Random occurence of the day

I was driving to work this morning and I witnessed one of those delightfully random sights that make you feel so pleased that you own a pair of fully working eyeballs. Now in the photo above you can see a young chap using a 'diablo'. A diablo is one of those 'circus-skills' pieces of equipment that many people have tried but few have mastered - myself included.

The way it's supposed to work is that you hold a stick in each hand. They are connected by a length of string/twine upon which you place the plastic bit, shaped like two cups stuck together, on. Once it's sitting there you start moving the sticks up and down, alternately, so that the plastic 'cups' thing starts to spin. Once you get up some good speed you can then flick it into the air and then (and this is the hard bit) catch it on the string again as it comes back down. That's just the basic method and as you can tell, it's really pretty tricky to achieve. Once you get really competent you can do loads more, but just getting started is a real challenge.

So imagine my visual joy when I drove past this ancient bloke who was attempting to master the diablo, this morning. He must have been about 80. He was wearing a flat cap, cardigan and old trousers that didn't quite reach his ankles. He was standing on the pavement next to a busy main road at 8.55 am - with a bright orange diablo set.

I don't know if he'd escaped from somewhere or was just a sad, old circus grandad who was trying to re-live the glorious diablo-days of yesteryear ... on the pavement. Don't get me wrong though. He looked very happy and was obviously having a whale of a time.

Oh the fun you can have with two sticks, a bit of string and a lump of plastic.