Cloud Rider (or not)

Leapt out of bed at 1130 and accepted croissants. The registered activity of the day was to try out Bud's birthday drone in a safe environment, so we drove to Ben's bumpy paths because there's plenty of space.

The Cloud Rider is a radio controlled Quadcopter with HD camera that takes pictures and video, and it comes with a manual full of warnings and some spare parts for crashing. For every 100 minutes of battery charging time, you get 7-10 minutes flight time. We set it up on a flat surface (car roof) and took it out into the middle of a field which was the cue for 73 dogs and their owners to converge upon us. We pressed the go-faster lever. It sat there. We wiggled the lever and I tried to take the remote and shouted out helpful comments about pressing more buttons. It sat there.

Then, it suddenly rocketed upwards, and headed purposefully towards the treeline. The lever was duly un-pressed and it plummeted back to earth 75 yards away.

Bud managed this feat once more (I am retrievals man) and Jof managed it as well, always flying due east, with the wind. I demanded my turn and put on The Face until I got it, but it wouldn't lift off. We did one more aerial mission before it just sat there. We took it home, mumbling darkly about returning it and buying an even more expensive one. At home, we discovered the manufacturer hadn't pushed the wire into the connector firmly enough giving an intermittent power supply, no wonder it spent most of its time just sitting there. Surprising, these Chinese manufacturers usually supply kit of unparalleled quality.

I had bought a Hasbro board game as an xmas present to the household and we played it a couple of days ago but I refused to relinquish the rules but may not have entirely understood them so we tried again, once some responsible adults (people from over the road) had read through them properly.

In The Game Of Life you spin the spinner and move along the track in your car: you are represented by a coloured peg. At various points you add a wife peg and possibly some baby pegs, most of which fall out if you don't shove them in hard enough.

I added wife-peg Gertrude, but Jof decided to be gay and also added a wife-peg. In these enlightened times, Bud also elected to be gay and married a goat called Geoff and with complicated medical procedures they currently have a baby goat, not kidding oho, and I have so many baby-pegs I have had to enlist the help of a second car. I also have a dream villa and private island, Jof has a beach hut and Bud/Goat/Goat live in their car. Every space that isn't a Life Choice™ (get baby, house, night school etc) is an Action Card where you have to perform a special dance or show off your skateboard or karate moves etc, so there's usually someone making a bottie of themselves, and it wasn't even beer night.