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Story: London Bridge!
Well this is an old story... It involves me, lamby, culkin and Jay and a very interesting weekend. Well the story starts by deciding we wanted to make a paint balling area that we could all play on in the wood next to lamby's house, the only problem was that we had to cross a very big ditch to get to this place. The original bridge so we were told was built by lamby and the scouts ( i think ) when he was younger... and was literally falling apart. So after much deliberation we decided to reinforce the bridge. We first brought lamby's manatuo and lifted the old bridge from its home onto the the embankment next to it. This then led us to believe that the reinforcement would be pointless as most of the planks had rotten almost completely. So we set to work pulling out each plank and collecting the nails from them. After this was completed using our very funny selection of tools that we brought from home, we went to find suitable wood to use as planks, lamby showed us to a huge stack of unused wood from strange and weird things that have been taken apart from his land and we started rummaging.. about 30mins later we had a good stack of wood, and many close calls of landing on nails that had been left in them, and splinters in the wood. It took us a good while nailing the planks into place as the nails we pulled out of the old bridge bend as you hammered them in, we had a barrel of laughs especially with my little toffee hammer of a hammer. After many hours of hammering, collecting more wood, hammering some more laughing, reinforcing the key parts of the bridge, hammering some more...
We finally finished and decided to get it across the ditch again. Now this was the interesting point, as culkin had to go to work for 3 hours so it left me, Jay and lamby to sort this problem out. First the problem was finding some rope that was long enough, which took us about 30 mins and involving me phoning my parents and grandparents to get some which both seemed fruitless, then we managed to find some in one of lamby's barns. The first attempt at breaching the gap we tried getting the manatuo to pick it up and lower it across the gap... this failed miserably as it wouldn't reach far enough across the ditch without the manatuo going in itself. The second attempt was trying to lower the bridge from standing using ropes that we would hold and lower it down slowly, this also failed as we found that we didn't have long enough rope to do this and that it was too heavy for me and Jay to hold and for Lamby to lower using the manatuo. After we found some chain that we thought that was long enough we decided that we would tie it around a tree and use a jeep to lower the bridge to the other side. After many attempts of me trying to throw this chain through the branches of this tree having Jay rolling on the floor in hysterics we finally got it through and attached to the bridge and the jeep, now we started to move the bridge, and for the chain getting tangled in the tree's which brought that attempt to failure, but we thought we were still on the right track with this idea, so we tried another tree closer to the embankment of the ditch. This tree took some getting to as it was right on the edge and involved me attached to a rope with the chain shimmying to it and trying to get this chain around the tree in one throw, after again many attempts we succeeded and attached it to the jeep again and stated moving the bridge. This time the damage was a bit more extreme as we managed to saw the tree in two and break the chain which ruined that idea and shortened our longest piece of material to get the bridge across. Our next idea was for the manatuo to hold the bridge and me and Jay to pull it into position, so we set to work in getting the ropes into position.. getting into position and pulling, this we thought was the best idea, after many attempts we had accounted every miss direction the bridge could possibly go including a good 15 minute swim in ditch as we debated the best way to fix the problem, at this time 3 hours had passed and culkin had arrived home form work, so i went to pick him up and explain to him our many attempts and failures.
When we got back to lamby's we tried again now with culkin's expert mind of these kind of problems we finally managed to get the bridge across the distance and for it to stay there. From there on we decided to further reinforce it by putting 2 huge poles into the floor and nailing them into place with 9 inch nails ( i think ) so now the bridge was firmly into place and stable. Next came the bridges ultimate test - The FLAVELL - This was afew nights later at a gathering that lamby had, probably some random disco that we crashed and me managed to brag flavell's mum into letting him come, so we took him to the fabled bridge and he jumped, and to all our surprise it held firmly and now a permanent part of Scalm Park. Since this the bridge hasn't really been used apart from been sick off, after shots of 96. It was a great success story and we enjoyed making it, nice work lads.
Moral: Leave toffee hammers for hammering... well... toffee.
Thanks for reading!
Author: Steven Wright
Well this is an old story... It involves me, lamby, culkin and Jay and a very interesting weekend. Well the story starts by deciding we wanted to make a paint balling area that we could all play on in the wood next to lamby's house, the only problem was that we had to cross a very big ditch to get to this place. The original bridge so we were told was built by lamby and the scouts ( i think ) when he was younger... and was literally falling apart. So after much deliberation we decided to reinforce the bridge. We first brought lamby's manatuo and lifted the old bridge from its home onto the the embankment next to it. This then led us to believe that the reinforcement would be pointless as most of the planks had rotten almost completely. So we set to work pulling out each plank and collecting the nails from them. After this was completed using our very funny selection of tools that we brought from home, we went to find suitable wood to use as planks, lamby showed us to a huge stack of unused wood from strange and weird things that have been taken apart from his land and we started rummaging.. about 30mins later we had a good stack of wood, and many close calls of landing on nails that had been left in them, and splinters in the wood. It took us a good while nailing the planks into place as the nails we pulled out of the old bridge bend as you hammered them in, we had a barrel of laughs especially with my little toffee hammer of a hammer. After many hours of hammering, collecting more wood, hammering some more laughing, reinforcing the key parts of the bridge, hammering some more...
We finally finished and decided to get it across the ditch again. Now this was the interesting point, as culkin had to go to work for 3 hours so it left me, Jay and lamby to sort this problem out. First the problem was finding some rope that was long enough, which took us about 30 mins and involving me phoning my parents and grandparents to get some which both seemed fruitless, then we managed to find some in one of lamby's barns. The first attempt at breaching the gap we tried getting the manatuo to pick it up and lower it across the gap... this failed miserably as it wouldn't reach far enough across the ditch without the manatuo going in itself. The second attempt was trying to lower the bridge from standing using ropes that we would hold and lower it down slowly, this also failed as we found that we didn't have long enough rope to do this and that it was too heavy for me and Jay to hold and for Lamby to lower using the manatuo. After we found some chain that we thought that was long enough we decided that we would tie it around a tree and use a jeep to lower the bridge to the other side. After many attempts of me trying to throw this chain through the branches of this tree having Jay rolling on the floor in hysterics we finally got it through and attached to the bridge and the jeep, now we started to move the bridge, and for the chain getting tangled in the tree's which brought that attempt to failure, but we thought we were still on the right track with this idea, so we tried another tree closer to the embankment of the ditch. This tree took some getting to as it was right on the edge and involved me attached to a rope with the chain shimmying to it and trying to get this chain around the tree in one throw, after again many attempts we succeeded and attached it to the jeep again and stated moving the bridge. This time the damage was a bit more extreme as we managed to saw the tree in two and break the chain which ruined that idea and shortened our longest piece of material to get the bridge across. Our next idea was for the manatuo to hold the bridge and me and Jay to pull it into position, so we set to work in getting the ropes into position.. getting into position and pulling, this we thought was the best idea, after many attempts we had accounted every miss direction the bridge could possibly go including a good 15 minute swim in ditch as we debated the best way to fix the problem, at this time 3 hours had passed and culkin had arrived home form work, so i went to pick him up and explain to him our many attempts and failures.
When we got back to lamby's we tried again now with culkin's expert mind of these kind of problems we finally managed to get the bridge across the distance and for it to stay there. From there on we decided to further reinforce it by putting 2 huge poles into the floor and nailing them into place with 9 inch nails ( i think ) so now the bridge was firmly into place and stable. Next came the bridges ultimate test - The FLAVELL - This was afew nights later at a gathering that lamby had, probably some random disco that we crashed and me managed to brag flavell's mum into letting him come, so we took him to the fabled bridge and he jumped, and to all our surprise it held firmly and now a permanent part of Scalm Park. Since this the bridge hasn't really been used apart from been sick off, after shots of 96. It was a great success story and we enjoyed making it, nice work lads.
Moral: Leave toffee hammers for hammering... well... toffee.
Thanks for reading!
Author: Steven Wright