Alton Towers

When I was about sixteen years old, my Dad took my sisters and I on a Sunday trip around B&Q (a hardware store in England) and we chatted about theme parks. I followed in his footsteps in that I was a little thrill-seeker just like him. We said we wanted to visit Alton Towers, a theme park about three hours away from my home (which to me, quite untraveled, was a fair distance). We said we would go the next year.

To me he would live forever, he was the strongest person in the world. To him, the back brace to hold his spine in place squeezed a little too tightly for future rollercoaster adventures, but he was as enthusiastic as me all the same. If we could have one more day together, we'd splash out on those pricey queue-skipping tickets and ride Nemesis and Oblivion, and drift along the Congo River Rapids. Then we'd have pizza and donuts, and get keyrings made of our terrible ride photos.