It was a mixed experience.

The lighting above the pins wasn’t working on our lane, but we bowled on. It soon became clear that the automatic scoring wasn’t working properly either, as it was frequently recording more pins downed than had actually been hit.

At one point, the scoring system decided that Mrs Penditure had bowled two balls when she had only bowled one, and we decided we’d had enough. We brought this to the attention of an “operative”. She said that all she could do was to reset our game, but if the problem persisted we could move to another lane.

The light above the pins was now working, and the scoring seemed to work OK for a while, but then it started to go haywire again. We complained again, but the person we had originally spoken to was no longer available.

The lady who attended our lane said that all she could do was to change the score for us – and indeed it turned out that we could edit the score from our own console. But the scoring errors continued, and it was impractical to edit the score every time, so we just bowled on.

It was still good fun, but the time we spent sorting out the problems took a big chunk out of our playing time, and we were only able to complete one game within our hour. On checking the website after getting home, I saw that we could have paid “by the game” for £14.80, saving more than a quarter.

Now I suppose I could write a letter of complaint and chase it up. But wouldn’t it be better if the staff were sufficiently empowered and motivated that they could just do whatever is needed to make sure that the customers have a good time out?

I’ve been ten-pin bowling elsewhere before, and the equipment worked perfectly every time. I hope this was just a one-off.

The same design of trampoline is sold under various brand names, which gave us a large choice of supplier for the enclosure. Prices ranged from £100 to £300 for what appeared to me to be very similar enclosures, so we shopped at the lower end of the price range.

The one we purchased was marketed as being for a Dragon brand trampoline, which provided some mirth when the packing slip arrived, describing the contents as “Cage for 14 foot Dragon”!

It took an hour or two to assemble, which was straightforward except that one of the U-bolts had a faulty thread and was unusable. That kind of quality control failure really shouldn’t happen nowadays.

The finished item seems to do the job nicely.

One consequence of having an enclosure is that the children feel safer and I guess are less worried about falling off. Therefore, they bounce less carefully, and as a result of this have already bounced into the net a few times.

A few years ago, trampolines were much more expensive, so when toys’r'us advertised a 14 foot (4.25 metre) diameter round trampoline for £150 we decided to go for it.

It came as two heavy packages that could only just fit in a large car with all the seats folded away, and took a few hours to assemble.

The amount of use it has received has exceeded our expectations. Even in winter the kids will often spend an hour jumping around. They both have trampolining lessons at the local leisure centre, so of course they want to do all their tricks and we have to be quite strict about what is or is not allowed.

It’s a heavy beast, and I like to move it around a bit every few weeks in summer to give the grass under it a chance to recover (because the black mat blocks much of the light). I can just manage to drag it across the grass with a great deal of effort.

The construction seems solid, and has given us no problems to date. The mat can be removed to stop people from using it when we’re away, but it takes about an hour to remove the mat and surround, and another hour to replace them when we get back.

The mat is not as springy as the one on the trampoline at the leisure centre, but it’s adequate, and the “euroActive” logo in the middle of the mat helps accurate jumping.

Now if I could just find a way to stop the children squealing so loudly with excitement when they’re on it…