Chapter 13

Sunday– 4.31 p.m. All we had to do was get into the amusement park without: a) Anyone going walkies off to distant lands b) Getting hassled by meat-head Ged c) Incidents relating to silly clothes, bulbous rolling vegetables or open sores

And we needed to do it quick. I was going to say we had to get our skates on but I already did– HA! HA! When I gave Dev's skates back he pointed out a few scratches, but showed absolutely

zero concern about the fact that I could have ended up in stitches (the needle and thread kind, not roaring with laughter kind). He tutted and said, 'That's the last time you're borrowing my skates.' 'Funny that,' I answered. 'I was going to say the same thing myself. Borrow your skates, I mean, not you borrow mine. Because I don't have any, obviously.' This carried on for a while until Oli shouted, 'STOP IT, I'VE GOT A HEADACHE!'

I'm sure that was down to the preposterous amounts of sugar he'd consumed today though and nothing to do with mine and Dev's bickering. Eventually we found ourselves standing in the ticket queue for the third time in as many days. It was beginning to feel like torture. Actually, getting my toenails pulled out by a crab getting its toenails pulled out simultaneously would have been more pleasant. To add to the agony, there was a family of fourteen at the front of the queue trying to work out the most cost-effective ticket combinations. Not with a calculator either, but by counting on their fingers. I heard them saying things like, 'No, two and two isn't five, YOU DUNCE!' And,

'HOW can I count up to twelve? I've only got ten fingers!' FANTASTIC. The whole process was taking the same amount of time as Neptune does to orbit the sun (FYI, one hundred and sixty-five Earth years), so Dev decided to step in with some of his ear-splitting soprano singing in a bid to hurry them up and get them out of there. It turned out he didn't need to in the end as the youngest of the clan did a horribly SMELLY POO in his nappy and everybody abandoned the queue, leaving the mam to single-handedly sort out the mess. Now that's what I call family spirit.

This meant we were now at the front– AT LAST! We bought our tickets and walked straight through the entrance gates without a hitch. After a group high five where we all managed to miss each other's hands due to lack of coordination, we joined another queue for THE MEGA BEAST. We were close enough to see the faces of the passengers zooming past. I couldn't quite work out what their expressions were, but I was guessing it was a mixture of surprise, awe and sickening vertigo. By gesturing, I explained to Agung that while we were on the ride, he was to wait for us at the bottom, and when it finished, we would get off and meet him. I did a wavy