Someplace To Go

It's been an eventful couple of weekends. A week ago I went with a few friends to Thorpe Park, to partake of their lovely rollercoasters, though I did get a bit stroppy when we didn't go on the biggest, scariest one straightaway. I can highly recommend both "Colossus" and "Nemesis", but the best by far was "Stealth", which is 205 ft high and accelerates from 0 to 80mph in 2.3 seconds. You can see for yourself what it's like, here:



There are cameras on each ride to take your pic at the scariest moment. On each of mine my friend Tom is grinning like an idiot whilst I look like someone's stabbing me in the eye with a pencil.

We'd been very sensible and brought a change of clothes, which was good because we got absolutely DRENCHED on "Tidal Wave" (do you think anyone ever regrets these names after various disasters?), which is basically like having God tip a bucket of water over you. It runs down your cleavage, so you lean forward and it runs down the back of your pants. There's a photo of us afterwards looking like drowned rats.

This weekend I was at my Dad's for his 61st birthday, along with my brother and his wife. We spent the day in Kew Gardens, which is just starting to turn autumnal. The trees were beautiful, but I think we enjoyed their aquarium most of all. My brother was most taken with a hermit crab that seemed determined to communicate with him, and my sister-in-law fell for a puffer fish that hid in a swirl of coral and gazed out at us shyly. Well, there's some anthromorphism going on there. Given that puffer fish are one of the deadliest species in the ocean, he was probably thinking how easily he could kill us if he could just get out of this damn tank. Dad then insisted on heading back to watch the rugby, so we got out his game of Trivial Pursuit that he bought back in the 80s, which has a lot of questions about Daley Thompson and Bucks Fizz. We didn't get out for his birthday meal till around half ten, at which point I picked their brains for what makes a good chase story and ate too much tiramisu.

What do you think are the elements of a successful chase scene/story? Comments please!