Gotta catch the redeye

Not a great start to the day with big red itchy eyes. Jof tried me on the eyedrops which as everyone knows, makes you blind for 15 minutes and you have to lie there and try and get late for school. But eventually the coma and Ebola and delirium that you get from eyedrops passed and I was able to have a normal-ish day at school.
In the afternoon I was one big argument. Everything that was said to me was wrong and I informed the world of this fact. I am 8, after all, and know far more than you do. Just you wait until I'm 15, I will be President of the Universe.
But then I went shopping, which I find mildly acceptable. I drove the trolley although, wouldn't you know my luck, I got one of those intransigent trolleys that doesn't steer properly and I kept having to back up and do 9-point turns with shelving units and fat people getting in my way.
I directed the purchaser to obtain a Hellebore, some strawberries and snapdragons and then it was just counting down the hours until Ben arrived. We compared amounts of gold we could get in our Zombie boxes (fair trips off the tongue, doesn't it?) and we only got 3 minutes playtime, practically, and the Cub Scouts are going to do a hike, but if I was a Scout, I could do a night-time hike.

Life, Jim, but not as we know it

Up at nearly 10am, a much better sleep after the busy day yesterday.
For Mother's day I did a treasure hunt for Jof and left little notes hidden around the house with instructions to find the next note until she discovered my 'M Day' card, which was the treasure.
Jof said she wanted to buy some plants for the front garden and the backyard so we opened the inspection pit in the garage and got out the big plant pots in preparation.
Last autumn I collected conkers (as any 7 year-old wants to do) and they spent the winter in an orange bucket going mouldy, so we emptied them into the bottom of the big pots to act as compost/plant food.
But not all of them were mouldy. Quite a lot had sprouted, new life with big white twisty willies seeking out moisture and earth. Well, we had gathered them with a promise to plant some of them and so it was our duty to select the best-looking 35 and plant them up immediately. I hope for a really good crop and we might plant some in the park or on Bens' Bumpy Paths or something.
Then we spent £lots in Homebase and got honeysuckle and lupins and petunias and hollyhocks and foxgloves and lobelias and ranunculus and we didn't get the dragon because it was £60. But the garden looks much better. A woman walked past and said how nice it looks and we felt proud although it was Jof that had done all the weeding last week.

You Shall Not Pass

Last night I agreed not to wake up, make noise or otherwise cause a disturbance until there was a 9 in the time. So I was up at half past six.
The morning foray (I did not feel the need to attend) to the charity shops yielded 4 bags of Lego assortment. One was a girls' bag but who cares if the bricks are pink, I got a Buzz Lightyear, 2 cats, a starfish, some ice cream and a slide. This is why I buy random bags of Lego.
Then Jof took me to town and I trailed around the shops and got new shoes and a Lego Tow-truck and another Zombie.
One of the little projects that goes on behind the scenes is Procurement. They attempt to procure me new and interesting experiences to make me a more rounded humanoid, instead of the rather knobbly humanoid with sticky-out elbows I currently am. Sometimes they don't work out. We recently got an email from the Verger of Chichester Cathedral saying he had just returned to work after having a heart attack, and he was not able to offer us a tour of his church towers at this time.
You can't really complain about that one.
But the man in charge of the War Memorial on the seafront said he couldn't allow untrained personnel inside the structure (it is a hollow tower - you can see slit windows at intervals up the main shaft, and one of the panels of names of the valiant fallen is a cunningly camouflaged door, the keyhole gives it away) as there's a deep watery sump under the ladder and no permanent lighting.
Jof says he is being reasonable but I object, for has he no idea of the high jinks I've been doing my whole life?
Then again, he's the chap with the key so it's no good crying over locked doors.
To illustrate the sheer breadth of my experience of confined spaces, I have opened a new 'Page' called "The Castles of my Dreams", the link is on the right hand side of your screen. Have a look, see if you've done half the stuff I have.
Later I built my Lego Tow-truck and sang to it. I also prepared a diorama to show off my winnings. Look at the unusual bits I got today - everyone has an ice cream, there's a fridge, slide, cats, extendable purple sofa, treasure chest with Lego Coins inside. I even found time to play 'fighting maniac' in the park. Jof ran past and I challenged her to a sprint circuit of the swingpark area: I won, although both of us had to puff generously afterwards. Then I helped make cakes, just another rubbish day...

Handhi Bendhi Gandhi

As 'Street Dance' was cancelled today, we got a bonus Ben to take home. He took my big new scooter and I took my little old rattly one and we scootled up and down the pavements of the world treating the various lines of paving slabs as motorway lanes.

One more barrel, 2 more minutes

At home I quickly shouted some ground rules and we set to work destroying the Cyberdyne Research Laboratory (faster than the Terminators' bomb) so the bricks could be recycled into a new structure. We have voted on some kind of Police Station with associated goldmine but who knows how it'll turn out. Ben could actually get in the tower, not that it was designed for human consumption oho.
In swimming I was officially promoted to Dark Blue Hat group: but there's no space so I have to remain with Leo the Mane Man (he has long ginger hair) in Light Blue until someone moves up to Purple or Heliotrope or whatever. In the car I discovered yet another Glow-in-the-dark Zombie Lego-alike that had accidentally fallen into his shopping basket. It's the invisible man! Very cheap to manufacture...

Husky stopped Play

Report day today, I was instructed to give the sealed envelope directly to my owners without opening it even a little bit.
It revealed me to be O for outstanding (not 0 for zero) in every aspect anyway, apart from the usual 'Must stop chatting with friends' and 'More care needs to be taken over handwriting and working in maths' which Jof reckons is a universal comment to all pupils, practically a cut'n'paste job.
At Thursday Park we learned that Wednesday Park is to be resurrected from its own ashes: this will make no functional difference to me at all but it's nice to be back to the way it all started. We played football but retreated in disarray when some big Year Sixes bundled us over and someone had spilled foam banana sweeties over the floor by the swinging basket so we threw them at each other for a bit until Johnny got one on the ear and it turned out to be quite hard.
In our later game of footy, we played 'One-touch Wallsy', a made up game against the painted wall until a random husky stopped play and Ben and Johnny got into a pointless battle and we all went home. I had to go straight into the shower due to mud overload.
Bud had bought me 3 more glow-in-the-dark not-quite-Lego Zombies: I now have a Vampire, a Zombie half-decayed, a Zombie construction worker and a Lagoon Creature! Other micro-figures available include the Fly/Scientist, Zombie Cheerleader, Wolfman and Frankenstein. Gotta get 'em all!

Business as Usual

Late last night Jof got a text saying the school would be open as usual today. Well, I should hope so too, it's a Wednesday! Only then did we notice the news about the planned teachers' strike...
Well, the most important event I could come up with today was Calum having a fight with Ben and them getting put on separate tables. The world passes me by.
Even though it was not Park Thursday, I demanded satisfaction and we found it in the shape of LittleMax and Mad Rosie and so forth.
So that was an hour of being Terminators (who refuel by holding the electric cables of the pyramid of ropes) and being hide'n'seek deathrobots and fighting Owen who is bigger than both of us but doesn't have the running stamina.
Campaign planning committees met behind the red bench and then it was time for guitar practice. I strode the pavements seeking elastic bands (dropped by the Royal Mail postpersons) for the hydraulic mythical monster I am making at school: it must be able to raise its wings unaided. I also need to make it extend one of those unrolling party-blowers (representing its tongue) using pneumatics.
Jof asks: can you use Spectral Analysis to detect ghosts (spectres)?

Goodbye Yellow Lego Brick Road

So this afternoon I had to fit my snack and homework into the narrowest of interstices between my guitar lesson and Gymnastics.
I was just copying out the rough draft I'd written yesterday when it was noticed that I'd basically copied the example text but changed the direction of the Yellow Lego Brick Road from the Wild Wood to the Rocky Cove. Poor old Perseus had to smell the same rotten flesh from the same wolves, maintaining a grip on the same old protective shield.
Apparently it is not sufficient to simply plagiarise the teachers' work, especially when she insists that the road is stoney, a classic example of anti-theft watermarking for the under-9s. There is a Stoney LaRue, coincidentally, but I feel it unlikely that she is obliquely referring to this Texan Country artist.
I hurriedly changed a few parts of my essay, and did it in my best joined-up writing to distract the examiner from the actual content.

Put more whisky in the water, there's better times a'coming...

Less is, more or less

After school it was rush-rush-rush as I stuffed in food, did homework and practised guitar for my exam tomorrow. Well, I don't have an exam per se, but the teacher will be assessing my progress and the paranoia-inducing questions "Will he approve?" and "Have I done enough?" seem to be a good way of making me practise just that little bit more.
My homework is about Perseus yomping his way across an island, and I included the fragment 'Towering over him were huge ruff rocks. They were as pointy as the spinica tower.'
For those amongst you who do not know the Spinnaker Tower, it is indeed very pointy.
Ben joined me presently and we continued our Lego Cops'n'Robber diorama which evolves daily. He had forgotten to bring his scooter so I issued him with my old one which now languishes in the garage. It was great for a 5 year-old who rides only on smooth pavements and doesn't expect to achieve escape velocity but for Ben it was an insult. I remember now why I asked Grandad for a new one for Xmas.
I got a hobby badge.

Everything is Awesome in 3D

I had already said I wanted to go to Giant Tesco because they have a better Lego selection. Then Jof wanted to go to Hobbycraft so our destination was set.
She managed to spend £41 in Hobbycraft and you just know it could have been a lot more. I hit the park to allow Jof to do Tesco in peace but obviously not for long enough as she was barely half way round. I got a £13 budget which got me the Lego City 'cop in police car chases 2 bank robbers' set.
Tesco came to £300, didn't think you could do that. Later I found that Jof had got me a Lego Minifigure Policeman, and Bud had got me a glow-in-the-dark almost-Lego Zombie with pistol!
Then I took Jof to see the Lego Movie in 3D, because she's worth it. It was totally bodacious and you get to keep the glasses and there were only 2 people in the cinema apart from us and it looked like things were going to jump out of the screen.
Incidentally, do rival blood banks compete in an IV League?

ScrapJunkHeapYard Challenge Anneka

Wow, what a massive sleep that was. During the night, my nocturnal bellyache transmuted into 17 1/2 litres of pungent marsh gas and farted its whiffy way to freedom to puncture a hole in an Ozone layer near you. I therefore awoke refreshed and pugnacious.
My first job was Junk Heap Challenge. Dear Follower Martin challenged me to clear his back yard of assorted rubbish and take it to the tip, winner gets a bottle of wine. It would have been a hush-hush tour of the Leonid Brezhnev Memorial Naval Command Nuclear Bunker atop Portsdown Hill but his Dad doesn't work there any more so he no longer has the security pass, crying shame there.
We filled the car with bamboo and bits of dead cupboard and buckets and planks and delivered it to Havant Municipal Recycling scrapyard where they have made a big effort to make the car park safer for little people so I was able to help unload the car as well. We also picked up a lot of slugs and centipedes and woodlice but the snail we donated to a French Chef. OK, we drowned it in a puddle but who's counting.
I threw planks into the wood skip and got "Ooo, aren't you strong?"-type compliments from passing Mummies, hurrah.
We battled the football-related traffic jams back home and I shovelled in some lunch and we all raced off to the Portsmouth District Cub Scout Heap'O'Junk Scrap Challenge. The building that The Nameless One of our number was convinced was the Scout Hut turned out to be very locked, but we checked out the Territorial Army centre (closed) and asked a man in a pub who told us we'd been about 50 yards from the real Scout Hut so we sheepishly (and a little bit goatishly) drove back the same way and got in hardly late at all.
My group was one of half a dozen competing Cub Packs and absolutely none of us had done one before. We had a story read to us about blue aliens attacking their former planetoidy domicile in a galaxy farfar away and there were castles and towers and recriminations and kings and forgiveness.
In the room were several presentation frames of Scouting Badges from years past, displays of knots, pictures of the Queen and so forth. One of these guys certainly liked his tassels and colourful metallic flashy badges, the other must have been a total porker to be big enough to fit all those badges on one scout jumper, I think we all know someone like that.
Some of the groovy badges from the seventies were sponsored by companies related to the discipline, eg the science one had BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels) stitched into it, did these people get to tour a nuclear power plant to get their badge??
We were then given all manner of boxes, bottles, paper and cardboard and a spectrum of powder paint and we got to work. All six groups independently decided to make a castle, as you do.
In the end, we came second, a complete travesty of course. Just because the 49th had a drawbridge on their castle, harrumph.
In familial Solidarność for my failure to progress to the next round, Bud bought me 2 Match Attax! cards, nothing to do with getting me out of Jof's way so she could rest her feet, honest. Later we played Monopoly. Hooray for reality, more than I get at home.
After bath fizzer night I rejoined Jof to watch Match of the Day on our comfortable sofa with the special knitted blankets and the Wayne Rooney goal that almost equalled that of Mr D. Beckham. What more do you need.

Sports Relief Day 2014

Jof let me sleep in a bit today so we rushed a little.
After spelling it was running. For sport relief we were allowed to wear civvies instead of school uniform so I wore my special red relief T-shirt.
We had to do relays up and down the playground in a style of our own choosing and I did mine with an animal theme - I did the chicken dance and also went crabwise. Ben invented the bum-shuffle which is sitting on the ground with your legs out in front and lifting yourself forward with your hands.
Of course he was very slow: I'm led to believe that in any population, there will be a smallish proportion of bum-shufflers.
My swimming coach says I might be nearly ready to get a preliminary assessment as to suitability to possibly move up a group. This is a somewhat watered-down victory, hoho.
We finished the Lego Cyberdyne Sytems building today. While the actual Terminator bit was completed some time ago, we've obsessively increased the height out of all proportion until we ran out of bricks.

The Show must Goon

Straight after school we had an argument about food logic. So, he says, if you didn't eat your lunch then clearly you don't want food so there won't be an afternoon snack. But Finlay was distracting me, I said, feed me, feed me now. OK, he says, if you only get half a lunch you can have a snack. Not good enough, I say, for tomorrow I might be hungry. It's one of those circular arguments where everybody and nobody is right.
The Head Teacher was right, though, she gave me a certificate for 100% attendance these last 6 weeks. How difficult can it be?
Arrived at Thursday Park where Bob said his Mum wasn't allowed a shower for 4 weeks and that I should wear a hat so he doesn't have to look at my hair.
We played Tag for a while but it takes us longer to shout about the rules than to play a game so we invented a new one with Ben. One boy is the bus driver and he scoots along the path hooting 'Get out of the way, Grandma'. The rest of the clan are elderly ladies with a variety of injuries and they attempt to cross the road before the bus driver mows them down and sends them to Granny Heaven.
We sourced walking sticks of various lengths from dogs of various heights and hobbled around the path, shuffling along bent double like crones with Crohn's, pronounced curvature of the spine and Alzheimer's, why not.
During some 'I am the King of the World' on the curly yellow slide, I got Ben in the face and he got me back and it was all his fault apart from where it was all my fault and I howled until we said sorry and we came back to mine and made Lego cops'n'robbers like nothing had happened.

Garderobes: Plumbing the Hidden Depths

Hi Y'all! This morning we were a-fixin' to go out. I was still neckid when Jof was pritnear ready, then I had a hankerin for the tarlet. She was right put out and was mighty afeared we'd be late but I said naw, and we ran and were dreckly there, and met them young'uns ShelbyLyn and Bubba and Enos and Bobbi Jo and Cleavon and Billy Jo JimBob and Earlene, Faylene and Raylene. Hey, shore cain't get no more suth'n than me, 'ceptin mebbe Plymouth. Ooo-ar.
Actually had an afternoon at home for once. Harvey has put me onto a groovy Lego games site and I'm just waiting for that all-important email confirmation by a parent or legal guardian and I'm off.
In olds (not news), Great-Great Grandad was a builder in London during the war and he had flashy fob watches and a War Office licence to enter burning buildings when struck by bombs (which we've still got, you never know).
One such unfortunate building was a church and once he'd rescued the people sheltering within from acts of god and demolished it, he kept the key as a memento. That practically constitutes a collection so today we improved it with 2 more (smaller ones) from that nice chap Mr E. Bay. Now I can either be a Victorian Gaoler or open a pub called the Cross Keys.

On Digestion

First out of school because I have guitar lessons. The teacher likens my plectrum technique unto that of a potato dibber or plastered plasterer, more finesse is required.
I worked hard for my badge 3 in gymnastics, and said my tummy hurt because of the exertion and a slight paunch. But then in practically the same breath, I asked if there were snacks, possibly chocolatey ones.
My reward for finishing my fishcake was 3 kiwi fruits. So surely, I countered, I deserve Cadbury's Mini-eggs as well? They must be full of protein. It was totally unfair on Jof, she cooked us a lovely dinner and then went to Getting-Thinner-Club, where they give you  a cardboard biscuit if you've been really good.

Brace Yourselves: false claims of Irish heritage are coming

St Patrick's day, 2014. Our friends over the pond particularly enjoy being Irish for the day with shamrocks and leprechauns and folk memories of famines and massacres and diseases and religious intolerance and green things and beer coming back up as fast as it's going down and shillelaghs and Blarney. Now, a little bit of the human part of my genome is Irish. But it's practically a fingernail.
My Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandfather was a French Huguenot immigrant. He founded a sugar refinery in the 1760s in Mullinahack, an area of Dublin. He married an Irish girl, and that is where the Mungo of my name comes from. That makes me 0.4% Irish. Sláinte, where's the craic etc! Of course there's also several other European nationalities, as well as a few off-world origins...
Ben did come round before Scouts but we hardly had any time and I had to tell him not to mess up my room as it had been cleaned completely - I even did the hoovering. He got the man of the match award on Sunday but his Mum says they should have awarded 3 prizes for handbags (getting sulky, emotional and prickly for no reason like a buncha girls).
We got a badge for the centenary of World War 1 and I'm not allowed to bring a hidden bag of tools to the scrapheap challenge this weekend, because it might be unfair on any other team that didn't think of it.

On yer bike

The day didn't start well when I failed to eat the breakfast I'd specifically ordered. But it rapidly got better when we took the bike out for a spin on the seafront, if you're not on your bike on a day like today, you're doing it wrong.
Canoe lake park was heaving, as was the promenade. I threw rocks into the sea and we went in the castle but the roof and tunnels were closed.
The castle staff asked me to put my shirt back on in case I got the girlies overheated and on the way back we stopped off to admire the model boats on the lake, because the model boat society was out in force. I liked the submarine which kept sinking and the 2 galleons Temeraire and Ajax and the fast boats and the amphibious landing craft because a guy drove a tank right into it and it could move its turret round and make shooting noises and everything. The swans didn't get in a flap.
When we got home, raddle my wingnuts with a Malaysian jetliner if Ben hadn't left a message saying meet you in the park, bring your bike. O how we laughed.
I played tennis and football and cricket and penalty shootout with Ben and the JBs, absolutely splendid way to spend an afternoon in the sun.

Sex à la Mode

Woke up at 0730 because I had left my alarm clock set. I was not the only one up, because my willy was in sex mode, don't know why it does that and it doesn't matter how much you tell it to stop or push it down, it's only when you get distracted by Lego it goes away.
So this meant I was able to walk miles to buy books with the school pound-off voucher and play armies on my own in Orchard Park. We got a new 10 litre watering can in Big B+Q which made a much better gun than just 2 fingers and I shot and exploded everyone we met.
The park was full of schoolchums and I joined in Leighton's army attack game, shame I'd left the watering can at home. My reward was giant fish and chips for lunch from Deep Blue, and while having my customary Grade 1 1/2 haircut (that I demanded) I read one of my new books, yet another instance of Extreme Reading, just not a set-up this time.
Later we went for a record-breaking 3rd walk and I got 20 Match Attax! cards. My latest Lego project has been the Cyberdyne Systems headquarters as seen in my favourite film Terminator 2. Today we added a model of Arnold with his Gatling gun and a lot of cowering police-types and in a flash of brilliance, used Jof's sewing set to suspend a police helicopter and motorbike from cotton thread, hanging from Nanna's fishing rod (a small stick). Sadly you can only just see the gatehouse security guard on the floor with no kneecaps and there is a random brown bear by the trees but who's counting.
OK, so the picture is a bit busy, and the whole setup is amateur at best, but I think it's really funny. Later (by specific demand) I watched Terminator 1 to help me understand T2. It's scarier but I insist I'm OK.

A Tale of 2 Cities

It was cold and misty this morning, so I looked silly leaving school this afternoon with a big coat in the warm sunshine.
But I took Poppy home with me and showed her the Cyberdyne Systems building and described how the liquid metal Terminator drove the Police motorbike through the window into the Police helicopter.
Then we built rival dens and launched ambassadorial missions of love against each other like the warring city-states of old.
We had to give her back eventually because I had to go swimming. It had got cold again so we got a bus, where I met a very well-behaved dog. It didn't buy its own ticket, but did sit there looking lovingly at my leg, don't know whether it wanted to eat it, wee on it or do that special doggie jig-jig on it. You never know with dogs.

Who is this Roger 310?

Roger 310, pigeon fancier, cordwainer and amateur dentist, was the last of his line.
Originally descended from Martijn Fortinbras (fl 1610) who appeared in Shakespeare's 'Hamlet', the Forten family settled in Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire and found work as hurricane chasers. Roger's more famous uncle Donald Forten was the eponymous inventor of the .410 shotgun, but died (without issue) of lead shot poisoning after being hoist by his own petard.
Roger, only son of Horton and Hortense Forten of 3, the Quivers, Surbiton, joined the Queen's own Fusiliers and was court-martialled in 1915 for improper relations with Guinevere the Goat, then working as Regimental Mascot, in her pre-Broadway years. He was reduced in rank to .310 and was subsequently killed by an errant German landmine in the battle of Midway, 1942. Today all that remains of him is a memorial horse trough in Carshalton cunningly fashioned from his pewter teapot collection, a sad tale indeed.
Took Ben home from school and kept up a constant babble the whole way, even Ben told me to shut up but I couldn't hear over the background noise so took it as encouragement.
In the park the sun had been replaced by a rather cold sea fog (or frith, haar, or whatever it's called nowadays) and we could hear the ferries hooting at the ships in the harbour.
When the JBs arrived we played football and had the usual Ben-Bob spat and I hid on the climbing rock to avoid confrontation. Nothing ever lasts for long with us and we polished off all the biscuits and did "What does the fox say, bneep, bneep" while jumping off the tables.
We got extra bonus Legotime afterwards and swapped football cards, shuffled Lego satellite dishes around the floor a la shove-Ha'penny, and had a farting competition.

Maxed out to the Max

In another child-on-child case of aggravated assault, Naughty Oakley stabbed a fellow pupil in the willy with a sharpened pencil. He had already racked up 4 misdemeanours and this one was worth 4 on its own so he was sent to the Year Sixes to get severely punished although I'm not sure what that entails.
After school I hit the park again because it wasn't snowing. The rest of the world had the same idea and amazingly, LittleMax was there as well.
We hid from and spied on fellow alumnus Leighton although for most of it, he didn't know, which made it quite pointless. Then we chased Bud and Leighton's little sister joined in and pulled my trousers down which made me very angry.
After an hour and a half of exhausting fight action, I took Max back to mine and showed off the secrets of my locked box, in the same way as the derivation of the 'Cabinet' meeting of trusted advisors. It contains such wonders as my first guitar sheet, £15 and a Waitrose card.
Later I started my Mythical Creatures project. We're doing this as a topic at school and I am trying to steal a march. My Hero Pithon roams a mythical landscape of mountains, swamp and sand, with a rockey cove, golden river, gloomy forest and dark mirror lake. Charictas include:

god: sam: boots of flight.

goddess: poppy: an axe.

rock sharks: rocky and rockso

monster: graglegrec, and now introducing the parana X6000! Pithon the Hero has a dagger of gold, a shild of pretercshan, and corage.