Of course we had to do our test flights. I wanted to go out to the outside balcony overlooking the sports field – actually it is an astro-turf football pitch – but they all complained that it was too hot outside. Back home in England I would be facing the opposite problem with students demanding to have lessons outside because it was too hot inside.
Contrasts.
Anyway, we went to the indoor balcony overlooking the big gym. The paper darts flew much as I expected, straight across and down. Bings’ went furthest and got a big cheer. Then came the ‘aeroplane’, made from a design I leant at Primary school, many years ago. (Actually we called it Junior School in them days, as the Infants school was in a separate building.) I had shown them how to make these planes by making them follow me, step-by-step using my visualiser; this is just a camera on a stick attached to my laptop which is then connected to the big TV screen called a Viewboard – isn’t life wonderful these days. In the end I had to finish the final folds for most of them.
First off went the twins. In both cases their planes went up in a loop, flew back towards us, and landed on the ledge of the supporting pillars, just out of our reach! Bing and Bong wanted to climb over the barrier to retrieve them – I saw a serious trip to the hospital coming up.
Princess Bulbhead machine a loop and a spiral glide downwards and her plane landed at the foot of the wall, just below us. Miss converse had a similar flight pattern, and managed to land about 5 metres away, which got a rapturous applause from the youngsters who had just files in. There were similar flight paths for most of the group, though Salty Salma Salmon managed to produce a nosedive, and the tail fell off the plane launched by the Bespectacled Toad.
Screwloose somehow managed to lose his creations somewhere between the classroom and the balcony. When I asked he just shrugged his shoulders and stared at me with that inane grin. I am certain that if he were at school in the UK he would have been assessed for ODD or ADHD or had a CAT scan to see if there was a brain in his skull.
Fairy Hanny 