Fly a Kite
Having 2 brothers and a sister meant that rather than get taken abroad as kids, we'd invariably get woken up at some crazy hour and packed into the car along with most of the house for a trip to Scotland or Cornwall year upon year.

After the usual bickering about who can 'lean on who' to sleep on the way, I would get stuck in the middle seat and lean between them most of the way annoying my Dad with inane questions about things spotted along the way. To his credit he had remarkable patience to put up with me asking questions he couldn't possibly answer about such things as "how many houses a pylon carried electricty for?" etc.

Once we reached our destination one year around 8am, we stopped in a carpark somewhere in Scotland for a cuppa and to stretch our legs.

As usual within about 5 minutes of arriving, so did about 15 other cars and they all had to park next to use, even though the carpark was about an acre square.

Having had a cuppa and some by now rather sweaty sandwiches, we decided we MUST fly the kite w'd brought with us. Dad duly got it out of the boot after about half an hour of rooting through through the 'essentials' Mum had packed.

Following a few failed attempts by us kids to launch the Kite, Dad took it upon himself to show us how it was done and started off on a run across the carpark. As we watched he turned to ensure the wind would catch it properly and started running backwards...

We could all see it coming, but as we began to start frantically warning him, Mum told us all to "shhh"!" Getting up quite a lick now THWACK!

He hit the now open car door of one of our fellow travellers and went clean over it backwards, landing in a heap that can only be decribed as the aftermath of a horror movie, with arms and legs everywhere.

Mum started howling with laughter and in time we followed suit (he wouldn't be getting up for a while after all). As the family of the car door he hit helped him up, we cried and cried with laughter until he began tenderly walking back towards us. Seeing us laughing he snapped the kite in half, kicked us all back into the car and we sat in silence all the way to our final destination as Mum broke into giggles every few minutes.

Needless to say I didn't ask any more questions along the way...
(Galahad is out of his gourd on yellow bentines, Fri 26 Nov 2010, 11:36, Reply)