This tale concerns the legendary gang of 5 - Uncle Dickshit (The Dronemaster) , Jue (the driver of the Electric Chariot), Kim (the Singist), Matt (the Purveyor of Des Resses) and myself, the Goodly Yadmaster.
Whilst on holiday in the heart of the beautiful Yorkshire Dales we went to Cotter Force to take a full and exciting range of pictures.
Much fun and jollity was had on the trip to the falls involving the waving of cameras and a great deal of ribald conversation, until the falls were reached and the Dronemaster exposed his equipment.
He proceeded to give the rest of the group a full demonstration of its capabilities, such as how high it could go, how rapidly it could travel in a straight line, and how far away it could be whilst still remaining within range of the remote control.
This all went successfully until it was a fair old distance from the falls and the time came to bring it back.
The 180 degree turn was a complete success, as was the rapid acceleration in our general direction. The piece de resistance was the collision with a nearby tree following which the Dronemaster proceeded to demonstrate his not inconsiderable mastery of ye olde Anglo Saxon. The air was a deep shade of blue and the drone was firmly embedded.
Shouting at it had no demonstrable effect.
Swearing at it didn’t help either.
The tree was far too tall to climb and anyway, the drone was at the end of a fairly frail looking branch so even if it had been possible to climb the tree nobody would have been able to reach the drone without coming down at speed.
The Singist and the Purveyor focussed on looking for long pieces of wood that might be suitable for use in the construction of a long pokey-stick, the driver of the Electric Chariot barked instructions in a mix of panic and fluent Bristolian, and the Dronemaster and I went off into Hawes in search of something long and jabworthy.
A trip around the shops of Hawes yielded little of any value. A set of chimney-sweep’s brushes looked like a possibility until it became clear that they didn’t add up to anything long enough for the task. It looked as though the drone/tree association was set to become a permanent one.
Then we tried a pet shop which sold bits of stick and may have had some long ones. It didn’t but it did have the contact details of a local tradesman who claimed to be able to carry out any menial task for a small fee. The proprietor of the pet shop told us that the man in question was also a keen flyer of drones, so we gave him a call.
He didn’t pick up so we left him a message and proceeded back to the falls.
When we got there we found that the Singist and the Purveyor had unearthed a couple of long pieces of wood and managed to attach them to each other, but they still didn’t reach the recalcitrant drone, so we tried swearing at it again but with no discernible effect.
At that point we received a call from the handyman who said he had the very thing and should be able to help.
He arrived about half-an-hour later bringing with him the longest fishing rod you ever did see. Just think of the longest fishing rod you ever have seen and then add about 50 percent to it. Yes, it really was that long.
I stood under the tree and the Dronemaster and the Handyman climbed into the adjacent field, directly underneath the drone.
There then ensued many minutes of fun, during which we tried to actually focus on the drone between the leaves and branches that had clearly only ever been created to obscure it, indulging in a lot of left-a-bit, right-a-bit, until eventually drone and pokey-stick made contact and the drone came dropping towards us.
The Dronemaster threw himself protectively at his drone in an attempt to break its fall and he succeeded admirably. Unfortunately, at the same time he slipped on a large pile of baa-lamb doings and performed a weird sort of slalom across the field finally getting up wearing a kind of poo-shell on his back. The result of all of this was a mixture of relief and an even more enthusiastic blast of fluent Anglo Saxon from the Dronemaster.
Oh how we laughed!!
We went from there to a nearby hostelry for dinner where we made the Dronemaster sit in a corner with his back to the wall and all pretended that we couldn’t smell anything untoward.
Story by the Goodly Yadmaster, Colin Seviour