When Castle Floats Attack

"The Castle crag of Drachenfels,
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine."
---- Lord Byron

On Sunday I was at my parents to celebrate my Mum's birthday. Of course, the anti-allergy fiesta continued unabated, with Molly the Wonder Dog stealing food left right and centre.

Later in the evening we were watching BBC World News. It's never an uppper, but my mother likes to know what's going on in the world. At one point, there was an article about a castle float that had become unmoored. This happened somewhere in the U.K. and if I'm not mistaken, a couple of people were killed.

I could not stop laughing. Neither could my mother.

It's a terrible, morbid thing. And at the same time, the whole concept of a castle float regulating on a crowd of carnival goers is also damn funny. At one point, they were interviewing a young man, who talked about how horrible the whole thing was against a backdrop of a what looked like a football field filled with the remnants of 10,000 broken ballons.

The whole thing reminded me of Bronte's story about yoga class with her Mum. Her Mum went into tree pose and farted. The two of them ended up getting kicked out of the class because they couldn't stop laughing.

Then the commentator in the article noted that the castle float was apparently an "interactive display", to which I responded "He's got that f*&king right."

It was too much for my mother, and we both went over Niagara Falls in the laughing fit barrel.

My sister noted we were both going to hell. My Mum turned to me and said "See ya down there eh?"