DONUTS!

I welcomed March with omelette and Minecraft, why not. Johnny reaches double figures today or thereabouts, 10 years old is practically an adult. His party was at Alpine Snowsports in Bassett, a forgotten armpit of Southampton. All us Puddlers compete gently to find the funniest party venues, we've done the inflatable pool parties a few times now so Johnny pushed the envelope with Donutting! Yes, you have to spell it in the American fashion.
I scooted round to his house and 10 of us lucky boys squeezed into their 2 cars and hardly got lost in Southampton at all. The Outdoor Centre is a huge place on actual hills (we don't have hills in Pompey) with football pitches, running tracks, tennis courts, a funfair, a large swimming pool with no water, and a dry ski slope.
The car park is completely hidden down a dirt track with potholes you could sink the Ark Royal in, you could see the burnt-out carcases of dead cars in the ravines below and there's a number you can ring for Mountain Rescue if your friends go missing for more than a week.
You can see here that on the left is a nursery slope for novice skiers: on the right is a super-long ski slope for the competent ones, and in the middle is the medium-sized Donut run. At the bottom is a huge padded crash barrier and any random trees on the slopes (how dare they grow there) also have their own crash pads.
But one of the funniest bits is the ski lift. Once you've been issued with your Donut and a crash helmet, you wait for a free pole on the ski-lift-that-never-stops and sit on the disc and it pulls you up the slope.
It does squash your nuts a bit but you clench your bum a bit and off you go. At the top you wait your turn and get into pairs or even threesomes. I can tell you that a threesome is great fun. A helper-bloke says when it's OK to go and you push yourself off with some little handles and you zip down the slope at an impressive rate and mostly you scream and end up going backwards and you hit the crash barrier and then your running-mate hits you as well.
Then, immediately, you scramble back on your feet and race back to the ski lift and you just go round and round and round for an hour. We were one of 2 parties and there was another kid in his forties so you don't have to be 9 to enjoy it.
Fighting the good fight with me today were Johnny and Robert (obviously), Ben, Louie from Cubs and some more of Johnny's friends. Mostly I teamed up with Ben and we laughed and laughed. There was quite a keen cold wind but you don't notice that sort of thing when the Helper-bloke starts pushing you down the slope while spinning you round and round just before the party food.
It's all very very funny indeed and clearly we all want to do it again for hours.

The Alpine Hut is the food venue and afterwards I was delivered home again and both Ben and I wanted to play Minecraft on his X-Box but it seems that US wanting something does not an appointment make.
So I Minecrafted to myself.