Sharing the rainbow

It'd be worth walking through the park this morning just to see if the lakes had covered the whole thing. Yesterday it was full of seagulls. Then the sun came out, I expect there were rainbows but I was in school.

Anybody else seen that nice advert for Skittles? A newlywed couple share some Smarties happily, can't understand why it was banned.

Anyway, I had a really good day at school and then Erin said could we go to the park for Park Thursday. Of course, I was booked at LittleMax's house for tea, and Ben and the JBs were checking out Tunnel Park Tennis. Thursday Park has not been without its teething problems.

LittleMax took me home for pizza and chips. We played well and didn't fight and I won the pillow throwing competition 5-4. He has Green Ninja Spinner which is really rare and only Johnny has one.
When Jof got home she made me practise spellings even when she was having supper.

Mrs Oedipus Rex: Ultimate MILF

For those who didn't understand the joke, the wife (and mother) of Oedipus Rex was Jocasta: they both took it fairly hard when they found out she was playing a dual role.
Wednesday: an afternoon off. The rain was taking an afternoon off as well so we scooted to the park for half an hour, don't seem to have done too well at that recently. Sam and Puddle-Emma were there with her friends Poppy and Amy so we ran about, got wet feet in the large puddles, climbed and chased and stole hats etc for a bit.

Our orders were to visit the large charity shop in Elm Grove and look for wardrobes. We parked in the highly salubrious area called 'Somerstown' and walked south through rear access passageways strewn with old cans of Red Bull, for there is no closer parking. The wardrobes were many and one of them was almost nice but Jof has to understand that they are all probably 7th-hand and are on sale in a charity shop, so may not be a) new b) modern c) stylish d) unmarked e) worth even the £100 price tag that seemed popular. Once you've paid the £100 and the £15 delivery charge and got the blokes to take away your existing wardrobe (free), it's a bit final, so we demurred. 

With the full support of the assistant, we took the pragmatic view and declined to buy any but send Jof in at the weekend in case we bought one she didn't like. On the way out I ducked down a side alley between the pseudo-Chinese take-aways and ran off down the back streets of beyond, with their polychrome vomits, torn-up Rizla packets and dead cans of Wikkid Brew lager, not to be seen for several minutes. I had in fact taken the correct route but for a seven year-old that does not know his way around the council estates, multi-occupancy high-rise tenements and bedsit-lands of Portsmouth, it was a bit much and there was shouting. Apparently now I have to be on a leash.

3 Day Radish Eventing

Goodness me, what a fun walk to school. The wind was so strong it blew the rain right up my nose and into my earholes.

After school I immediately occupied my normal position (directly in front of the TV with my hand out awaiting the peeled grape equivalent of chocolate and ham/cheese sandwiches) when he said actually, when was the last time you voluntarily got a book off the shelf and started to read it. Now I'm not that stupid to fall for a trick question like that, for I know the answer is never. So that's what he made me do, saying I'm really good at operating the TV remote but can't read. This is a second day of medieval torture, after the tea-towel incident yesterday. I bet none of my friends ever go near a book when the teacher isn't there.

In gymnastics I got my Badge #5! I managed this because of my stronger arms. Some people got sixes and 2 advanced students got fours but at least I'm progressing. Jof says she'll try to sew it on but I'd rather wait for Nanna at half-term. I don't think you move up to the next class until you have badge #2 or 1, then you get to do flips and things that are way out of my league.

You serve me now

The weatherguessers at the BBC have predicted a limitless downpour and subsequent flood of biblical proportions for the next week. So we put the laundry out to dry.
In school today everyone asked me where the bruise on my cheekbone came from, bit embarrassing to have to say I kissed a pavement because I wasn't looking where I was going. Then when we were playing Boys Get Girls I slipped over in the playground and howled my way to the Bump Stop for a hip transplant, not that there's a theme developing. The pro gymnasts came and took PE class again, the routine was easy because I've done it all before.
In other news, Grandma and Granddad have had a constant stream of people viewing their house. Of course, nobody has actually offered to buy it yet, but at least there's hope. Maybe they'll sell theirs before we sell ours.

After lunch 2 we bought some more paint, the first pot was running out far too quickly. So I was downstairs, playing Lego while he painted upstairs. He shouted down for me to stop screaming. I did. Then a short while later he shouted down exactly the same order, don't you know you have to make noises when Lego-ing? It was just a series of explosions with screaming of dying victims and Avengers shouting and so forth. Then he made me sit on a teatowel in the middle of the room where I couldn't reach anything to play with and it was boring and uncomfortable and pointless and it took 40 minutes before the paint pot ran out and we both left. It's totally duff being sessile, I don't know how barnacles do it. Medieval torture, I tell you, that's like, 7 years of my life gone. FML.

Controlled by a platypus

A day of, well not boredom, so much as unimpressiveness.
I got up at 9, but that still meant 10 hours in bed.
We went shopping and lost each other in the supermarket many times.
I have bright orange new shoes. Bright orange is my favourite colour.
The charity shop was closed so we couldn't buy a new wardrobe.
This is getting in the way of me being able to burn the 2 old wardrobes.
We added spikes and lights to the giant Lego building. Soon it will be heavier than me.
He ran, we watched the FA cup match and then they painted while I played computer games.
Poppy was out again. She's always out.
Jof says that bath fizzer night is all very well but it stains the bath purple and she has to clean it. *The fizzer this time was indeed purple, but there was also some kind of blue sausage. There would have been a picture, but by the time the camera appeared, I'd inadvertently hooked out the plug chain with an overenthusiastic leg. However, whatever the colour, there's always a tidemark to clean off afterwards.
I guess even Mungletons have to have a day off sometimes, I can't keep up my usual blistering pace all day every day.

Not crying over spilt ink

Unbelievably, it wasn't raining, so out we went for the bottlebank walk. Remembering to take the walkie talkies at long last, we arrived at the Milton Road shopping precinct separately.

Tunnel park was nice if damp and I ordered breakfast and lunch items at the butchers, and ate the whole giant sausage roll on the way back to swingpark for a quick go on the swinging basket. I got to the tattoo parlour (Darren Stares, world famous tattoo artist) dead on time but it's not as if we had to walk far because it's practically opposite my school, it's been a temptation for too long and I finally gave in.

We had a look through the photo-books of previous tattoos and my personal favourite was the group of red indians having a tomahawk battle. It was noisy in there with the constant buzz of the ink guns and the Real Men studiously not screaming in pain and I marvelled at the man who was having jellyfish from his hips to his toes. Here's me choosing a buttock-located heart and flowers with the names Poppy and Erin in a scroll - hedging my bets.

It didn't take long because it was only small (that's what all the ladies say) and we went home to have a big fry-up. I decided I don't like scrambled duck eggs, just the idea of scrambled duck eggs.

Our appointment to view #103 was at 3pm. By 5 past we were getting cold, so Jof phoned them and said where are you then. They countered by saying we have you down for 330, so we wandered off to find nappy rash cream for the tattoo. All the chemists were closed but I did randomly trip over one of the flatter sections of pavement and needed to buy chocolate to stop the big bruise on my cheek from hurting. When we got back to the house the estate agent was with someone else. We said we'd just phoned the office and they said you'd be here. She said your name's not on the list, I've got Mr Stirling today. Are you sure you've got the right house?

We said you may verily insert the house within the confines of your cavernous buttocks, we've got better things to do than stand around here freezing to death in the wind, Poldarks to you, the house wasn't big enough anyway.

The better things were watching Happy Feet 2 with bags of chocolate. Meanwhile, the first coat of "Soft Apple" paint went on upstairs and Jof got back and she'd bought me 2 Lego Ninjago Spinners! I really know which side my bread's peanut buttered so I thanked her repeatedly in a variety of sincere voices for ages. I did have a go at painting with a special mini roller kit but it's just not as fun as I thought. Yes, that's my damaged cheek.

Friday: French and Frangibility

We know our parents. Many of us knew our grandparents, but only as elderly people. Our great-grandparents are folk we have only heard of, and if lucky, we may retain a knick-knack or piece of furniture once theirs. Further back in time, all details are lost forever and all that remains of them is their name and a weathered stone in a distant field. This disconnect will happen forwards in time as well: our linear selves occupy but a molehill of time in the meadows of forever.

Throughout history, the peoples of bygone ages have been reviled for their eccentric ways: theists and polytheists, flat-earthers and earth-centrists, phrenologists and communists. But all were correct in their time. Thus future generations will look back on us with pity for our ignorance: Hellfire clubbing or seal clubbing, the swingers club or the football club, all may be despised by our brothers from another mother in another age.

One generation’s quiet socializing in a tea shop is another’s drunken buffoonery in an opium den: one’s state-sponsored cruelty or stubborn resistance to change in the face of overwhelming evidence is another’s righteous political correctness or establishment status quo.

We view with horror the primitive ways of our ancestors. And yet these are the people that made us and the world in which we live. Their sacrifices and achievements shape our lives, yet they would be as strangers to us for we are separated by cultural shifts, awakenings, schism and revolution.

And soon enough, if it has not come to pass already, our own children will ridicule us for our archaic beliefs and customs, and the minute we open our mouths in indignant response, we have self-fulfilled their prophecy, and confirmed ourselves to be the curmudgeonly sticks-in-the-mud they know us to be.

Our descendants these five or six generations hence shall know naught of our lives, who amongst us knows the daily deeds of their mother’s father’s mother’s father’s mother’s father?

So what can be done? Shall we give up; knowing that nothing we do shall be remembered by our distant seed? No, for even that conscious choice will go unnoticed. We can only stand by our convictions on those things for which we have solid evidence, and remain open-minded on aspects which remain articles of faith, lest we too become the enemy. Plus, keeping a diary might help.

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Happy Friday to all! Poor old Erin got a nosebleed at school today, we were Jumping Off Benches and unbeknownst to her, somebody walked in front of her so she nose-butted them on the way down.
I scraped a bit more wallpaper off because I too wish to move house. In swimming, normally we get to jump in repeatedly doing the hands/knees/toes thing, I reckon it's just to get us used to being submerged in a fun way. Today we gangnam styled in. A buncha seven year-olds queueing up to ride invisible horses into a swimming pool looks pretty strange, but reserve your sympathy for the 3 daddies of the 3 gangnam stylers as they tried to dry and dress 3 dancing singing maniacs who all know the words and actions. Ku-ro-sa-wa aaaair! Sexy lady.....

Thursday: Thrupenny Therapy

It started snowing again, not exactly drifts blocking off the island, but at least it's trying.
We have a new girl in our class - Georgia, due to a house move. With a song, state and country named after her, she settled in well sitting next to Erin who was tasked with mentoring her around the school.
Later we had 4 University students perform "Rumpleskin" or something like that, the 20 year-old chap played the father of the 18 year-old girlie (Helen Highwater), something wrong there. But anyway there was a King and some villagers and an evil Queen and lots of song and dance.
Then they split us into groups and I ended up in 'Princesses' group - so I had to make a pink mask-onna-stick and I played a Princess whilst Erin played the King. If this is the future of our relationship it'll either be childless or a very open marriage.

Today was Thursday park, but because Jof was on a half day she distracted me by listening to me for ages so we were a bit late. The JoniBobs had forgotten completely due to the schedule change, so Ben and I played football with his new light sabre, it lights up and makes Woosh noises.

The swinging basket suddenly became free so we sloshed over (still flooded) and got in: Jof tried to slow it down and an unknown Jonah (4, and a current Puddler) played the role of Bobert the Ball Thrower and we all did very well until he had to go and we decamped to mine to play Lego. Ben took one look at my vast Lego collection and realised I was Über-cool, and said so. BensMum finally saw my magnificent Lego erection (visible here in the background) and was duly impressed, pictures are all very well but it's much bigger in the flesh.

Thus we had an hour plus in the warm while the dodderers drank tea until going-home time, cut short in our prime, we were. I carried on expanding the cool car he'd made after he'd gone but it wasn't the same. Later I continued removing wallpaper in Bedroom 1. I need the stepladder, but I can actually be left to get on with it.

Wednesday: Weleasing Wodewick

At least it wasn't raining this morning, so I only took my warm coat, not the raincoat. Shame it was raining in the afternoon.

So anyway I had a really good day apart from one issue which was a massive tear in my trousers right in the crotch, torn asunder during Zombie Tag. Nobody likes gusty gussets in this weather, apart from LittleMax.

He took one look at my panties through the gaping rift and decided he too wanted extra ventilation, but I dissuaded him from ripping his own trousers open in solidarity by warning of the terrible dangers in letting girls see your nuts.

I have hired Colin the Camel to show how my trousers embarrassed me all day.

Today was our day off so we went and bought paint to tart up even more of the house. We chose 'Soft Apple' and then moved a wardrobe, a dressing table, lamp, cabinet, shelves, chest of drawers and the laundry basket into other rooms to make way for wallpaper stripping time. Jof got very confused when she got home.

This is one of my favourite jobs and I turned down TV to continue. But I did have a little time to stick a couple of humanoids on my ever-increasing Lego structure, it's amazing how many little walkways and bridges and roof tiles you can install if you are sufficiently obsessed. Anyone else have a parent that plays Lego more than you?

Tuesday: Tickled by Treetops

Back on track. Today was a great day at school, marred by only 1 personal tragedy and a world-wide disaster.
Badgers (my class, not the persecuted nocturnal mammal) have started the "Great Race" project to build a car and compete in seeing how far you can get it to trundle. I've started on the chassis but haven't got to the airframe yet.
The Phantom Bogblocker is back. You may recall that an unknown assailant bogwashed my favoured red coat when I was in Reception year, the old trick of [filling the sink plugholes with bogroll and turning all the taps on/bunging up the toilets and flushing them all repeatedly] has made a comeback. I suspect Kieron or one of the other Year R kids. I had to use the girl's toilets!
Meanwhile, LittleMax and Erin made a new club. Then she instantly expelled me from it. What's the point? Continued work on the Lego Shrine of Naughtiness, possibly for a little too long and we were late for Gymnastics. Well, we got a lot of red lights, a learner, and the heavy traffic associated with freezing rain and sleet. Last week we were 15 minutes early, can't we ever get it right? In Gym I got to use Hula Hoops, and not just the salty snacks.

Jof's chocolate reward for finishing her dinner included a couple of delicacies from the Chocolate Musketeer (more useful than a chocolate teapot). This is an extremely hoity-toity shop in the middle of Sherborne (Dorset) which appears to have occupied the same building since 1694, at least 2 of the sales staff certainly have. Before Xmas, Grandma told Grandad to go and get chocs for Jof, the default present that will never be wrong. But Sainsbury's had run out of obvious items, so he spent a small fortune on a small but select monogrammed box of 'The Right Stuff'. Orders came to not let me have any of it: I am as yet unaware of its existence as she has guarded it closely and successfully.

Monday: Mandrake and Moonshine

School again, I bet there are plenty of northern monkeys who get to play in the snow because their schools are closed. We were half way through a numeracy lesson when the teachers realised they'd made a scheduling error and we had to get changed for PE.
Well, I had a go at the spellings for this week and made the usual hash of it. I will have to repeat the year at this rate.

Straight away I wanted to continue work on the Cathedral of Deviancy. I scoured the floor (over which my entire Lego collection is scattered) looking for Humanoids to engage in whatever niche practices I had lined up, while he continued with blocks and decorations for the House of Leather. The idea is to use up every brick available but I don't think that could ever happen again, there's so much. You can see the Implements of Religious Correction hanging down in the Basilica of Bondage and the large crowd hard at work with their group activities. The Temple of Thwacking is open for business.

At Beavers there were a couple of Investitures (new Beaver member being sworn in) and by next week everyone will be in full uniform. A couple have gone up to Cubs as well so there's a few Beaver openings in case anyone's keen. We did the Goodbye crush as usual, Bluebird says they're not insured for catastrophic dental damage so we have to be careful.

The First Church of Sado-Masochism

Bedtime last night might very well have been 1145 but that didn't stop me leaping out of bed at the crack of 930. I had conned him into promising 2 hours of Lego building with me today so we started early.

On the way to the supermarket we stopped off at Fort Purbrook. It is one of Lord Palmerston's incredibly expensive follies and was never used as a fort and is now inhabited by horses, but it's a great place from which to view Portsmouth in the snow, which started again this morning. The snow there was much deeper and we threw snowballs at the wildlife information signs. The hillslopes of Farlington with their many houses and kids who were off school on Friday had a giant snowman about every 40 yards, and there was one excellent igloo with hewn blocks of ice and everything.

 Once I'd befriended yet more Girlies in Sainsbury's, we got back to Lego. The derricks from yesterday are still in there and we decided to use up every standard brick I've got to make the walls taller.

 It looked a bit like some kind of robot Nativity diorama and I can fit half my body in it. As the roof grew ever taller, I added some whips, spiked chains, handcuff restraints and knives, for some of my Ninjago warriors come with these accessories, so I really do actually have that sort of stuff lying around. It looks highly suspicious but of course I don't know that, for I am but 7 years old. So now one of the Lego humanoids is chained up in the dungeon, suspended from the derrick-frames getting poked in the sporran by a masked Ninja with an electrified cattle prod, supercharged by a cable leading directly to the lightning conductor I've installed on the spire.

A Timely Derrick

First thing I did was miss Ben's birthday party at ¡Goals! and miss out on a chance to captain a team. Now, it's never good standing up your best mate but the way I hear it, they had a bangin' serious footy match for an hour in the biting wind, a quick lunch and then another 40 mins grudge match. I couldn't have coped.
So we did the bottlebank walk and did some park action and threw snowballs (of increasingly low quality as the snow melted away) at trees and lamp-posts. I also got a surprise Grade 2 haircut at good old Sid's place by the park. I really need to take a hat everywhere with me now. We built some Lego rockets, but something was missing, the tall scaffolding derrick thing where the astronauts climb up and walk into the cockpit.
There was a session of frantic cleaning and laundering before our house-viewing visitors arrived at 315 and then we all went out. He went to the Tattoo parlour while I took Jof into town. We bought some bath fizzers and had some toastie sarnies in M+S because that's my favourite food. I did pester Jof for Lego, so many times that she said I couldn't have any more, ever.

Well, poodle me sideways if Bud didn't have a surprise for me upon our return. The fabled £10 bag of random Lego from a charity shop struck again! This time, he was happy. We have our artistic differences: I like Ninjago Spinner-type items: he says they're rubbish because you can't take the bits and recycle them to make a tower. This is true, but I like them. He likes big blocks and other building-type stuff. Today's bag was - a massive selection of blocks with some derricks! So we made a massive Lego Rocket launchpad! Look at the walls on that! Everything in this picture is from today's bag, apart from the rocket and the grey base. Just like Ben, I'm moving towards Daddy dearest, away from those apron strings.
For Youtube videos after Bath Fizzer Night, I had 'Mad Russian with .50 cal machine gun versus 250 watermelons' and 'Mad American and his mates fill the sky with lead from every kind of machine gun imaginable', and Beethoven's 5th to calm me down again.

Boba Feta Cheeza: Trudgement day

Well, it definitely snowed this morning. However, we are on the coastal strip and hence enjoy a milder climate than locations even 1 mile inland. So I bet Salisbury and Winchester are having fun today whereas we have to trudge to school (and on a Friday, too!). Just onto the mainland, Highbury and Paulsgrove Primaries closed. Then, gradually, Portsea Island schools started to register on the closed list - the JB's school, Ben's place, even the Junior school next door, and the bus company ceased operations. But I had already been dropped behind enemy lines and Agent Erin and I were in deep cover lockdown mode for the duration of the war.
Well, we had our Judo lesson (during which a consignment of little boxes suitable for our car-building project mysteriously turned up in my classroom) and played in the snow and slipped over but carried on anyway.

The snow continued past lunchtime but it was heavier off the island, and by the afternoon it had stopped. Pops didn't even go in today although her school was open as well!

The swimming pool website bore all the hallmarks of lack of effort. Closed due to adverse weather conditions. A swimming pool closed? They're just being wet. Aha.
This just gave Erin and I more time to enjoy the park.

The snow has clearly been tramped down for the whole day by all the kids from other schools that didn't open, but there was quite enough left for our purposes.

Our purposes were to attack our parents, of course, strange that they attacked us too. In a snowy free-for-all we huffed and puffed and got snow and woodchips down our collars and wellie boots. One sneaky move saw a handful of snow applied directly to my builder's bumcrease while I was bent over collecting my next shot.
Pops appeared later and brought her sledge thing with drag-rope attachment, which we filled up with ammunition. But all too soon, Erin had to go and Pops had a party to go to, so we emptied out the sledge and Bud pulled us home in the slush, we were quite cold and wet: you can never really have enough gloves. The whole event took all of half an hour but it was full-on and quite quite tiring. Very funny, though.

Ben is having his birthday party at the football place tomorrow. I could say that I'm not going because it'll be unreasonably icy and any one of us could easily slip over and crack an arm - and I didn't enjoy it when I broke my arm. I could say that it's because Jof is taking the car tomorrow, so I can't possibly get there. But really it's embarrassing because I don't like football any more. It was OK at Thursday football when we were all 5 or so, we were all as crap as each other and spent most of the time quacking and laughing and running up and down between the little orange bollard things, which required no skill. But now everyone else is a foot taller than me and they're really keen and I just get knocked over and if I ever get the ball, someone nicks it off me and I get kicked in the leg. I guess that makes me like the girls who don't want to do the football party. Sorry, Ben. But I'm busy getting in with the girls.

Ben Jammin' et les Plaisirs Inconnus

Everyone keeps going on about possible snow, but I don't believe it.

Someone else is going to view our house! I'm really looking forward to the endless cleaning and re-hoovering that inevitably accompanies such a viewing appointment. Personally I object to having to quarantine my Lego while the ingrates stalk around.

School today was terrible. Depending on how you ask me, either I was told off 12 times by my classmates, or I was told to sit on the wall for the whole playtime by one of the teachers. Mostly I wanted to play Green Ninja attack but someone else wanted to be Green Ninja and there weren't any more colours and they told me off for squinnying so I moaned and bleated instead.

This afternoon we visited Ben for his mini-party. I'm still hoping to get the band back together and keep coming up with suitable names, if only they'll listen this time. We always split acrimoniously over artistic differences and who gets the drumsticks. This time we turned up exactly on time which turned out to be well before everyone else so Ben and I played Lego until Erin arrived and then we played HexBug and hid upstairs. Then we were graced by a Pops and the JBs so most of us disappeared upstairs when Ben nicked his mum's Ipad.

We watched Gangnam style and some special films from his Dad's browser cache. JBsMum may be a Government bean counter but boy does she make a good chocolate cake. We did the birthday song with all the wrong words and got chocolatey moustaches. During the fallout, Ben appeared to have had his first full-on 'Encounter', but none of us noticed until the pictures ... came out, hoho. I think maybe his Mum will have to have the special talk with him.

Then we all fought on the sofa and danced to rock music like Gangnam Style and stayed longer than was scheduled because we always do. I trod on Bobert's head by accident and he told me off. This was the final straw in a day of tellings-off so I howled and ran away, even though he was the one that got trodden on. We took Pops home and we made dens under my bed (honest) before we had to relinquish her. I had a massive plate of luxury fish pie, with Pringles, as you do. Hey. I'm trying to gain weight here.

Burgers for supper? Neigh, thanks

Distinctly nippy this morning, walked to school past all the drivers scraping frost off their windscreens. Our car has an orange snowflake icon on the dashboard to alert you if the outside temperatures are between 1° - 4°, in case you hadn't noticed on the way to the car. Today we discover that it also has a red snowflake if the air temp is 0° or less, in case you hadn't noticed the frost on the windscreen.
In other news, I assure you it is by complete coincidence that tonight's supper (to eat on the hoof) is Shergar-burgers with Flex-E-Bend™ cheese slice. Personally I suspect that horse meat is just as nutritious as beef, just a little unexpected in something called a beefburger. I mean, all the other processed reformed mechanically recovered meat products are self-explanatory.
Turkey Dinosaurs. Created by creationists with the finest meats from only the most extinct dinosaurs.

Vermicelli (little worms). Slimy Italians were not the first to appreciate the gritty taste of the humble earthworm.
Toad in the Hole. Adorable amphibian skewered in its own burrow. Just don't eat the hallucinogenic ones.

Hot Dog. A sit-down meal of this obedient Chinese delicacy will have you begging for more. Down, boy.

Chicken Nuggets. Strike the motherlode with these, mined in the Wild West, with grizzly bearnaise sauce.

Fish Fingers. These crunchy willy shapes will leave you turbot-charged. It's not as if fish need their fingers anyway.

Pigs in Blankets. Few can eat a whole pig and the blanket can get stuck in your teeth, but they're worth it.

Jerk Chicken. This adult-only urge-awakener is served with Coq au Vin at those saucy suburban parties.
Meat Balls. An acquired taste that'll drive you nuts: these manly morsels will put hairs on your chest.
Roll Mops. A dieter's dream: the string is filling and has zero calories, but the wood tends to make a hard stool.
Monkey Brains. These can improve your climbing ability, appreciation of bananas, and possibly your IQ.

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After a post-school sandwich we hastened to the seafront to catch the promised sunset. However first we had to collect a bag of shoes from Jof to save her carrying her own shopping home on the bus, and also to mourn the loss of the Lego Spaceship which was in the charity shop yesterday and Jof was going to reserve it but then someone else bought it.

While we were in there we spotted a couple of Lego Bionicles so we got one. All this is why we missed the actual sunset, which to be fair, was a scheduled event at a known time. We threw a few rocks and jumped in the iced-over puddles.
Jof ran as far as the front gate before the icy onslaught drove her back inside.

One hand in your pocket

Last night, Jof went to bed at 730, and never came back. He says why can't I do that. Plus, he only had to come in 4 times before 930 to tell me to stop singing.
We have discovered that our house-viewer of last Saturday (Code-name Gholigosh) is a serial time-waster. They view lots of places, feign interest, and put in an insultingly low offer in the hope that someone will mis-read it and erroneously accept. We shall not.
The very first thing Erin said as we came out of school was to dob me in for losing 5 minutes of Golden Time. It was because the teacher had to tell me to be quiet lots of times. What's a cane?
Anyway, we have had the end-of-year questionnaire from the Head Teacher, where she asks all sorts of questions about my perceived learning experience in order to improve the education service for future pupils. In answer to "What was the best thing you learnt all year" - Learning that a frog is not a reptile. In answer to "What would you improve about the school?" - put more things in the playground to hide behind.
Gymnastics was good as usual and my straddle rolls shone. Afterwards it was a bit nippy outside: Jof waited 35 minutes for a bus so by the time one arrived, her mind was so benumbed by the arctic temperatures she forgot to get off and had to walk back from the train station. She was unable to feel her icicle-feet and they stood up by themselves. The laundry was not dry. In fact, it had frozen solid on the washing line and the sparkly bathmat stood up by itself in most comic fashion. It should be noted that Bud went for a run up Portsdown Hill during my Gym session and a bit of him also stands up by itself.

FOR P = 1 TO 12. NEXT P

There was the briefest of snow flurries this morning. Snow's fun, particularly now I have so many gloves. But what I fear is the lake that is the park icing over. I suppose I could ski to the first Beavers session of the year.....
Anyway, school was good and Erin broke her toe yesterday but she's better now. I battled with spellings (what's wrong with the fauses of graverty?) and hid inside from the cold behind the new sitting room curtains.

I scootered through the park avoiding the vast puddles, they only needed one day of rain to return. Beavers was relatively quiet, they always wait a week or 2 to see how many people have failed to turn up and how many are now old enough to progress to Cubs before allowing a new intake. Anyway, I got 2 badges straight away! One is the Creative activity badge, the other is the Faith Activity badge, they must have caught someone worshipping me at some point.

At the end, after the Dear God prayer (which may be up for a re-write, from what I hear) we do this thing where we all join hands and make a ring and do the G-O-O-D-B-Y-E song and crash into each other in the middle and collapse in a big blue heap of squeakiness. Every week Bluebird (Leader) says we don't have to if we don't want to lose teeth etc and every week we let her finish her health'n'safety speech and crash anyway.

Fighting ice with fire

I was up nice and early, 1045. After a vitamin-poor breakfast of scotch egg and pork pie, we went shopping so Jof could run. I am currently learning to drive, by changing gear for him. So far I have mastered first and second, I have had a brief foray into 4th but while selecting 3rd, have a tough time not going back to first.  Later, Jof took me to the seafront so he could run. It's cold. I played on the arcades and won £4 for my Lego fund.
At home the final stage of the cupboard upgrade was ours for the taking. The old tool cupboards were bought by Grandma and Grandad in the 1950s and are now very rickety. The big one has a pull-out table thing in case you can't afford a dining table, this made an excellent den so I arranged all the cardboard and wood around it. It became my shop, selling wood, and I dispensed it slowly from my front window and kept rearranging the stock out the front. But gradually, Poppy's Xmas tree was finished and my shop began to sell everything it had (a firesale) until there was nothing left. I put on the last work surface myself and retired to sofa, my work done. After my shower I was allowed to watch Fort Boyard before bed. It was only then that we remembered the 6 giant cardboard triangles and the 2 boxfuls of Bay tree branches that we'd put in the loft out of the way of our house-viewer (codename Bhupinder Gholigosh). I'm sure there'll be another bonfire along in a minute, there usually is.

Sure beats doing 25 to life

First thing, I showed Jof my upside-down bicycling that was Judo warm-up. She tried it as well but fell over and I laughed at her. Rain. I refused to go on the normal Saturday bottlebank walk and missed out on a soaking. Jof was being strange and was cleaning everything, he bought a new toilet seat, what was wrong with the old melamine one that was original to the house and had all those authentic splatters of paint, I'll never know.

For a while it hailed, as if in readiness for our house-viewing visitor. This flyer was in the laundrette yesterday: looks fun. So if you want to be sleek, sexy and powerful like this ecstatic non-blonde why don't you join all the other Pillox down at the community centre.
So anyway, we waited dutifully for 315 to come around and sure enough, our Viewer (Codename Bhupinder Gholigosh) and family turned up 20 minutes early and loitered with intent outside in the rain, lucky they were in their car. At 2 minutes to appointment we cleared off as arranged, and drove to North End to donate the old TV to the charity shop where we hoped to get a tool cabinet or similar, any old thing would do as long as it wasn't the red-topped cupboardy things we'd inherited from Grandma. They look good but are terminally tired. The agent rang us and said that they couldn't get in the house. We said well we gave you the key, Sherlock. He said Oh dear, I've left it at the office, better go and get it then. Such is life when you don't organise everything down to the last final detail. Meanwhile, the football was rained off due to excessive rain, a good reason if ever I heard one.

The shop didn't have anything good, so we tried Albert Road. Then we tried Fawcett Road. The junk shops there cater for the Landlord who doesn't want to pay too much for crap furniture for student and rented accommodation: we saw many great things including some rather decent bar tables, old church pews (may have to go back later to secure these) and Welsh dressers piled high without any chance of actually extracting an item of furniture without demolishing the 'showroom' but not what we wanted. B+Q beckoned. I wandered around the cavernous warehouse getting lost while they argued about lockable metal cabinets and bathroom units and troubled the staff and it just went on and on, like this sentence. In fact, the 2 delightful hours I spent trailing around after them seemed like a life sentence. In the end they agreed to buy 2 small units @ a mere £7 each and move a cupboard we already have into the conservatory. So after all that, we spent £14 and simply rearranged things. The phrase "couldn't organise a drinking session in a brewery" springs to mind. To rub iodine-rich salt into an already festering wound, the rain never actually stopped so we failed to have a bonfire. This is bad. We never fail to have a bonfire.

No man is Ellis Island

Friday is here again, congratulations for surviving the week. In school today we all made some kind of cardboard device, Erin's had many compartments and mine was an artistic triumph in brown with logo and swing handle. How they failed to see it was a suitcase, not a particle accelerator is beyond me, so I started the weekend in a huff as they laughed at my Herculean efforts. See the Tevatron-cyclotron electro-magnet and the fact that it's 2 minutes past Beer. Remember the unrequired bag of boxes he brought from work for the class city-building project that never was? The big flat box is one of them.

Speaking of which, today we started a course of Judo. The teacher calls it fighting-in-white-pyjamas. I was used as demo model for the forward rolls and then we did some upside-down cycling and back-to-back hug wrestling where you have to grasp each other sensuously and make your opponent fall down. Erin got a Golden Book sticker for her awesome moves and I'm looking forward to doing it again. ps, I was not paired with Erin for this task. Some things are beyond even me.

Back to regular swimming. But first was more clearing up for tomorrow's inspection. We have espied Poppy's Xmas tree which remains unclaimed by the recycling lorry, and is just asking to be burnt. It will slip away in the night and become as a beacon of truth, a towering inferno of crackliness, ho ho.

We picked Jof up from work. The Notts county football team coach got stuck coming out of the away end and nearly took out the bus stop, we all had a good laugh at that one. Then we dropped off the laundry and hoovered and cleaned and changed the beds and painted and mopped and wiped and I ate chocolate and who knows, maybe somebody'll buy our house. So much work, just not for me.

Change is good

 In other (quite old now) news, a little after my 30th birthday, the near-earth asteroid Apophis will make a fly-by. The only Apophis I know at the moment is the evil guy with the silly voice and the glowing eyes in sci-fi hit Stargate, which Jof still watches sometimes. But if this speeding space rock gets it slightly wrong (13th April 2036) there'll be quite a lot of changes, probably not good.

The discoverers of the asteroid named it (as per convention) after their favourite TV baddie, so just you wait until I'm a qualified astrophysicist and discover the imminent Extinction Level Event caused by asteroid 'Doofenschmirtz'.
At school I got a 'Your child has had a cheek bump' docket, this time it wasn't Zombie Tag but Ninjago Spinners, I got up and Sam crashed into me. I've moved up to Gold reading level, can I have 50p please?

Anyway, today is the first official Thursday Park of the year, a change I'm looking forward to. We were first there and then Ben and the JBs joined me. We were all set to play my game when they all decided to break away from the main group (me) and play football. I exiled myself. Then Bob and Ben broke up, meanwhile Johnny had already exiled himself too. Soon enough us disparate nation states came together, e pluribus unum.

We chased and light sabred and had a feast (on stilts this time as the ground was soggy) and played Master and Captains and got a good go on the swinging basket. Bob is a dangerous ball-thrower while we're swinging, we shall name him Bob Viscous, after Sid Viscous the punk, for his hair also sticks up.

Some 9 year-old girl had lost her HTC, I mean, she only left it sitting on her rucksack for half an hour in the dimming twilight while she wandered around, how come it wasn't there when she got back? I have many items far more valuable than a smartphone. But they're all in the bank, and robbers are out of fashion.
The estate agent rang to tell us someone's coming to see the house. This is a shame as it only gave Jof 2 days to hoover the entire house 9 times.