Drainpipes

Luckily for me (or unluckily depending on your point of view) I and my children get an extra week of the Christmas holidays to most so today we have been back to the holiday activities.  Today's was making ball runs out of pieces of old drainpipe.  First step was to collect pieces of old drainpipe from the garage.

Second step was to remove kitten from drainpipe ...

The children then found the highest thing in the lounge we could attach them to - we went for the clothes drier and some string

The string tying took a lot of attempts to get it right, drainpipes are not fond of attaching to driers!

Next thing was to attempt a corner - this was done with a LOT of parcel tape, and a chair balanced on a box to give the right height for it to rest on the other end

This is also possible in houses with clear and tidy sofas

After that we went on a mission to make the ball double back on itself, which was much easier said than done.  Another acre of parcel tape and 250m of string (plus a margarine tub) and this was sorted!

After a test run where the ball stuck to the parcel tape I had to put another piece on the inside of the end stop

And then finally a last pipe to take it back to the clothes drier, and (occasionally) into a cardboard box at the end of the run.

Then all that was left was to watch it work.  Sometimes.

The kids played with this for hours!  All the joints were repaired at least five or six times before I finally had to take it down to hang up some washing to dry