Boards
[ehwhat-centric]Forget jugglers in the park when it's hot. Yesterday we had tightrope walkers...
While we're relaxing in the shade of Victoria Park a guy rushes in on a bike. pulls out what looks like climbing gear and stakes out two trees.
We watched as he spent a while wrapping nylon straps round two trees about 30m apart then started to run a strip of of cable between the two, setting up a pulley system at one end.
Eventually another guy rode up and we could hear them talking just about. It turned out the other guy was a stranger BUT HE HAD A SIMILAR RIG HIMSELF. At this stage we weren't sure what this 'rig' was meant to do, we just realised the sheer strangeness of one nutcase happening upon an identical nutcase on a bank holiday in the park.
Just as they were about to finish a Tower Hamlets guy came up and spent some time phoning through to someone who either okayed it or admitted there was nothing to stop them doing it.
After they got it just tight enough that the weight in the middle of a man took it down from about 7 feet to 1 foot from the ground, the originally guy made his way across. Quite impressive.
I did, however, wonder what would have happened had he been alone and some wayward dog/child had run up while he was midway through and waggled the line behind him (it being so low to the ground that a toddler could have grabbed it). Imagine, if you will, him falling and said puppy/child being catapulted into the air or at least losing a limb.