Thursday 16 April 2009

RUSSIAN ROULETTE

I've taken quite a few risks in my time. Not all of them have paid off.
When I was a kid I was very interested in parachutes and parachuting. So I jumped out of my bedroom window. Luckily my Dad had recently dug the garden immediately beneath it. But I still made quite an impact. As I had not, at that stage, mastered the Parachute Landing Fall (the Para's roll) I fell forward and got a lot of dirt up my nose, bloodied my face on stones and skinned my hands and knees. Not to mention the pasting I got for being so bloody stupid in the first place.
I started parachuting in my twenties in order to beat what I thought would be the ultimate test of fear. Turned out it wasn't. I nearly got banned from that game by jumping a parachute rig that hadn't been properly tested. It was an honest mistake. Guv.
As I approach fifty, you'd think I'd have learned my lesson. But you'd be wrong. I'm still very much up for a game of Russian roulette. Here's how it goes.
You go in a wood. Preferably one filled with silver birch trees. You enter on the pretext of "a nice family walk". You then ferret about and find an old, dead tree that is nevertheless still standing. In a silver birch glade you can normally find plenty. Then you shake said tree to and fro, setting up a good rhythm and then, bang, you suddenly shake it on an off beat. Result? Tree comes crashing down. You run like f*ck. Hopefully you survive to play again.
A simple game of simple pleasures. For nutters.
I've played it many times with my two sons who collapse in laughter as their Dad comes crashing through the undergrowth to escape certain death or injury. I haven't yet tried it with my two year old daughter.

2 comments:

  1. I love this idea.....this reminds me of the things that I used to get up to in my youth. The weekend is coming......bring me a birch.....

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