The Rescue of Jackie, and Trip to Magna Day.
Jackie, seen here, was in dire need of rescue, she had been working for many weeks with very little spare time, and was getting quite down. What else could I do but hatch a cunning, rescue plan!!
The plan was orignialy, a trip to the earth centre followed by the obligitory picnic, the plan fell out of the window from the second I got to Jackies. She was hung over, Devil incarnate hungover, exorcist on acid hungover, 100 angry gnomes with big hammers and rancid pocket badgers hungover, it was bad.
She tried cornflakes, I thought them a bad idea, she agreed after a few spoons, I was still concerned as to how much of a mess those few cornflakes might yet make, so moved on to what the day should encompass. Somebody had mentioned that earth centre has poo on display, so that was no longer an option, we changed it to magna a supposedly less pooey place, and the picnic? well Jackie was supposed to supply ingredients, she had bought herself new pj's and a dogbowl, but no food, I sighed, we'll eat out....
Onto Magna, A big ex steelworks turned interactive science thingy. The drive was a little random but we made it, Jackie insisted on spooking me with talk of spiders, which for the record i have no abnormal fear of. We noted an adventure playground, as we prepared to enter, but it was full of kids.
Within Magna there are 4 main zones each on a different floor. The first is Earth, unfortunatly for Jackie this was also the most noisey (I hid my giggles beneath caring aww's).
Here you can see an accurate scale model of the sand quarrys which were so important for steel manufacture in the days before anyone knew how to make steel, small children occasionally played on this model, throwing sand into the eyes of new visitors as a way to show them why they don't want kids.
Wooo Ha Ha Ha, Yes I got to wear a hat, not only did I get to wear a hat, I also got Jackie to wear one. Quite an achievement considering Jackies strong anti hat position.
This is a failed picture of the digger game, the best part about the eath bit aside from the virtual mice was the digger game. Three large diggers are set up side by side, ou have two minutes to scoop as much rock into a basket as possible, I was quite proud of my two half scoops in the time limit, I giggled a little as Jackie struggled to understand the controls. Eventually though something did happen, I'm convinced it was fluke, she may claim otherwise, but Jackie managed to procure the biggest scoop of rocks I have ever seen. Excitement surrounded us time was short, a croud quicky surrounded the cab, Jackie appeared to skillfully glide the scoop to almost over the basket when the pressure got to her. one wrong move and all her hard work was lost, and with around 3 seconds left on the clock. Awww I thought, guess I won then.
Big floaty egg things?
More importantly, just where was this living robots show? every sign we saw would point in a different direction, and no-one seemed to have a clue. I believe it was all a big diversion, I think someone had replaced the robots with gerbils and wanted to distract people from realising with a clever maze of signs.
All right they were big remote controlled zepplin things, I really wanted a go but conditions for flight were not good, and Jackie was screaming for a smoke, we retired for a five minute smoke break before venturing onto the water zone...
This be water zone, enter past walls of water, it's quite spooky and quite relaxing all at once.
Yep there was a bubble macine in the corner, very nice.
The biggest example of the floating tap trick I have ever seen, it was about 15 foot tall, made a lot of noise and looked... well not quite as pretty as the little ones but far bigger.
A big educational model of the water cycle, I was pretty bored of this very quickly, we wanted to play with the water!!!
Weird gun fish game, guide the ridiculously fast fish past toxic waste and jump the walls was the general idea I believe, Jackie swept past stage 1 and passed it to me, I died almost instantly, claimed the contols had broken and suggested we more quickly on.
Onto Magna, A big ex steelworks turned interactive science thingy. The drive was a little random but we made it, Jackie insisted on spooking me with talk of spiders, which for the record i have no abnormal fear of. We noted an adventure playground, as we prepared to enter, but it was full of kids.
Here you can see an accurate scale model of the sand quarrys which were so important for steel manufacture in the days before anyone knew how to make steel, small children occasionally played on this model, throwing sand into the eyes of new visitors as a way to show them why they don't want kids.
Wooo Ha Ha Ha, Yes I got to wear a hat, not only did I get to wear a hat, I also got Jackie to wear one. Quite an achievement considering Jackies strong anti hat position.
This is a failed picture of the digger game, the best part about the eath bit aside from the virtual mice was the digger game. Three large diggers are set up side by side, ou have two minutes to scoop as much rock into a basket as possible, I was quite proud of my two half scoops in the time limit, I giggled a little as Jackie struggled to understand the controls. Eventually though something did happen, I'm convinced it was fluke, she may claim otherwise, but Jackie managed to procure the biggest scoop of rocks I have ever seen. Excitement surrounded us time was short, a croud quicky surrounded the cab, Jackie appeared to skillfully glide the scoop to almost over the basket when the pressure got to her. one wrong move and all her hard work was lost, and with around 3 seconds left on the clock. Awww I thought, guess I won then.
Big floaty egg things?
All right they were big remote controlled zepplin things, I really wanted a go but conditions for flight were not good, and Jackie was screaming for a smoke, we retired for a five minute smoke break before venturing onto the water zone...
This be water zone, enter past walls of water, it's quite spooky and quite relaxing all at once.
Yep there was a bubble macine in the corner, very nice.
The biggest example of the floating tap trick I have ever seen, it was about 15 foot tall, made a lot of noise and looked... well not quite as pretty as the little ones but far bigger.
A big educational model of the water cycle, I was pretty bored of this very quickly, we wanted to play with the water!!!
Weird gun fish game, guide the ridiculously fast fish past toxic waste and jump the walls was the general idea I believe, Jackie swept past stage 1 and passed it to me, I died almost instantly, claimed the contols had broken and suggested we more quickly on.
