In Retrospect: Panic On The Streets Of Carlisle

Our visit to Carlisle this weekend is at least partly in celebration of Ivory's birthday; when she and Tom were living in Lancaster last year we held a Hawaiian beach party round their flat (complete with sand and dodgy music). This year we're not being quite so extravagant, but to mark the occasion Tom's gone to the trouble of buying a box of Chinese lanterns. At half midnight, with more than a few beers in us, we decide its time to start setting the lanterns off from the balcony of the flat.

Congratulations to those of you who've already worked out what a slightly daft idea that is. In all fairness, everything's looking peachy until we set the lantern off to float into the night sky, and it instead drops like a fucking stone down into the park below and lands in the branches of a tree. With a resounding chorus of expletives, Alastair and Kenny rush downstairs to try and free it before we inadvertently commit arson, but before they can get there, the wind does the job for them and lifts the still-burning lantern out of the (thankfully unharmed) tree. Sighs of relief all round. However, those sighs are stifled when we realise that the lantern's completely disappeared; Alastair spots it floating away round the corner onto Botchergate (Carlisle's main nightlife strip), not gaining in altitude, but just chugging along about three feet off the ground. He runs down to Botchergate to see if he can catch it, but it's vanished off into the night.

Alastair and Kenny return to the flat, and we sit down and listen apprehensively for the screams of some kebab-munching inebriate being immolated by the runaway lantern. They don't come, and we relax a little. At least until Tom suggests setting another one off, an idea that plummets a little like a Chinese lantern in the middle of Carlisle.