The Frisbee four

“Left a bit, left, no left – I SAID LEFT”


It’s not my fault that we were going right though – I was trying my best. How many of you have attempted precision pedalo driving, while attempting to nonchalantly look like a normal tourist, rather than the leader of the ‘The Frisbee four’? The cover wasn’t exactly being helped by the two fishing nets being swung around by the two youngest members of the least subtle heist team, since a bunch of A-list celebrities thought that sticking not one, but both of the drills used to dig the channel tunnel under Vegas.



Was this fiction? Was it the beginnings of Ocean’s 14 or the opening sequence in the latest series of the mighty BBC’s Hustle?

No.

This was Glen’s life.

Sadly – this really is what happens to me.

So why were we surreptitiously floating about a lake in the Cotswolds, working the perfect scam while disguised as tourists? Well I guess I need to go back to the start…

August 2011 – somewhere in Cornwall, way down South in the United Kingdom.

My eldest, Daniel, lets it be known that he wants a Frisbee. To be more precise it isn’t a Frisbee he wants – it’s a disc. I actually don’t know what it’s really called, but it flies – oh it flies. Apparently (because this is the kind of thing that Daniel tells me as fact, which I tend to just believe, rather than spend any time verifying) the model he wants is a World Record holder, for flying really far.

Daniel has his pocket money, so we have no reason not to let him buy himself one. The hunt begins. One thing I should point out is that Daniel shops like – well he shops like a child. With no patience unless the very first shop you go in has what he wants. Actually he shops like me, if I’m honest. We couldn’t find the disc quickly and so it soon became an issue, an issue bigger than it needed to be, if you know what I mean?

We quickly forgot about the Frisbee until the last day of the holiday, when we walked by a shop selling THE EXACT MODEL! His eyes nearly popped out of his head, bless him. At £12 this was no cheap buy, but he looked through his savings, decided he wanted it, and went for it. Why not?

Have you ever had one of your children buy something that you know you have absolutely no space for them to play with? The wait to play with it nearly killed him. When we got home he ran out on the very first evening and managed to stick it on to the garage roof, on only his second throw.

I got it down and again we attempted to explain that the world’s longest flying Frisbee was just too much for our garden.

So a few days later, my wife took the boys to the open space of the Wittenham Clumps, which is a lovely place near us. Here Daniel could finally achieve the disc throwing excitement he craved.

And he did.

And then he wanged it a good un, before heading off to do something else and forgot about it.

Meaning that he well and truly lost the bloody thing.

He was gutted, but he had been told to go and get it straight away and wouldn’t, so when it was lost it stayed lost.

He wasn’t exactly happy, and I felt sorry for him, but these things happen.

August 2011 – The Cotswold Water Park

We went for the day at the lovely Cotswold Water Park and enjoyed a great day on the beach, and then went for a walk along the lake. This was where the miracle happened.

There in the shallow waters, just out a little from the edge, was a disc. An exact duplicate of the one Daniel had lost. Clearly some other kid had failed to heed his parent’s warnings about the distance this monster travels, because this one had sunk itself firmly into the water.

Daniel couldn’t believe it – and neither could I, and that’s when the plan hatched in my criminally genius mind. The lake had pedalos. Pedalos you could hire. The little shop had fishing nets.

The heist was on.

So ‘The Frisbee four’ ventured out onto the waters with possibly the worst pedalo driver in the world at the helm. We had already drawn enough funny stares from people as it was, for heading away from the pier at the designated “No fishing” end of the lake waving two fishing nets about on the end of two over excited children, who were also shouting about the fish food that they had made me buy as well. I coughed and attempted to indicate to the objecting bystanders that there was a perfectly innocent explanation for all this that, if they cared to wait around for, my wife would explain to them upon our return.

As much as is possible in an out of control pedalo – we legged it.

And then spent a ridiculous amount of time floating back and forth somewhere in the vicinity, but not quite within fishing net’s reach of, the disc.

Until suddenly – WE HAD IT!

We had the disc in the boat, which I promptly sat on to hide.

Unbelievably, we got away with the lamest ‘non-crime’ of the weekend’, and now Daniel is smiling because he is, once again, the proud owner of the world’s longest flying Frisbee. Even if it is a bit mouldy, jagged and battered and thus doesn’t really fly very far, considering we actually paid more in fishing nets, fish food and boat hire than we would have if we’d bought him a brand new one on Amazon.

Still… I quite enjoyed my stint as George Clooney, even if I did get my Dinner Jacket soaking wet on that lake…