Days without ΞΨЮЂЭ incident: 23

Went to view cars today. I test sat one as well (I'm not allowed to test drive any yet).
We'd told Grandad about our plans and that if we bought the Ford Focus not the Mondeo, we might be able to afford to get windows as well, double glazing in my room would be nice. He said here we go again, we give you money for one thing, and you end up getting something else. You're supposed to be buying a car, not software.
Poor chap. He tries.
So after school I stropped that Erin wasn't coming round to ours, he should have looked in his crystal ball. And then I didn't want to do the job up the ladder but when he'd done it for me, I changed my mind and got huffy, all the usual stuff.

Walked to the car showrooms in the bitter cold, still stropping and huffing, which didn't warm me up.

It seems that you can have a wide variety of cars of all shapes and sizes, all in the right price range, as long as you don't mind that they've been driven to the moon and back. I sat in one of them and turned on all the lights and wipers.

They told me I could only test-drive with the steering wheel which was a bit dull so I turned on the radio and all the lights and wipers again.

As I left hurriedly, the disembodied voice of a nice Japanese woman told me I'd left the lights on, which was thoughtful of her.

They have 2 statues, one that roars if you go too close, and one with snakes on that sits in a car but exists only from the nipples up. You can see him in this picture.

We tried the car showroom over the road and were thankful that it had a heated office. It's extremely small so we all sat on the nice man's desk and talked about the pre-loved cars he had, which seemed similar.
During spelling practice tonight I tried focus again and came up with FOCKOES, which was wrong. I then tried out a variety of pronunciations while he went pink, flared his nostrils and managed not to laugh.
It's very cold and the weather-guesser says it'll be -2° tomorrow morning. I know this is nothing to my Swedish and Canadian readers but those in Oz and Saudi should feel lucky.

My name, on your lips again

First day as a regular Beaver, infiltrating the secretive organisation to bring it down from the inside. Or maybe I'll just have a great time making cookies and earning badges.
From school went straight to Puddleducks to drop off some colouring books from the big clearout. We met Helen, the one with the comfortable chest we all liked. She's manager now after Gemma, her predecessor, left suddenly when she was caught eating the kid's food.
In Beavers I wore the new top and he bought me the T-shirt and scarf and woggle. I know everyone's laughed about dib-dib my woggle and it's a word I'll never be able to say straight, but seriously, couldn't you have come up with a better word for a noose-tighteny-loop of leather? Anyway, 2 policemen came to talk to us and one was the tallest policeman in the world. He was 7 foot 13 and had to come into the room on all fours. They showed us the special emergency buttons on their radios and said how fun it was driving down the street with woo-woos on and how they really mustn't do it when they're only going out to buy milk.
My spelling words this week are even more difficult. I tried manfully and came up with soxes (success), fockoes (focus) and ginier for ginger because I got my J the wrong way round.
Today, Zoe (Martin's girlfriend) interviewed successfully for the position of cleaner at my school. Present at the interview were 2 pupils who asked inane questions of the calibre you'd expect from 6 year-olds. She starts Monday.

Medicated Meditations

Jof didn't want to get up this morning so I played in my room. Breakfast was late. While he ran, Jof and I made a rocket picture with glitter and glue and cut-out components. The red dwarf has run a bit but it's all good. Later we braved the icy blasts straight from Archangel to go hunting for a second-hand car. Both places we visited were closed, which goes some way to explain their cashflow issues. We have, however, seen some cars of interest and will return at a time that suits the salespeople more.

Despondently, we went shopping in LIDL to get experimental ingredients for Jof's experimental cakes. It's amazing what random things you can get there. He wanted the pen with laser pointer, she wanted all the protective skiing equipment, I wanted more vitamin juice, which was actually sensible. Jof slaved over a hot stove for hours and produced 9 little heart-shaped cakes, all with different icing designs, mainly as a practice run for the school Valentine's day cakefest, but probably also to prove to herself that she could do it. Then Nanna phoned and kept Jof talking for 1 hour 18 minutes.

The phantom Power-Walker

Up before 0800 in a world first, but was happy to play myself at battleships. Wisely invested £1500 from Blind Uncle Len in the bank and met Erin shopping. She was in a grump because her dad hadn't bought her the right present: I had an identical grump for exactly the same reason when I found I haven't yet saved enough money to buy a packet of Lego track. Some more bath fizzers from the charity shop brightened me up.

While Jof went off to buy me some new shoes (I unscrewed my feet so she could try them on) we did the park tour where we saw the Power Walker again. She is very determined and goes up and down the white lines of the tennis courts for ages every week.

A lazy afternoon followed. I was just challenging Jof to Battleships when Bud reminded me of the Xmas tree task. We were notified of an Xmas tree going begging by BensDad and it's been sitting in the back garden awaiting destruction in preparation for its ultimate fiery fate. Last week Jof bought some new choppers for such tasks: I tried them out and was stunned. They're excellent and as I have been fully qualified on choppers for some time now, I set to work and denuded the tree in no time. You can see the chopped-off branches in this picture: I have a big chopper and I know how to use it. The whole lot is now drying in my Wendy-house.

Then I beat Jof at battleships. Then Pops turned up and we did jumping and dens and splits and all the other stuff I do with my joint top girlfriend (with Erin).

Just looking forward to an extremely fizzy fizzer night.....another classic fizznight. Coconut/shea butter with Ludovico Einaudi (Le Onde) tinkling the ivories. Then, because I enjoy sliding around in an empty yet slippery bathtub: Youtube videos. 1: Olympic luge. Then, mountainous ski jump. Then, ski slalom, topped off with the Torvill + Dean 6.0 Bolero gold medal ice skate.
I will sleep well, dreaming about ice and its benefit to society.
Bed: 1030. I love everything.

A single drop of rain

Happy Friday to the world, especially our Muslim brethren, whose Fridays are Sundays (back to work tomorrow, guys).
Got in the golden book again for mathematical feats so with the 6/7 on the spelling test, I must be due a £1 coin into my Lego Train Track fund.
A lovely day until 20 minutes before school pickup, when I made it hail and monsoon. Then, glorious sunshine for the walk home. Then, a monsoon of hail once we'd safely reacquired the safe house.
All 3 of my grandparents are chipping in to help us buy a new car: can I have the amphibious Maserati flying cannon digger please? At swimming class, I was allowed to jump into the deep end with no flotation devices and swim back to the edge 4 times. I can practically feel myself being crowned with the the yellow hat of success.

Prophet warning

► Prophet sharing only amongst the top employees, all others to be volunteers.

►Collect pew fees from all praising and paying members.

► Increase prophet margins by raising seat prices for special occasions (comfy cushions extra).

► Minimise not-for-prophet activities.

► Send out easy-prophet bots into cyberspace to increase online revenue streams.

► Keep your core products imaginary for low packaging costs and increased gross prophets.

► Use tax loopholes to remain a pre-tax prophet.

► Greater net prophets mean more chocolate sauce on your propheteroles.

Thursday, a day like any other day. I got into the golden book again for going up a reading level to a new colour. Just call me Agent Orange. But then I fell into an immediate sulk at going home time when he wanted me to carry my own lunchbox. I stropped so much I hid in full sight behind a wire fence and pretended not to see Poppy who was standing next to me.

Mama don't allow no parkin' (Brownsville Station)

Wednesday park...damp, but good. We played steal the hat from the silly man and were helped in this by a reception year kid in Moles, my old class. There was a lot of running around, some white Maltesers that Bud won in a coffee machine competition at work, a lot of dodgeball, climbing, bomb aiming and hat theft. In all that time there was only about half of one wail, Bobert got annoyed that the hat was lost on his watch, but who's counting.

None of us wanted to leave but it was micro-drizzling and dark so it was destiny. BensMum has to decide whether to move to Bracknell (after she'd finally achieved her girlhood ambition of buying a house by the sea) and Jof's day was enhanced by the entire Hampshire police force (including helicopters) arriving outside her office. That's what you get when the bank around the corner has an armed raid. Wish I was there, there were more flashing lights than the arcade slot machines.

Another day older and deeper in debt

Day of rain so missed playtimes.

At pickup time Erin and I tried as before to railroad ErinsMum into letting her come back to mine but she was busy. So I drove up to Tangier Road where there is a shop that does Beaver scouts uniform (amongst other things). Even though they had just had a delivery I got the last top in the shop. It's big enough to last me 2 years + and also to hold the millions of badges I'm sure to get.

The nice lady gave me a riffle through her sweetbox and I selected an orange coffin with a real sugar skeleton in it! You can actually hold the whole thing up by its head and it's too tall to fit in its own coffin. We made our escape but got diddled by the no right turn onto the Eastern road and had to have a long detour through lovely Copnor.

A wider piece of sky

This morning brown water ran from all the taps. First brown milk, then brown water, what's next, brown juice? I expect it's full of nourishing iron but we won't try it.
Second free beaver tonight so had supper #1 early, after extended lego recombination.

This time I went on the bike but stuck to main roads rather than the park as the roads have advantages in the dark such as street lights, the park has disadvantages such as inky blackness, unguided running dogs and teenagers trying to hide in the shadows.

We played football and then lined up to wave at the flag when the lady blew the whistle. Then there was dodgeball with 2 older scouts acting as bomb aimers: through superior snake-hip action I won!

Then we were separated into a good boys' table and one for the bad ones: we decorated biscuits to sell for scout funds. Then finally we asked the lord to help us be better scouts and left the older, green scouts to take over the hall. I'm definitely going back.

Let them eat cake

Dropped a carton of brown milk off at the JoniBobs so it wouldn't go to waste, then continued to the supermarket. Jof did the actual work while we went to a new and interesting park in Drayton. It's got a roundabout, swings, slide of death, 2 climbing frames, a hole in the fence where you can watch trains going past and some little hills for bikes. I didn't have a bike so we ran up and down them. Following a lazy afternoon Ben came round to play computer games and lego. We opened the last of the presents and spread everything over the floor because that is what floors are for.

Even though there were only 2 Daddies, they still gathered in the kitchen and drank all the brown milk and talked about house prices and rodent infestations. And even though there were only 2 Mummies, they gathered in the lounge and drank tea and talked about relationships and emotions.

Then we cut the world-class homemade cakes and lit the last sparkler (and its number was 666) and ate cake. Thus, surrounded by Lego and Star Wars, passed the final instalment of our Sith birthday party.

Clearout Saturday

In the morning we got up late and left the house at nearly noon. 1 quick bottlebank later, we reached the charity shop where I was able to buy 2 items from the 20p bucket with the reward money Jof had given me for being the best in class (or was it best in show). Then I got a bonus orange lollipop from the nice lady at Sids' who gave me a grade 2 haircut.
Later Jof wanted to defend againt visiting mice so she cleaned the kitchen, hoovered the house, went to B+Q and bought some branch loppers, cleared out the playroom and made me get rid of half my stuff.
Also: I have opened all my presents and lost all the cards so I don't know who gave me what. So all I can say is thank you all very much for all my wonderful stuff. I hope Ben got as much as me. I know he was on the beach this afternoon because Bud ran past him.

Monster Raving Loony Party

At last - not before time. The day of my birthday party held over from the busy Xmas period. In order to halve costs and double the fun, it's a joint party with Ben.

School spelling test result: (Envelope, inside, tube, explode, television, prize) 3/6. Could do better, see me later. (see you, Jimmy). But this paled into insignificance when I won the Star Of The Week award for "Always being enthusiastic and keen to learn. A pleasure to have in Otters class. Well done"

Jof had taken a day off to prepare for the party by cooking millions of sausage rolls so she picked me up from school.

I later discovered that this was because Bud was going to a place called Irving Brewery just near our Sainsburys where he bought some brown milk (Type 42 and Invincible, full of vitamin B) to keep the PuddleDaddies happy while we were playing in Horizones tonight. When I found that the brown milk had been given the star treatment in the car, I was most miffed. Here's me trying to pull a miffed face. Admittedly, it speaks more of colic and piles, but there you go.

My afternoon TV was interrupted by Ben who came round to eat sandwiches at me while the Mummies loaded up the car with all the sausage rolls.  

At one point a mouse ran past so Bud put out some little plates full of blue seeds and made us promise not to eat them.

Ben and I drove to the party and met Rosie and Zak on the road. Then the rest of the world turned up and we got busy with the climbing and the running and the jumping and the ball-throwing and the screaming. Gradually we stripped and had the sausage rolls and the world class cakes as produced by JoniBobsMum and the PuddleMummies. The tablecloths were the Star Wars originals from Bud's 7th birthday in Libya. We blew out the candles and then Jof lit the sparklers (a pair of sixes. It was supposed to be 666 but we lost one). Bit by bit everyone left and we stayed on to clear up. By the time Bud had irresponsibly sourced some Deep Blue fish'n'chips and we sat down to eat, it was ten past 9. I started opening my numerous and generous presents: there's still some to go but I've seen a DVD, lego hero, actual cash and a metal detector so far. I was still babbling at 1040.

We are stardust, we are the children

Today is the class trip to the Planetarium in Chichester. Apparently we get to wear space helmets and shoot aliens while walking on the sun. I might be wrong about that. This is part of my term project/subject of the moon. When we got there the door was locked so we had to phone them to let us in! We sat in the globular auditorium and watched the fantastic light display.

Then we went through a variety of other rooms with videos etc and did some drawing. All of it was ace. The man told us about a meteor that hit the earth at 50 miles an hour and made a big crater. He passed around a sample which was cracked. This was not my fault, it was like that when I got there...

Speaking of ancient rocks, it's my first show'n'tell. This time I have a small selection of fossils to display, all lovingly collected from the Jurassic coast of west Dorset. I passed them round the class: my first question from the floor was "Where did you get them?" I answered "the fossil cliffs", but luckily the teacher knew where that was. I guess I needed extra coaching before starting on this. The second question was exactly the same as the first: bit of a waste as that was all we had time for.

In the afternoon Bud and I did more spelling preparation for tomorrow's test. I have a decent chance of getting at least 4/6 again, but I still can't get television. Then we finished my board game. It's exactly the same as when I designed it - well, the layout and track is, but he's spruced up the design a bit so you can see where you're going, plus it looks a little better. He has some experience with board games and it all looks cool. I filled in the reservoirs in red. Then I sat with the TV and ate slightly burnt leftover sausages and a cold potato. Tip: if the child is watching TV, they won't be looking at what's going in the mouth. I had proper supper later anyway. Jof came home, ate, and went straight back out again to make birthday cakes. Don't know whose birthday it is...

Mother, let me back inside

Day 1 of my new back-to-the-womb sleep regimen.

The drizzle we'd had all day stopped by Wednesday park time leaving everything damp.

We were the only ones in there until Ben arrived so we took advantage of the empty hanging basket. When the JoniBobs arrived, Johnny got in but Bob stood outside the ring of doom and tried to hit us with the football as we orbited with vomit-inducing speed. We did assemble in the football area but as soon as Johnny stole the ball from me while I was measuring out a 25-yard run-up, I got in a giant huff and manually removed the ball and hid it. In the end we did the usual climbing, chasing each other around and so forth that you'd expect in the summer.

Playing "Bumpercars" (armless boxing where you chest-butt each other) was quite good until Ben got me in the throat, I should expect it really, being 6 inches shorter than the rest of them. That was one of only about 4 howls between us all day, a much better howl ratio than last week. We started the jumping-off-the-rock game but by then it was dark so we left.

A self-made fool

Tuesday. Still inviting new people to my party: today I told a Year 2 student that he was invited and to be in London on Friday evening for the cakes. In the afternoon we worked on my board game but the cheap giant pens we bought from the Asian corner shop had obviously been there for years and were dry and useless. Perhaps some giant black marker pens can magically appear from someone's work.
While they were eating their supper I did my bit for global warming by leaving the back door open so we could warm the globe: I'm generous like that and do it frequently.
I also spent a while making a den by putting all the chairs on their backs underneath the dining table and filling the resultant space with all the coats and hats.
She doesn't know it yet, but tomorrow morning Jof will shout at me when I just can't find any of my coats and make us late.

That naughty frequency

I read today in the New Scientist that blue light, especially at bedtime, disrupts the circadian rhythm and thus quality of sleep. Lamentably, for the last few years the shade on my night-light (which I still insist I require) has been a deep azure blue. Thus this evening I put a job card in for Facilities to replace it with a more suitable colour at the other end of the visible spectrum.
My bedroom now has a warm red light. I'm thinking of putting in a Leatherette minibar, a couple of What The Butler Saw machines and some pictures of tennis players scratching their bottoms. I think Erin will love it on that sleepover she asked for.

My first beaver patrol

Jof has found me a new activity to help fill up my week - Beaver Scouts! Jof says I can learn all sorts of things from beavers, I can't wait to have a crack at it and get stuck in. This is just a taster session so I shall taste my first beaver this evening, in the same church where I was assistant percussionist #12 at the school nativity play.

We scooted through the park in pitch blackness at zero celsius, lucky I have lights on my scooter. We got there early and I played football with more and more of them as they arrived. There are 4 people I know from school, the park, or swimming and one is in my class.

We saluted a flag and said a liturgical poem, then did the running around statues game. Then we split into groups and did colouring in, solving worthy mazes (Help Johnny get all the litter into the recycling bin) and learning what things can be recycled.

The poems, promises and official sacraments mention god quite a lot but I know that all the various gods are fictional characters made up by priests to get money out of other people so I don't mind.

During proceedings we all had to stand to attention and say an oath of allegiance while one of the beavers was summoned by the high commissioners and was inducted into full beaverdom in a touching rite of passage. He got his full initiate's badges and woggle.

Then another one was old enough or had enough points to be promoted to cubdom in a quite intense symbolic transmogrification ritual in front of the council of elders in regalia. The 2 leading cubs jumped over a strip of blue plastic (representing a river), marched up to the ex-beaver and jumped him back over the river, making him a neo-cub.

Well, I'm bang into beaver. I just can't get enough beaver. Just you wait, I'll end up as grandmaster.

Grandad phoned to say that Grandma has moved to the local hospital and will now get therapy, and he had to sign a thing called a DNR.

Ben's almost-birthday

 

 Jof won the game of monopoly we started yesterday: in the end she had several streets and £4300 so we died. Then we went to Ben's house for his birthday party. I got him another Lego Hero but he already had that one. We split instantly down party lines: the mummies sat on the sofas, drank tea and talked. The Daddies stood in the kitchen and drank 8 pints of brown milk and talked. We occupied Ben's den and ended up recombining all the hero and villain subcomponents into new and interesting lego chimaeras, mostly with extra spikes.

There was cake which gave us all moustaches. They sang happy birthday but they got the words all wrong and did it in silly voices, it's pathetic.

Loft and found

Was rudely woken at 1015 by some more Jehovah's witnesses, who got the usual abuse. Met 3 schoolfriends on the bottlebank tour and got another car out of the 20p bucket in the charity shop. I was busy driving it around the model railway track in tunnel park when I fell off it: the ground was only 18 inches away but I landed sideways and I spent half an hour wondering whether I'd broken my arm again. I really didn't want to go to the clinic and get plastered again right before the dreaded Horizones (where I broke my arm last year) birthday party next week so I got better.

It's football day again so we had to leave the car miles away because the footballers had taken up all the parking spaces. Luckily there was a space right outside where BensDad had told us about the Xmas tree so we shoved it in the boot and walked home. We couldn't remember the exact house number and there was a tree at #94 and #84. Perhaps we'll take both just to make sure. Then we had yet another loft clearout. Many spare pillows and baby items were consigned to the output queue and some burnables went up until the next bonfire. Here I am with the cable drum, numerous tubes and a boy scout, the beginnings of my own Hellfire club. Not all the baby stuff went, one blanket thing knitted by Nanna was put up for assessment, but then Jof started making those mummy noises and you just know she isn't ready to move on.

In the evening I challenged Bud to my new boardgame, based on games I have met so far. It's a little rough'n'ready and is only the first iteration. He won but it's just down to the roll of the die. Due to the way I've drawn it, there are difficulties (am I on this square or that, is it a yellow or orange square) so we undertook to redraw it in new and interesting colours and shapes. We'd got 30% through it when Jof finally stopped hoovering angrily and challenged us to monopoly. We got an hour into it before we realised we hadn't eaten so they argued with various curry takeaways (what do you mean, an hour's wait for food, I thought there was a recession on) then she bought one from Tesco. By the time it got to bath fizzer night, it was too late to start so I had a quick shower. This is when problems started.

Quality time: the rant

At drying time, he's kneeling down holding the towel like a toreador, hoping to envelop and dry me. I roar a lot, charge him repeatedly like a bullish (yet bare) conquistador and try to knock him over. This is pretty well the same as every other night of the week but after a bottle of red I've got a decent chance of flooring him. Soon I was laughing so much I got hiccups. This makes him incapable with mirth which only makes me worse (and more aggressive) and him more vulnerable. Within no time, we were both gurgling and hiccuping and dribbling while I pounded him against the cupboard. This is when Jof came in and berated us for being so happy. Women the world over will complain about lack of quality time spent with the kids but to us - it's different. If one of us isn't busy trying not to poo himself while the other is busy trying not to vomit because we're laughing so much - then it's time not worth having.

I'm a regular jack in the box / in my birthday suit and hippy locks

Sleeping, while you were (PG)

How the hell do I think I'll make it / when the real test comes and I just can't fake it?
Spelling test day today, but happy Friday anyway.
On the way back from school we popped into the tattoo shop to see how much Bud's tattoo would cost (£30) but Jof says no way so never mind.
Victory!! I got 5/6 on the test. I still can't spell field but such is life. I got a pecuniary bonus into my Lego track fund as a reward, a few more golden book-related tranches of funds and similar will see me operating a veritable network.
Swimming was splendid, we used long knotted floats that looked like those long balloons the man uses to make sausage dogs. In no time I'll have graduated from my red beginners cap to the orange headgear of the intermediate. As a mark of respect Bud brought home 14 (count them - 14!) of the giant clingfilm tubes from his work so I'll never run out of cannons. He says most will go into the loft with the carpet tube and the cable drums for use at the next bonfire. Ben also put us onto (a whisper from a geezer in the elephant) one of his friends who has an excess Xmas tree outside his house - we'll collect that tomorrow. If it wasn't for the lobster pot of disappointment we'd be onto a winner. Hooray for everything!

Sleeping with one eye open

Grandma has relearned smiling and sitting up. She has been given her own wheelchair and is allowed to move out of the stroke ward as soon as a bed becomes free in the rehab clinic.
Meanwhile Grandad is tackling the unused kitchen utensils so will no doubt need to hire a small lorry to take it all to the tip.

Bud picked up a blonde in Tesco again but it was the same one as last week so probably doesn't count. This was good for me as Ben got to play lego trains again while they had tea. We made a train track in the shape of a willy: Ben doubted me so I whipped mine out to prove it. Again: this seems normal to us even though the parents laughed.
Today is my last chance to practice for tomorrow's spelling test. It's been tough. Here is the overall scoresheet showing my wondrous progress throughout the week with its many iterations of the same set of words.

SPELVOLUTION: The trials and dribulations of a boy on a learning curve over a single week

ATTEMPT
1	2	3	4	5	6
AMAES	AMEAS	AMAES	AMAYES	AMAZE	AMAS
CRAION	CREAON	CRAON	CRAON	CRAYON	CRAON
PHETHER	FETHER	FETHER	FEATHER	FETHER	FIETHER
FEAOLD	FEAOLD	FEAOLD	FELD	FEAOLD	FELD
PTAITOES	PATEATOES	POTATOES	POTATOES	PATAETOES	POTATOS
WIND	WIND	WIND	WIND	WIND	WIND

It was at this point that Bud put a pen in his mouth and started playing the table like a piano. I believe the piece was "Air in G" by Bach. I never did get "Field".

Sleeping on the sidewalk

Today begins the resurrection of Wednesday Park on specific request from Ben who has spare energy to burn and tends to get ebullient if he doesn't have a suitable outlet.
I scooted across to the park at the usual time to find Ben setting up. He appears to have grown since I saw him last but his Mum says that's just a jumper that's got too small. We climbed the biggest rock and tried to knock each other off with a football, then the JoniBobs arrived and joined in, and even Football Harry turned up. There was quite a lot of swinging on the monkey bars and then we had a game of football in the usual corner. This did not quite go to plan. Although I constantly shouted orders nobody seemed to obey me. Harry also likes shouting orders so I simply doubled my output to drown him out but it didn't work. Generally, at any given time, two of us were howling. Bobert howled the most but then he did get a high-speed ball in the tummy from Ben's boot which can be pretty strong.

 Ben had a couple of 'Roid rages and in the end Jof had to come over and be a control rod, dampening the nuclear reaction. Then Ben knocked his Mum's tea all over Cal and earned a shouting all of his own.

When they suggested we could go home if we couldn't behave, that got an even more howly response so we played quietly on the climbing frames. The darkness chased us home where Bud made me do spelling practice again.

Sleeping with the enemy

In April, Keith Richards and his childhood friend Mick Jagger will have completed 50 years playing in the same band. We have footage of the Piddlers playing in the same band from 2009 so in 60 years this will be priceless. But what will the band name be? We probably can't be The Piddlers, but by then tastes may have changed, Piddletown in Dorset was renamed Puddletown by haughty yet repressed Victorians in denial.

Did a lot of playing dens, and a lot more spelling attempts. I'm very consistent in my inaccuracy.

I'm also no longer allowed to use the TV remote control. I play with the buttons so much the Sky box gives up and we have to keep unplugging it.

This is my "Houses of Parliament on fire with Fireworks" seminal masterpiece in card, chalk and glue, a product of last term's fiery theme. It's very papier macho.

Sleeping under the stars

The beginning of a new week and a new spelling challenge from my teacher. Last night I tried to write the words out sight unseen and got 1/6 right - Wind. My efforts for the others were as follows -

Phether (feather)

Feaold (field)

Amaes (amaze)

Ptaitoes (potatoes)

Craion (crayon)

I shall improve.

Plotted with Erin and got her back to mine after school where we bared our buttocks at each other and played Nippleshow once again, comparing areolæ in detail. This seems normal to us but Bud laughed a lot. Then we opened a sweet shop on the toy shelves but miraculously there was stock shrinkage - I blame those light-fingered staff. After supper we polished it all off anyway.
Poor Erin is to lose Dylandog today. ErinsDad just isn't a doggy person but they have found a new owner who is a vet so Dylan will either have a long and healthy life or a short and painless one.

The albino squirrel

Slouched out of bed half nine-ish and ordered scrambled egg on toast to go with my black pudding. It was like a hockey puck, next time I'll only ask the butcher for a normal-sized slice.

Did the town Sainsbury's while Jof took advantage of the refunds desk at M+S. From there we walked direct to Victoria Park where I climbed all over the rope frames, wooden playground equipment and the little red train. Their hanging basket only swings one way but it goes really high. We also pushed slivers of carrot through the mesh of the animal cage: the lazy rabbits were comatose as usual and couldn't even be bothered to investigate the dune of assorted foodstuffs that had built up on their side of the fence. The guinea pigs at least feigned interest but adding my one carrot to their existing array didn't impress them. Then Jof saw something strange in the undergrowth by the railway line: an albino squirrel! I didn't know they did them in white. It had red eyes. It seemed to be squirrel central so we wandered over and persuaded some of them to come down out of the trees (like the early primates the priests don't talk about). I didn't know they liked Kit Kats either, but I can report that squiggles have tickly little fingers and will take food right out of your hand. They're much more fun to feed than the swans at Baffins Pond - smaller and less likely to eat you.

Back at home, Bud was declared winner of the monopoly game we didn't finish last night: he had £3700 in loose change and was busy buying everything on the board when we died.