From Jester To King XXXII

They say the Isle of Man is delightful in spring, so we went one better and travelled in summer. Me my Dad and I. I can see the view from the hoverferry in my mind’s eye as we sailed over the sea, all the small islands dotted around I never knew existed, little raised brown things with hardly a thing upon them until we finally pulled into port. I predictably lost my father as soon as we docked. Those who know him will be acquainted with his ants-in-his-pants, can’t-stop-for-a-second side so he rushed off and I was left to fend for myself. Typical! There was an immediate quaintness to the place but I didn’t know which direction to follow to catch up with Dad, or indeed the rest of my family who’d arrived on the hoverferry before. Something told me left, so I went right, because if I go with my instincts I’m usually wrong. And so I went right and found myself on something of an unremarkable normal UK suburban road with an extended pavement, with all the familiar United Kingdom signs and realised pretty soonish that none of the attractions of the main park could ever be here, so I did a 180 only to find a very troubling man by my left heel – he was hunched over himself, ill or drunk, one of the two -- and despite not wanting to show him the dim light I obviously held him in, I fairly scarpered along the lane back towards the port but fortunately he wasn’t the slightest bit interested and carried on with his own thing. I got back to the mini roundabout but none of the two exits were familiar, after such a short time how was this possible, how could I have forgotten? So I took the first and this was more like it, no signs of the theme park as such but it was more picturesque and we were entering the real country and there was no pavement on my left hand-side of the road, just hedges and overhanging trees and I struggled to make it up over the incline so I decided to put it in second but couldn’t for the life of me remember that it wasn’t an automatic. People were looking at me like I was mental, the engine kept making these high pitch yelps but eventually I managed it.

There was a helicopter trip later. People who didn’t think I could fly a helicopter, well think again because a plane is as good as a helicopter in my book. And after all the commotion I managed to land it pretty much without anyone knowing we’d actually touched the ground. Now there’s some skill for you.