Ken Hoffmann Being Different No 3 or Tall Tales No 1-the latter methinks!

This post is sparked by a Ruth Blades tweet.

I told many of the kids at The Stair that my father Ken Hoffmann could fly! When they asked how, I said that he had brought a magic carpet back from India from one of his sailing adventures with the Ben Line and got his mother, Nana Hoffmann, to turn it into a pair of shorts. When they asked me to prove it I said he was out for a flight (!) just now, but could I show them a photo instead?

Ken Hoffmann 'flying'!

I showed them the photograph but of course had to keep my thumb over the diving board.. He regularly used to dive off the bridge of ships and before you ask, yes I think he was sober! The additional photograph below gives an idea of the height! When Will and Tom were young, whenever we crossed a bridge they would always ask me 'would Grandpa Hoffmann (who they never met) have dived off this bridge?'

Ken Hoffmann on far right.

Postscript: I'm discovering, like novelists that despite the author's best efforts to paint the characters in a certain way that they end up taking on a life of their own-Ken's coming across as too much of a character!