New and ever more interesting ways of falling into a lake.

Yesterday Dad and I set to work on building a new jetty for the lake at home. To allow us to suspend our baby carp rearing nets in the perfect depth of water you understand, nothing to do with creating a fishing platform in front of the new house!

So with Dad's friends Ray out to help us we pile drove two old railway sleepers upright into the lake for our posts. It was a hairy manoeuvre and at one point Ray was yanked quite aggressively by the digger bucket - I thought he was going in! But he recovered it nicely.

Dad had me jumping from the bank into the out-stretched digger bucket and back to cut ropes from the sleepers - as you do you know. Slippery clay bank to wet water filled digger bucket? Of course!
As Ray said, when he woke up he thought, wallet, keys, watch. But not really hmmm lets build a jetty!

Anyway we got the cross member sleeper over and I was stood atop it to direct Dad as he used the digger to square it up on the top.
'It's a bit high at that end Dad!'
'Right you stay at that end....'
CRASH the digger bucket landed on the far end of my sleeper and my end rose up. A slight impression of a a windmill and some canny footwork kept me dry.
'Flippin' heck Dad, I'm not sure I'll survive another of those!' I shouted.
But Dad had lifted the bucket even higher and dropped it even faster....
CRASH
My end jumped up into the air and I found myself thrown backwards, head first into the lake.
The very cold lake, the colder that I would have anticipated, very cold lake I told Dad. I believe most of the anglers on Lonsdale heard my colourful descriptions of the temperature of the water, as well as Dad laughing.
Worse still I'd lost my hat as I was flung in! I could see it where Dad pointed. Drifting away the Kangaroo leather (I'd bought it, worn it and cherished it all around Australia) taking on water at an alarming rate just a couple of inches visible above the surface.
Luckily my dodgy front crawl had me on the scene in time to rescue my beloved hat! The only damage was a slight bend to the feather in the band.
No harm done!

I climbed out onto the sodden and soggy bank, looking very much like a monster from the deep as Dad stopped laughing to tell me how funny I'd looked.
Apparently my legs and feet had attempted to recover my torso and remained on the sleeper for a slit second longer than expected, then suddenly they followed me in, almost like they belonged to someone else. This description obviously set Dad chuckling again.

I think when Dad and I get working together we really should set up a video camera on the job just in case. That's twice in four days we could have earned £250 on you've been framed now!

So we've added another dive possibility to my repertoire of interesting, accidental but always stylish methods of falling into lakes!