One bad apple doth not a barrel make

On the standard morning walk we met 3 of my schoolfriends and Runny-nose Archie from the spy games a few days ago. He was eating some kind of white sweetie-powder so on the way back we bought some. It's called Fizz Whizz and it crackles on your tongue and is coke flavour so I called it go-faster powder because it makes me walk faster. Apparently there is another coke-flavoured one called Bolivian Marching Powder which also makes you go faster but this bag was only 15p from an old woman in the Post Office so probably not the same stuff.

SPY STORY

Various sleeper agents were reactivated this week by a series of mysterious dead letter drops organised by "J", secretive asset controller, Europe Western division. We convened outside ours at 3pm as instructed. Present were: myself (Red Leader), Erin (Pink Bleater), Pops (Honey von Trapp) and Ruby (the one that can read).

Having tried out a lot of the costumery provided we pretty well ignored it and got on with the task. We had a map, 3 of the 5 clues ("J" hurriedly printed off the missing ones) and notebooks, to be mostly left behind.

We used the poisoned Bulgarian umbrellas to poke the ping pong balls out of the suspended blanket, losing only 3 into the bushes. We noted my house number. We counted the number of stars on the EU flag on the back gate.

We counted the number of dinosaur stickers in my playhouse that had traffic cone stickers on their heads (guess who made up that clue). We delved into the Bucket'O'Sand with real snakes and counted the gold bribe-coins therein. This gave us a string of numbers, which, when decrypted using the provided substitution cipher, gave us the magic word - TABLE!

This could only mean one thing. We rushed inside and discovered the dining table had been transformed into a haven/den of iniquity with individually labelled official bank night safe boxes of goodies, tailored to our specific needs!

I got a tank with flashing tweeting gun, some of my colleagues got sparkly make-up etc. Then, to add to Jofs' workload we demanded art equipment and sat and did sticking for a while while Bud burnt the hedge. Then there was some digger-in-the-sandpit action, hula-hooping on the pavement, making get well cards for Millie, wandering aimlessly, helping with the bonfire, arguing over roller skates (apparently you can't share roller skates), and finally supper. Poor old Jof was run ragged looking after our every demanding need, serves her right for having such a great idea.

Then the agents went back to their cover lives one by one and by 7pm the house was quiet again (because I had the TV and Jof was having a lie-down).