Suddenly, a wild half-term appears!

Following the "Man eating face of shooting victim" in USA, people should start collecting weapons, hiding holes and sacrificial friends for the imminent Zombie apocalypse.

Jubilee party in the assembly hall for those of us lucky to go to my school. We all got souvenir medals (actual metal ones with tricolour ribbons, but after the Gymnastics medal and the Bike medal, they're a bit old hat).
I walked out with the end-of-term springy step. Pops hooted us in passing so I got her round to ours and we made a big den. We played DJ Quack and Lady GooGoo and made a mess, generally, while housework was done around us.

When her Mum finally came to pick her up, she dropped the bombshell that they might still be in the frozen north visiting relatives on the day of the Jubilee Puddleparty.
Still, at least we managed to do some goblin.

Then I had to tidy up. Jof has promised me another game of Monopoly. The garden is being slowly reformatted and defragmented for next week.

Whether you want to or not

Today is school photograph day. Funnily enough I have my picture taken fairly frequently so am no stranger to the gawping lens of the paparazzi.
I won a place in the Golden Book for my gold gymnastics medal and then got into the Polite Book for the first time - for saying thank you to the gymnast coach when we'd finished the tournament! This means another pound into my Lego Heroes fund, and another certificate and sticker for the fridge.

I scooted back from school and went off for Park Wednesday. Charlotte and I used the curly yellow slide and sung our special Gymnastics song "Baby you're a firework". Johnny arrived but was abandoned with us because poor Bobert has the Delhi belly or some vomity lurgy and was not his usual self. Ben and Erin joined us presently. The boys went off to play football while Erin played scooting with Siena, a girl in my class.

We dropped by for food every now and then, (as usual) and orbited the park on activity rotation, with Rosie and Charlie and Lola and many others. 

Sadly I howled when Johnny pulled me over, howled when Ben tripped me up, howled when Erin took the ball from me and grumped off into a corner even when they were trying to say sorry for what were borderline transgressions at best.

This was 3 howls too many for Bud and he likened me unto the 2 year-old we all were once, and summarily cut short my playday for being pathetic and made me read until the washing up was done.

When we picked Jof up (missed the bus) I mysteriously failed to mention any of this. But I did cheer up when it was time to ice the cakes for the Jubilee Party tomorrow. We only had to take in 6 so Jof and I glued our jaws together with the icy remainders.

Sneeze me a lullaby, Duchess

Bragged about my gymnastics medal at school. Today we performed our countries of the world song, project exhibition and hat parade. Some had to explain the local area with a block graph traffic survey of the main road, some explained that there was a golden ship in the RC cathedral and I had to identify the animal I represented in a sotto voce stage whisper. Due to idiocy and bad parenting, Bud didn't show up so dragged him round the classrooms afterwards. My hat seen here, represents a tortoise, pronounced Tor-toyse to aid in spelling.

Our chromatography experiment has finished due to a massive civilisation of mould in both pots. The rings have worked but they're not really colourful, more a series of spludgy greenish-coloured patches. So we have tried again, with a better cut of blotting paper and fresh petal-only liquid, no green at all. Once I'd read some Alice in Wonderland he suggested I see if Poppy was free but I elected to watch TV.

Just when we were expecting Jof back, Pops came to collect me so she'd have someone to play with while her parents had a barbecue. We played circuit training by manoeuvring a plastic bowl around the garden using brooms, trucks and fishing nets, as you do.

Pommel horse and vault, rings and things

At last, the day of the Key Steps gymnastics festival is here. The twelve of us took a minibus up to the big gymnastics centre by Alexandra park for the inter-school competition.

Here's somewhere else I want to go when I have enough money. Jof probably won't enjoy it, though.

Anyway, my class was competing against classes from lots of other schools and we got the Trophy for getting the biggest points score! I did my routine and remembered to present with one arm at the beginning, the other arm at the end and to hold the pose for 3 seconds etc. I was full of angle, skill and poise. In fact you could say I lit up the whole room with my anglepoise. Aha. So therefore because of my ultrafine display I got 99.1% which secured me the winners' medal for best in class, helping my school win the Trophy. We all got School Sport Partnership certificates with many worthy Olympic phrases such as courage-determination-respect and equality-friendship-inspiration-excellence. They also spelt my name wrong.
Scooted to Beavers via a quick go in the park: they awarded me the Fitness badge, then I scooted a couple of circuits of the park on the way home. It's been a good day for athletics, trick is to spend hours on the sofa eating chocolate then go nuts outside.

Nudism. Getting it out

 So you think it's going to be an easy day. We bimbled about and did small housework jobs, took some rubbish to the tip and spent far too much in giant Tesco. It was still sunny and warm so we loaded up to go to the nudist beach (the one with the free car park) which is when we got the Random BBQ text from the JoniBobs.

The beach was busy and some people had earrings in their nipples. I took my new mask and snorkel and swim ring and tried repeatedly to swim in the cold sea but it just wasn't the same as swimming in the pool.

I kept coming out and demanding towels and different shoes in case it made the sea warmer. After an hour and a half of stopping Jof reading, we gave up and turned up late to the BBQ.

The whole Puddlegroup was there but because we were so late the numbers reduced soon enough but I got some quality Legotime, all the time knowing that under my clothes, I was still a nudist.

Later I was still argumentative and didn't want to do what I was told so Jof took my lego away.

Potions, parks and pinatas

The potions (chromatography experiments) are going well, but slowly.
Normal morning walk to Tunnel park where we met 'Arry with his Mummy of unknown European extraction and Conrad with his YummyMummy. We collected pine cones and brought several home for the bonfire.

We said poo to skin cancers and only put our shirts on to go in the Butchers' shop to get black pudding. It was yet another splendid day, let's hope all the Piddlers got some of that good ol' vitamin D.

Then it was a bus ride to town to get me the promised bath fizzer. I chose the "Rocketeer" which looks like a blue cats' face: apparently it floats in the bath and 2 protuberances fizz quicker than the rest which propels it forward, like camphor. I may have to video it.

This also meant I could get pushed in a handy abandoned Sainsburys' trolley into the nearby Victoria Park and have an ice cream with flake and climb on the wooden things and rope nets.

While he ran I helped Jof start on the Jubilee pinata. We did it Art Attack-style, let's hope it works. Later we took a bin back to Asda. It's a replacement for our broken kitchen flip-top bin, but the new one doesn't flip. It doesn't open at all, even if you manhandle it roughly. I know we have to reduce landfill but this is ridiculous. Went to B+Q for the new bin but theirs were all £36 or £85 which is unreasonable.

Fired the big cable drum (too many splinters for a Puddleparty) and the excess wood and fried the nearby plants again. When we used prodder sticks to remove the metal support struts out of the cable drum, they were glowing red hot. Watched some of the Eurovision song contest and laughed at the funny foreigners with their strange garments, dances and accents. Why is it most of them sing in English but nobody votes for us?

It was 10 by the time I hit the bath and the fizzer was very colourful but didn't scoot across the surface really. Watched a couple of relaxing youtubes and hit the sack at 11 something.

Hello? Is it Mungle you're looking for?

Happy Friday! Because Bud had an emergency office move yesterday, all the saved-up combustibles had to come home all in one hit or be consigned to the bin. Thus we gained another cable drum, 6 sheaves of triangles, 20 tubes and 30 resin-impregnated wooden boards (the ones that go up like Rome when you play violins at it). Thus I will have a quick burn this weekend, just to prepare the way for the Puddle Julie B party next month, you understand.

On the way back from school we started on the chromatography project, inside, because the conservatory was a balmy 118°F.

We collected samples of flowers from peoples' gardens and added it to tissue samples from our own florid display.

This gave us a petal selection which I pounded and ground in our metal pestle and mortar. The aqueous extraction of the above was greeny-purplish and gooey. We separated it into 2 equal pots and added circles of blotting paper (from Jof's work) and cut tongues to dip into the polychrome solution.

We left the 2 experiments to work their magic. Who knows what they'll look like in a week or so?
After swimming we drove down to pick up Jof and she was in the pub so was late out. While we were waiting 2 drunk men got in the back of the car and said "How much to Gunwharf mate?" - how were we to know we were in a cab rank? We said if she was late again she'd have to get a bus.

100 things to do before I die

Much has been made of this, with several books, much Twitterchat and so forth. So what's on my list? At the moment I am but 6 years old. So my list is:

Find some £50 notes

Get a new Lego Hero
Have my own tractor

Go to the pub

Have my own TV where the cartoons never end

Drive the forklift truck at Bud's work

but in the future I may reconsider as my priorities change. Perhaps my updated list will be:

Find some £50 notes

Swim with dolphins

Orbit Earth
Get a reply to my message in a bottle

Canoe down Grand Canyon

Put on lots of make-up and visit Mecca

Various desires involving girlies

Attend Rio carnival

And yet later in life, as death actually becomes a possibility on the distant horizon and my thoughts turn to self-prolongation:

Various desires involving girlies

Clone myself

Get a cameo in a film of my life story
Hold the world record for something really silly

Discover a comet or new species

Colonise and rule a second planet

So I reckon you can have one list, but it's got to evolve as you do.

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The day started promisingly when I woke Jof up at 0830 to ask if I needed to go to school today. There was a bit of a rush and I got there just in time.
For my scheduled presentation I did a show'n'tell about the miniature trains ride at Nanna's place. I didn't get into the golden book, but nearly.
Jof has taken another half day so instead of simply watching TV while the bins were done around me, we have elected to take advantage of the sunshine and have a splash in the waterpark.

Two small boys and a salami sandwich

 The main one (by the D-Day museum) was closed so we used the backup by canoe lake and hey presto, Ben and his toothy ex-girlfriend Aimee met us there. Also present was Luca from yesterdays' park, and various of my classmates, who must have had the same idea because the whole seafront was very full of people who had forgotten what sunshine looked like. Jof suspected that most had skived off for the entire day, for they were young, tanned, toned and undeserving.

We got stuck in to the water splashpark instantly and ran up and down screaming with hordes of other wet youths. It squirts water from various nozzles in an undetermined pattern and we all got very wet.

Coming out to warm up, we chanced upon the picnic that Jof had made for us and gorged on salami and cheese sandwiches, strawberries, tomatoes, cucumber, potatoes and hula hoops.

We also excavated stones from the earthworks and got muddy: then we played bat'n'ball with an outsize set of ping-pongs and were joined by Joseph, who was in the year below us at Puddleducks. We all laughed at how incompetent we were, and didn't get in one huff all day. After a laugh-related leakage Ben donned his fourth pair of trousers that day and we were in hogs' heaven.

At going home time we cadged an ice cream from the van where we met George from Beavers and went to eat them on the seafront (where else?) and threw rocks into the sea.

2 and a half hours of sweaty blue-sky thinking later, we went home for an immediate shower. It was yet another excellent afternoon's work, can I be rich and famous now so I can do that every day, please?

The Marvellous Avengers assemble

So. A vial of Ronald Reagan's blood is up for auction. The "owner" said she was going to give it to the Ronbo Raygun Foundation but in honour of his capitalist policies, has decided to sell it, bids now at $10k.

What's next - pieces of the true cross? Julius Caesar's fingernail clippings? Tissue samples from the crashed Asgards from Roswell? European churches have jealously hoarded "relics" in bejewelled golden reliquaries for centuries, so what will be the relics of the future? So many possibilities.... Jof kept the trimmings from my first haircut, I'm bound to lose my baby teeth at some point, I don't need ten toes, really, do I? Time to start keeping those used handkerchiefs, methinks.

LOS VENGADORES

At last, warmth arrived in a flurry of solar radiation and I could lose my winter coat. Today is the venerable institution "Wednesday Park" in which diverse characters come together for sugary comestibles, psychobabble and football, all in 3D. Today I was Mr Nick Fury, gathering superheroes Thor, Bruce Banner, the Incredible Hulk and the naughty Asgardian Loki.

First we climbed and played with the one lego hero we had until a ball was produced, then all the decent (and indecent) action was outside the park. We had scooter and foot races against Loki's Chitauri army, the format was mostly thus: everyone lines up, one person shouts readygo! and they run off, the others say well I wasn't ready, he's cheating, then when the actual runner has got 90% of the way round the course you do a quick loop, cross the finishing line you were standing next to and say I've won 'cos you cheated. This we took turns at so in the end everyone won and everyone cheated. We opened the magic portal with a tesseract we made earlier and prevented the hostile extra-terrestrials from enslaving the human race by mind control.

Erin can scoot 1 circuit in 1 minute 23 seconds but Bob reckons he can do it quicker because he only counted up to 47 before he got distracted.

Presently we retired to the Helicarrier (today doubling up as S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters) and had a picnic of Jaffa cakes, breadsticks and melon (no shawarmas this time).

It was a lovely hot day and some of us took off our shirts but Erin couldn't as she only had a school smock/blouse/whatever it's called. Overall it was great fun with a bonus Erin (who does not normally make it to the boy-filled Wednesday Park), a high calorific burn with a low whinge coefficient. We called it after 2 and a half hours of hot fun and I had to read half of Alice in Wonderland because my teacher says I should be reading more. I don't know who wrote that story but I think they've been eating the wrong kind of mushrooms again.

Sister Rubys' house of pain

Another day of sun, looks like summer's here at last. A week or so ago, I was kayaking to school. Now it's Suncream-me-up and we actually had to hose the garden. A long-standing promise for a playdate came good today with LittleMax. I went straight home with him: we quarkled and hootled and rorgled our way up the road like the village simpletons of old, and we disappeared into his room for the duration, even though there was a trampoline in the garden.

Meeting Bud half way, we cycled to swingpark and found George S from my class and his football, so we invaded his game and played shirtless.

George is better than us and he hit it right into my face when I wasn't looking and I got a crump on the nose: luckily there were no teachers present to award me a "Your child got a head bump" notification.

When both George and LittleMax had to go, I did a few circuits of the park on my bike and got home just in time for Jof. The conservatory still measured a healthy 108°F which was nice for the chilli plants and the sun has brought out my pink cheeks and our first flower on the peyote cacti. With luck we shall soon have little baby peyotes to nurture as part of my Pan-Global Shaman Cult training.
My nose has recovered from the impact of the unexpected football.
Do I really have to learn my 3 x table?

All our yesterdays

Back to school again.
Follower Martin has bought me a little army truck from a boy in the street, as you do. You can never have enough trucks.
This term, my class has been getting PE lessons from a proper British gymnast, he's the one that took the course at Ruby's school last year and we've seen him up at the big gymnastics centre talking to his gymnast friends. He's selected me (one of six boys and six girls) to perform in front of real judges in a competition against other schools! He says if I don't get zero I'll get a medal or a badge or something. It's nice to be picked. He's given me a routine with about 10 things in it, I practised it on the pavement on the way home.
The badge I'm working towards in Beavers is the Fitness Challenge badge - OK, so I'm a bike-riding football-playing gymnast with a power to weight ratio of 47.6 and about as much body fat as a Bic pen. Why don't they just give me the badge now?

Instead we moved onto tenting. I shall be camping with the Beavers and Scouts in a couple of weeks so we all had to practice tenting. Our ones sleep 4, but the Scouts have 11-man tents and the Cubs have 9-man tents or was it the other way round.
I cycled there and back through the park, which was full of clouds of buzzing midges. If we'd have been hit by a burst of cosmic gamma rays at the same time as being bitten by some radioactive midges, I'd have morphed into Midgeman!

Cuando sea viejo y sabio (old and wise)

The weatherguessers have dissected the holy sparrow and predicted a craft day inside. But it was not to be: we had a walk and play in the local swingpark and then did crafty things.

I have made Jof frazzled by jabbering incessantly and needing things all the time, and Nanna has frazzled her by asking useful questions like "Has Bud had his lunch yet?" and then telling the same stories for the 4th time. Still, they exchanged some useful knitting patterns.

So. Did you guess what you can make out of a cable drum and a curtain?

See me, for I am the human gnome of tiny stature and I have hooked a lego hero with my rod. Sadly the curtain wasn't big enough to cover the really big cable drum so I've had to use the next size down, lucky I have a bijou bottie and can fit.

This mushroom/toadstool is the Fly Agaric (amanita muscaria) and when eaten, the curious compounds contained therein can cause profuse sweating and delirium. So quite like Krazy Kaves, then.

Riddle me up, Scotty

Riddled with bullet points

We all like bringing home unusual things to burn from work, Jof gets poster tubes and lifesize cardboard freaky boy scouts, Bud gets pallets and triangles and I get cardboard creations from cutting'n'sticking classes and sticks from the park. Nanna even has a wooden toilet seat saved up for us, for she knows our strange habits and incendiary desires.
One of the more recent inflammable curios is a cable drum, which will go up joyously like the last one. But he says there's something he can use it for first. Here it is with

●  A bit of curtain

●  A plastic fishing rod (only £2 at the charity shop!)

●  Some bits of packing foam

So, riddlers and piddlers all, what's it going to be? Answers on a postcard by last Friday, please, etc etc.

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Today I left home, going to stay overnight with Nanna. This meant I missed the Puddle Picnic on the grass at the Summer Fayre in Victoria Park. But I got to go on the little train again and played in their swingpark and ate lots. I have been told that I need to get fatter, so I'm really trying, Nanna is good at food so it's a great place to start.

They have 2 excellent play areas at the trains and you can go on a nature walk around the whole place. The lengthy track goes round a large lake which is stocked with fish and fishermen.