h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The most silliest thing happened when I was painting the outside of a caravan one hot summer's day. As you know caravan windows are abnormally long compared to those found in the average house. Well, painting round the windows involves the use of masking tape (actually it involves the use of a brush and some paint but let's not split hairs). This is duly removed in long strips when the paint has dried (and not before!!). Anyhow (where was I?). . . The caravan windows were particularly high, so with the use of a step ladder I proceeded to tear of these masking tape strips individually before releasing them to fall onto the ground behind. A passing bird then became caught up in one particularly long strip and I turned around to notice it's plucky efforts to disentangle itself. Thinking the worst, and seeing its distress, I immediately jumped to the ground and lurched forward in an attempt to rescue our feathered friend. This made matters worse. Not only did I severely sprain an ankle but, to my sheer amazement, the bird (by now scared and startled) took flight, trailing behind it about 20 foot of used masking tape. This was very soon flapping and twirling overhead before finally disappearing behind a distant tree. The whole spectacle was both surreal and spectacular, and I often think about what became of that reluctant bird of paradise .
As for the sprained ankle, this meant having time off sick from my job as groundsman-cum-general dogsbody on a holiday caravan site. In my absence, the site manager gave my job to someone else and I never did go back to work for those slimeballs.
So long
Zaphod

nice one zaphod !!!!!did you not limp after it? pity you didn't write a message on the tape. Silliest thing I done was to saw off two equal lenghths from the two ends of a piece of wood instaed of just sawing it in half.