Tent Poles ©
By
Michael Casey
The girls came back from
their aunty’s with a car boot full of treasure, so I unloaded it before with a
double hoot my sister drove away. Amongst the treasure was a flat packed tent
in a plastic bag.
It’s been sunny in
Birmingham this Easter so obviously the girls wanted to try out the tent. So I
unsealed the plastic bag, and threw away the instructions, doesn’t everybody?
The tent was an igloo kind of design, there were plastic tubes that were ready
for the tent poles,
The tent poles were more
like the equipment Bruce Lee used to use, you know the sticks with chains
attached. Though they were like giant chop sticks, with elastics holding them
together and with a bit of metal too.
So I thought all I had to
do was to thread through the 4 feet of elastic and chopsticks and then the tent
would be ready. So I started in the middle and then tried to thread the poles
through. I tried it this way then that way, and it was no use. The chop stick
like poles wouldn’t and couldn’t fit.
So what do you do in these
circumstances? You try and find where the instructions were, the wind having
blown them to the bottom of the garden where the squirrels lived. Perhaps if I
gave some nuts or breakfast cereals to the squirrels they would explain how to
erect a tent.
I looked at the pictograph and
still could not work it out. So I went and had a cold drink before inspiration
struck. Instead of starting from the middle and doing the splits all I needed
to do as start at one corner and go diagonally over the middle and down the
other side like a roller coaster.
Success, I did a lap of
honour, the squirrels chattered, what an idiot this human was, obviously I didn’t
eat enough nuts, I could hear them say.
Then it was just a matter of starting in the other corner and threading
the pole though to the middle and down again like a roller coaster again.
The girls leapt for joy and
hugged their fat panda like dad, I could not do kung fu, but I had threaded the
kung fu fighting sticks, they had a tent and I WAS their panda like dad.
The girls gathered their
books and used the tent as a reading room, the library is at the bottom of our
street after all. Blankets and cushions were added to it. I went inside with a
dad smile on my lips, this is what being a dad is all about, priceless, though
sometimes useless as the squirrels might say.
The girls stayed in the
tent all afternoon, bringing their cheap and cheerful tablet outside to the
tent, Utube in the garden. Me, I retreated to the PC, see how many more people
I could annoy on Linkedin. I had taken loads of photos of my tent puzzle, so I
posted them on Linkedin, somebody said he expected a story, and yes right now a
day later I’m writing it.
Later as the chill
descended I brought the tent inside still with the poles in it. I placed it on
the floor of a bedroom. So the girls ransacked the wardrobes for pillows and
set up their next palace. The squirrels watched from the trees in the garden,
at least the human’s small offspring were not as stupid as him.
Today we hung out he
washing, this was my excuse for not bringing down the tent. The tent stayed
upstairs on the bedroom floor. Like a tent for Bedouins tribesmen or Eskimos, either
or, I’m not sure which.
The girls stayed there
reading books and watching Utube. Perhaps they even watched Panda videos on the
tablet. As for the squirrels they debated what washing was, a series of tents
maybe?
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