraption formed from Sellotape and garden canes. Our idea having failed, and Erin being scary when she's mad, Sam and I get drafted in.
We discover that the one cane after another approach won't work so we begin the long process of taping on more and more canes to the lower sections in order to make them stable enough for the height we needed. At this point, we moved from in front of the sheds to into the front drive. Given the final size of Citizen Cane, this proved to be a wise choice.
Sam wielding the masking tape, Erin the Sello variety and myself armed with two rolls of duct, we proceeded to spend several, I jest not, hours taping together canes, lifting them to test for structural strength and generally wondering whether we're ever going to get that disc out of the tree. Before my parents come home.
At one point, we even acquired an onlooker, who was walking through the field on the other side of the road. We say hello and continue to try to position this most unwieldy of pointing devices in such a way that it reaches and knocks the branch that the disc is on, hoping to make it fall out.
We succeed.
In knocking it on to another tree.
This tree, while lower down, is still to high for us to reach and too sturdy for us to shake down. However, it is closer so that the precision engineering that went into calculating the length of Citizen Cane (as it had by then been named) no longer worked. Further fiddling with the position of the base, which may or may not affect the position of the top, got the disc down a second time, and there was much rejoicing.
There was also much running around as my parents were expected back from Glasgow with my brother and we needed to tidy up all the tools and remaining canes (there weren't many) before they arrived. Curiously, we weren't all that concerned about how to conceal The Colossus of Troon. We ended up sticking it in my brother's window as far as it would go and leaving it for my parents to find. We dashed inside and only a few minutes later, the car pulled in the drive.
Many explanations and “looks-on-faces-that-you-really-should-have-seen” later, we got the cane down and stashed it more or less on top of the sheds at the back of the garden. Current long term plans include touring the country with it (Sam), religious worship of it (Erin) and poking things with it (me).
Ladies and gentlemen, I present Citizen Cane, 933cm of garden canes, sticky tape and passionate stupidity.
More photos and a woodle on the way tomorrow. Bear with me. Sam's still here. He's trying to juggle behind me. It's gonna be a long night.
posted by Alasdair Corbett at
11:19 PM
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