We got the trampoline six years ago. Problem is it’s been used less and less over the years, so yesterday we donated it to Emma and Nick and Zoe.
I’m relieved someone wanted it, actually. The fashion these days is the trampolines with the netting around the sides, which this old thing doesn’t have.
After the final bounce (see video), we had to pull most of it apart to fit it onto Peter’s stationwagon, but it didn’t take too long. And as a result we’ve gain back some of the (relatively small) back yard.
But we’ll never be able to unobtrusively/accidentally peek over the neighbour’s fence anymore.
10 replies on “Big and bouncy”
Whoa! I felt motion sickness just watching the video!
Good on you for giving the trampoline away to friends, rather than trying to sell it on eBay.
As the kids get older, you sort of notice “milestones” – like they no longer use certain toys/equipment. Last year I once went to clean the bath-tub and realised no-one had used it in a whole week (the first time in 15 years) – the kids now both have showers.
And you won’t be able to have a bounce and think “Hmm, better clear those spoutings out before the next downpour…oh, look! The neighbours football is on the roof, wonder how long it’s been there?…Oops, there’s a hole in the eaves just screaming To Let to every possum in suburbia….”
Looks like you were in danger of jumping into the hedge!
We gave ours away when we moved over from Adelaide a couple of years ago. Our didn’t have a namby pamby net either, which made it way cooler for the boy who now uses it and loves it.
Every time I look at the new trampolines with the nets I can’t help but think of wrestling rings… I got an old-school one for our kids (same kind we had when we were kids) – I’m a big believer that learning not to bounce onto the springs or the bars at the edge is all part of growing up. You can’t protect them from everything, but you CAN teach them to play safely!
Goodness, there was a trampoline at the farm in Suffolk where we hired a log cabin a few weeks ago.
We both had a go and – forgetting that I’d probably not been on a trampoline in 35 years – unwisely decided to intersperse an “ordinary” bounce with sitting down.
Oh dear. I thought from a split second I was going to break my back. That was followed nano-seconds later by the fear that I was about to roll backwards off the thing.
Never again!
Loved the video you did of the “last bounce”, though. And I thought all classic Aussie homes had a 1/8 acre plot?!
Jayne what is a spouting?
Chris, I think it’s what we would call in British English “guttering”. Not sure where you are, or what terms for it are used elsewhere in the Anglosphere!
I can remember my elementary (primary) school in the 1970’s having a giant folding trampoline in the corner of the gym that we could not use because the school could not get an insurance policy to cover it.
“Spouting” is what I sometimes call the down spout or sheetmetal drain pipe that carries rainwater down the side of a house or building. This is the word that I learned for it growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania. The “gutter” is the part that collects the water from the edge of the roof and leads it to the spouting.
As the daughter of a retired plumber I can assure you that what you call ‘guttering’ – along the edge of the roofline – is correctly called spouting.
The ‘gutters’ are the smooth pieces in between tiles/iron in the ‘creases’ of the gables on the roof itself that lead down to the spouting.
Down pipes are what lets the water down from the spouting to the storm water drains.
Here endeth the lesson :P
Gutters are also those things on the kerbside that take water and detritus to the sewers.