Of Messerschmitds and cats arses
To relay this story requires the admission of ultimate geekness.

Despite the fact I am on the wrong side of 40 and am meant to be all growed up, I have for a few years now rediscovered my childhood hobby of Airfix kits. Its a nice bit of stress relief and an escape from the never ending demands of work and fatherhood, essentially, having a creative outlet keeps me sane!.

So, in the early days of rediscovering this simple childhood pastime, before I took over a whole room in the house, I would build my little plastic aeroplanes on a tray on my lap in the livingroom.

One day, the wifes boss and his wife popped over for a quick social, and to set the scene of domestic bliss, I am sat in my easychair with a part built messerschmidt on my lap while everyone else is sat on the sofa drinking tea and boring the pants off me. The cat is happily draped over the back of the sofa purring sweet nothings into the ear of the boss’s wife and the dog is in deep slumber in his basket on the floor at the other end of the sofa.

For those of you who have built a plastic kit, you may be familiar with the word “Sproing” for this is the sound occasionially made by a small plastic part launching itself into orbit when you cut it from the sprue.

It was time for the little plastic German pilot to be transplanted from the sprue into his cockpit, and true to form, as the stanley knife cut down to release him from the sprue there is a familiar “SPROINGGG” as the erstwhile 1/72 replica pilot took flight at close to supersonc speed sans aircraft!

DINK! he rebounded off the wall

SPROINK he ricocheed off the TV

And with a final POINK off the door he terminated his flight at some speed with a glancing blow to the cats rusty starfish which the cat had, up until now, been enjoying displaying to all and sundry, legs akimbo on top of the sofa!

This is where it all went a bit wrong

The cat lept vertically off the top off the sofa and with a crack hit the bottom of a shelf above the sofa, let out an anquished MROooowwwwlll and landed in a 4 paw full claw vice grip squarely on top of the head of the wife of the boss

The Wife of the boss let out a shriek as she was being efficiently scalped by the cat, now in the full throwes of the fight or flight decision and hurled her cup of tea into my wifes lap.

Meanwhile, the effect of the cat hitting the bottom of the shelf was enough to displace a vase of dried flowers at the far end of the shelf and with a Roing roing roing it slowly span on its base before falling off the end of the shelf.

The dog, woken by the noise, looked up, to get the vase of flowers square between the eyes! He then proceeded to go into a frenzy which first consisted of biting the ankle of the wifes boss as he was valiantly pawing at my wifes scalded mimsy to try to give relief and was thus a threat to canine kind, to then moving onto the beanbag which was duely ripped open with gay abandon showering the room in a festive haze of polystyrene balls.

Once the mayhem had susided a little, my quip of “bloody luftwaffe eh!” did not help as I had forgotten the Bosses wife was half German!.

Not my best day

Apologies for spelling … pissed 🙂
( RadG Drinking Gin and Tonic in the sun, Sun 24 Jan 2010, 16:33