Squirrel Monkeys and Trampolines

Yesterday was an ideal day to go for an outing so I took the wee fella to the Heads of Ayr Farm Park. On the way there, quite unprovoked he started laughing.
-I’ve gotta joke for you, dad
-Go for it.
-This man has a dog called Willie and a house he calls Big Hairy Bum. He loses his dog one day and calls the police. He tells them he’s looked all over his big hairy bum and he can’t find his Willie. Cue giggling dad and child. It’s good to be eleven now and again, no? Wonder where he gets the daft sense of humour from.

We loved the Farm Park, by the way. Loads to do and see – otters, llamas, iguanas, GIANT rabbits and the cutest monkeys you’ll ever see. They’re called squirrel monkeys and they are about the size of...you guessed it, squirrels. The park has also giant bouncy pillows – think of the floor of the bouncy castle without the castle, slides, quad bikes and trampolines. Well worth a visit for anyone with families out there. Lots of kids with smiles plastered all over the faces being the best judge of the quality of the place.

Some of the children there were absolute wizards on the old trampolines. We used to just try and jump as high as we could. Now of course if you don’t have a trampoline in your back garden you’re the odd one out. And it showed with somersaults, flips and spins on display.
This reminded me of my brief career as a world class trampolinist. When I were a lad, the only people who could afford trampolines were t’ council. The list of unaffordables was long and included colour TV’s , football boots and foreign holidays. But hey, wagon wheels were HUGE and mars bars had more than 3 bites in’em. Life is but a series of payoffs, innit? Where was I? Oh, right...there was some trampolines down Barassie shore in Troon. They were rectangular and set up with two rows of five inside a wire fence about seven feet high.

I was about twelve – so that is my defence for what happened next...after a good ten minute session of bouncing I was the only child within the fenced enclosure. Fantastic! I had all these trampolines to myself. So I decided that I would make use of this and jump from one to the other down the line. There was about a foot of grass between each one so with just a little effort I could easily get from one to the other. The big mistake was when I decided that I should only allow myself one bounce on each trampoline, with the grass being out of bounds, on my attempt to travel to the far end. I bounced down towards the end, only realising that I had built up a fair amount of momentum when I got to trampoline number 5, with nothing to halt my forward movement apart from a bloody big fence. I crashed into it head first and crumpled to the floor.
I cried, dear reader and I had a nice mesh effect on the left side of my face for at least 4 weeks.