The nightmare after the nightmare before Christmas

I finished my term of supply work about a week and a half ago and was very sad to go actually. I've missed teaching and all the hilarity such a job brings. Once again, I think my main failing as a teacher is that I want to enjoy myself too much. I just want to muck about most of the time and have a laugh. It takes a great deal of concentration on my part to do all that working in silence and being very serious crap. Hmmm. Very professional.

There's a chance they'll invite me back (though not if they read my previous sentiment) and so I'm lingering about like a bad smell over the Christmas period. Sadly, I mean that quite literally. I am at this moment sitting in a room so messy, that I am forced to climb over things to get to the door. Hideous, hideous things at that. I'm even watching Tomb Raider, for my sins. It's the Christmas period and this is the best thing on TV. Bah Humbug. The fact that I have heard that Daniel Craig is in it has absolutely nothing to do with it. Nothing at all....

To get me in the Christmas mood this year, I went to see the Nightmare Before Christmas 3D. I've never seen a 3D film before. We had the glasses that make everyone look like Woody Allen as well. Very cool. I love the film, so I wasn't disappointed, but the 3D effects were less obvious than I had hoped. There was a sample of the 3D effect at the beginning and all these numbers came towards you from the screen in Tim Burton style, before a pumpkin sprang out of a box and looked like it was about to hit you in the face. That was excellent. The rest of the 3D stuff was OK.

When The Pook and I were walking back across Leicester Square we happened to notice (unsurprisingly) a huge brilliantly lit funfair in the middle of the square. I don't know if I ever posted my lengthy rant about how much I hate amusement park rides. The basic point is that much though I would love to go on these upsidedown crazy bastard roller coasters and emerge laughing and wanting to have another go, this is sadly impossible.

...Why the hell is Lara Croft doing strange acrobatics on bungee ropes in her giant entrance hall wearing silky PJs? What an odd thing to do....

Anyway, the reason exciting rides are out of the question for me is that I suffer from a little thing called primal fear. If I am hurled downwards in any way then my body assumes death is iminent and shuts down. I can't even jump off high things into water. I convulse with agonising pain and am unable to breathe. It's quite hideous. I imagine I resemble a corpse. In fact I know I do because I have seen photographic proof. The last time I went on one of those log flume things when I was about 13, there was a camera to catch you 'enjoying' the moment of the terrifying plunge. I looked very very ill. I'm never sick, nausea is not a factor. It's just the experience of heartstopping terror in the face of death that I fail to find fun.

But then there's the Chair O Planes. Oh God, I have always loved these things. I have many fond memories of feeling like I was flying in a metal seat. For anyone who is unaware of chair o planes, it's like a carousel with chairs hanging down from the top section usually on rickety chains that have seen better days. You sit in a chair and pull another chain across the front of the seat to hold you in. Then the carousel gently twirls and by the magic of centrifugal force, you start to swing outward and all the blood rushes into your legs. It's a wonderfully fun thing to do, trust me.

There's a chair o planes thing IN LEICESTER SQUARE!! There's also one of those 300 foot high spinning cage things, but I have no wish to try that. We'd walked past it on the way to the cinema and I'd said 'Oooh! Chair o planes!' On the way back to the train station I decided I'd have to have a go. The Pook and I had been debating if we should go on it for some minutes. We paid our £2.50 and went to select a seat. It's been many years since I had a go on my favourite funfair ride and I was almost dancing about with joy. The seats were not as frail as I remember and the chain across the front of the seat had been replaced by a steel bar. Slightly more alarmingly, there was also a dog lead type strap that you brought up between your legs and attached to the bar. Just as I was starting to feel a twinge of anxiety about the necessity of the steel bar restraint and the dog lead thing on a ride that rarely achieves speeds of 20 miles per hour, the ride started.

Well. It all started very well, but then, just as I assumed we had achieved maximum velocity, a new element came into play. As the top part spun, it also started to tilt from side to side. This meant that not only were you whirling remarkably fast but also undulating up and down and starting to twist the chains above you. I definitely had a twinge of the old primal fear, this was not the gentle Victorian-esque fun I remembered from my distant childhood. It was by no means a terrifying experience, but I definitely recall a certain sense that I was about to come loose from the chains and go flying across the square, perhaps to crash into the front window of the Hagen Daas cafe. Hmm. There's an interesting way to die.

I had the nostalgic realisation that although other things were different, the chains that attached the corners of the seat to the top section of the carousel were still horribly rickety looking. At this point, the ride hit a previously unheard of speed (probably of about 30 mph, although it felt like 70) and we, the riders, nearly became horizontal in our flight. At this point, I turned to The Pook, twirling horizonally beside me with an expression of slight windswept alarm, and shouted 'If I die, I want a jazz band at my funeral!' And a small part of me was covering all the bases in the event of an unpleasant accident.

Still we emerged relatively intact with streaming eyes and inexplicable hair. And I was pleased to discover that I had quite enjoyed myself. Don't think I'll ever have a taste for those crazy rides with names like THE DISEMBOWELLER, but I was rather proud of myself for averting one of my crazy corpse moments. Yay me!