Not for the faint hearted, poles and paintball.
The children had requested (Nz'rs & Scots) a trip to a pole climbing centre to see how long their respective parents lasted before buckling under fear of heights.
The site consisted of 10-15m high poles joined up with wires, bridges and other tall apparatus. All with one thing in common, to test how far you felt like going. Going home didn't seem a bad idea at all at his point however, as we had paid we had to stay. Angus was raring to go so up he went and monkeyed along the wires at 10m. The chiels all romped through and graduated onto the shaky chain bridge with no hand holds at 10-12m. Quite the test, Jack fared best skipping over Billy Goat Gruff's death trap bridge while Jen had to be airlifted off.
The best news I heard all morning was that we had run out of time and couldn't graduate to climbing the 10m pole and jumping off to the trapeze bar. It would have been a humiliation for the family having their father weeping at the top and be taken off by one rifle shot.
The next challenge was the paint-ball firing range to vent all disagreements leftover from Christmas. How the children were looking forward to legally damaging the parents without a beating to follow. We teamed up with three others making ten in all and went into battle to capture the flag and retain it. The junior officers felt that an example should be set by a more senior member of the red beret command who would be backed by their massive fire power. Fine in principal until my own brother shot me at close range in the back, sinbin for him. After Jen and I doing our commando rolls and “Dirty Harry” manoeuvres we won the day.
Fish suppers all round and off to bed.
Gary(bruised, physically and mentally)

pics Kate on bridge and Darth Vader(Jack or Angus)