Spirit World: a Voyage of Discovery

Today is our scheduled visit to Hayling Island on our own yachts, and what an unseasonably warm and sunny day for it.
We had to get towed a bit against the tidal flow through Sewage Works Straits out into the Solent but then we were off.
We parked up by the Hayling Funfair and were allowed into LandLubberVille to buy food from the café, I had a double Flake 99 for £1.50 but others had chips.
Because we got back to base with time to spare, we all paddled about in the sea still in our westuits and one of us drifted out over the mud near the slipway and we had to make a human chain to rescue him, all good fun.
We got home and the house was empty so we did a quick change and in my swimming lesson, there were only 6 other swimmers in the whole pool! They must all be out doing something else. The new teacher was trying to teach us the really safe and rubbish dive that beginners have to go through and I showed her my Mediterranean dive and she said goodness me you'll have to teach me that. But when we got home, the junction outside our house was hilarious. Various marauding bands of zombies and dead princesses had gathered outside the newsagent for a pow-wow to decide which roads they were going to bandit-ify next.
Anyway, because poor old Jof had been off work with the lurgy, we left her on her own to cope with the Trickle-Treaters, making the little kiddies scream when she opened the door, and that's without the scary costume. I opened the door to the first lot, then we scarpered. We took a quiet side road which had a pumpkin in a window and one on a car because we correctly figured that nobody goes down the side streets, so I Terminated at them and my first solo freelance trickle treating was highly profitable, especially when I said "Trick or Treat" in an Austrian robotic voice.
The Puddlers had already done their trickling so we had sausage inna bun and did the lucky dip and sat outside jumping out at people going rarrgh and put on a DVD and let the adults get on with their usual worthless activities. Everyone said that my Terminator costume was ace but Bob stole my gun. We shared out the Stonehenge cookies or the Submarine museum biscuits or whatever they were this time.
As usual this meant that Bud tried and failed to carry me home, for he now only even tries when drunk. When we finally staggered back, Jof said that she'd practically run out of eyeballs and someone had nicked the little pumpkin.

Freaking in the Rigging

Welcome to Hallow'eve!
As soon as I got to work, I struggled into my wetsuit and started rigging my boat. I have made 2 buddies there, but later in the day I made 2 enemies as well when I found them unzipping my rucksack and pilfering a £10 note.
Much staff activity followed, with parents in on the conference call. What's a cavity search?
Anyway, one of the older kids asked if I was famous because they stumbled onto this very blog, possibly by Google image-searching. I said no, but give it time.
We picked up the laundry from the very expensive laundrette (they're all very expensive now that My Beautiful Laundrette on Albert Road with the relaxed attitude, curvy chicks and cheaper prices closed down) and when we bought milk in the Co-op I was just using it as a bazooka to kill all humans when the moistened handle escaped my sweaty grasp and it flew across the room. Because I was told off I got in a big mood which didn't really dissipate until the chocolate course after supper.
Today is the day of the annual pumpkin tragedy. No, not spice, not the entirely talent-free carving, but that this house has no compost heap for the spludgy bits you pull out of the middle. The next house will.
I'll just take a short 23-hour break, and I'll be back.

A Gauntlet Thrown (and a Gauntlet Run)

This year I did the Great South Mini-Fun-Run and got a free shirt and finisher's medal. Next year I am in the Juniors (4 1/2 km) and have already bought my ticket. I challenge you all to join me.
So anyway I got to work early and it was rainy so we did do quite a lot of classroom work learning reef knots. I am now qualified to say reefers get knotted.
But we're not allowed to get away with it and went out on the water and capsized and chased a green rubber duck up and down the tidal channel and my partner captured it but just when he was going ner ner ner I've got the duck, he dropped it and another team tacked in and stole it from under our very bowsprit.
I had a great day and shared out all my chocolate M&Ms, even the ones I spilled over the muddy floor because the other boys picked them up and ate them anyway.
On the way out we espied a pear tree by the side of the road and got out and collected 24 free pears because who can resist free food. We put them in the garage on a tray because that's what Grandad used to do.
When we got home we found it all clean and someone had plumped up all our pillows and my bed was all flat and smooth not runkled up in a corner like usual and we found that Zoe the Cleaner had left me a choccie bar and a note saying thank you for tidying my room. Super-bonus! We had a huge roast dinner to celebrate Jof hitting her weight target, a move even I determined was suspect.

Cheeky Monkey (Irritable Jowl Syndrome)

Got to work before most of the staff, OK we met them in the car park but still.
I was in a group of 3 today and we did land tacking which is sitting in a boat in the boat park pretending to tack and following procedures in preparation for real sailing in the larger boats.
We did loop-de-loops in the channel and one of the others capsized onto us and I was hit in the head with a boom and I did a reverse roll into the sea.
But it was all good fun, until I realised he'd sent me to work without issuing me with a towel. I had to dry off by jumping up and down.
At gymnastics we even had a fun play part where I made a den with foam walls but Daniel's older sister kicked it down on us which hid us totally.
We thought we'd get a photo of the sun setting behind the motorway which looked a lot better than it sounds last year but the clocks moving back put paid to that idea. The sky-glow from the lights of Southampton really show off the brutal silhouette of that giant crane by the bridge.
For suppertime viewing we chose Groundhog Day and whaddya know, Jof got back from Slimming World and we hadn't done anything, the film seemed to take up a lot of time for some reason.

Sailing the Seas (not cheese)

It's supposed to be half-term but first thing I drove north through the rush hour traffic and reached the Sailing Club.
Although I'm doing a week of hardcore sailing, the Outdoor Centre is still running the Camp Adventure I've done a couple of times and one of today's Adventurers was Poppy, which was nice.
I was in a group of 6 'Allo Sailors and I was allocated the Spanish boy as partner, should have lots of experience on his uncle's fishing trawler.
It was a splendid day with warm sunshine and light breezes but once we'd capsized for the 6th time I did have a little cry because it is the end of October and it gets cold in Davy Jones' locker.
We had to eat lunch in our wetsuits and Pedro the Spaniard and I have attained our Stage 1 but we haven't been given a certificate yet. I was tired when I got home in the dark, lucky I've got an hour of gymnastics tomorrow afternoon, that'll teach me. I'd recovered by supper, which is technically group mastication.

The BUPA Great South Run 2014: Human Racing

Well the nice Man from the Ministry gave me an extra hour in bed today for Daylight Savings Time so I took 2 hours to consider it in detail, a tradition for teenagers like me.
But then all of a sudden Bud left us to do his Sunday run 5 hours early and I opted for large omelette breakfast to compensate. Jof insisted I cycle down to abuse him and we almost didn't make it as I like to dawdle and pootle and wander about with my head in the air.

But then we met up with Elizabeth and we saw Bud trundle past the expensive houses in his 10 mile blur of pain and discomfort (orange shirt) and I was so busy babbling with Beth that we missed BethsDad but then Bud finished and met us and we all went to the other side of the cricket pitch to cheer on BethsDad from the vantage point of the wall outside Lumps Fort. The race itself sounds like a million rubber raindrops on the road.
Bud set off with the big boys and couldn't keep up so had to have 17 walkie-rests and finished in 1 hour 15 which is only 1 minute quicker than last time, BethsDad chopped several more minutes off his time in revenge and everyone's a winner especially when you get a goodie bag with big-ass metal medal.
So we all cycled back and had curried lunch in honour thereof, as you do. We watched the recording of the race to try and see ourselves and I jumped, fidgeted, babbled, climbed and did forward rolls on the sofas the whole way through, don't see why I should be told off, I'm sharing a talent that only kids have.
The afternoon was leisurely spent, my sailing clothes and lunches for next week were prepared and then Jof bogged off to the laundrette all because the lady doesn't love a washing machine with a 240 volt live outer casing, some people, eh.
I have half-term homework which is to make a dreamscape in cardboard with added twiddly bits so he got the cutting and sticking box out of the loft and then we instantly ignored it, because of a garage-related task.
One of Jof's Life Improvements is the purchase of a tumble dryer, and the garage/workshop has been designated as its place. She pointed towards said garage in heroic pose and quoth "Get thee hence into the outer darkness and make me a space in the garage for the dryer and clear it up totally while you're at it" like Queen Boadicea only with more teeth and we hopped to it, I can tell you, oh yes.
But garage work is always fun because I get to use the big knife and ditch all of my kiddie toys and the fishing rod we bought in 1977 in South Africa and the rubbish that builds up and I found 4 count them 4 wooden snakes and we made a very good basket of kindling for the living room fireplace. We also destroyed the 2 extra brooms that the builders left behind and broke up the shafts with the 2 1/2 pound lump hammer, resulting in high-speed shards of pointy wood practically killing us but missing our unprotected heads at the last minute. Gosh, life is fun with beer.
Once the bin men come and take away the 8 binbags and vast pile of recyclable cardboard, we might even be able to get a car in there, certainly a tumble dryer. Queen Jof was pleased.

The Running Man

Today I cycled to the seafront where it was very busy. We went via the laundrette so that Jof could finish the laundry: she was unwilling to use the washing machine because it was sparking and making electrical disturbances and whiffs of ozone, all very healthy.
Fences abound and blocked our path, luckily you can carry bikes over obstacles etc. We arrived about 11 minutes before the hooter was due to go for the Great South Mini Run, and even then I got bored.
Straight away we found Ex-Puddler Emma so I started next to her, and I also saw Poppy, Bertie and Elizabeth.
The bloke on the rostrum did a little dance that we had to copy and told us we should already have eaten a banana for breakfast, sadly I'd had a fry-up so no luck there. The road was full of kids in pink shirts although some of the braver ones had refused to wear pink. The pavements were full of parents with cameras and quite a lot of runners had their Daddies with them, but I had resolutely refused to be accompanied and made him leave the Adult Accompanier ticket at home.
The hooter hooted and we all sprinted off to many cheers and hurrahs. After the big loop round the crazy golf course I saw Jof who had done the laundry and I only walked once, honest. I did it in 9 minutes 30 seconds, not bad for a first time also with a slight tummy-related handicap, I shall return next year. My face got as pink as my shirt but who's counting.
At the end you get herded round the corner by stewards on bikes and even more fences and I got a goodie bag with my very own metal medal! It's the first time I've won a medal for ages, I got one when I was 4 years and 1 month old, when I cycled without training wheels for the first time, and I got a few for schools gymnastics. My bedpost is absolutely covered in medals but the rest are either Great South Run ones earned by Bud, or plastic efforts saying I've been on the Needles Chairlift ride etc.
We had a cup of tea by the Skatepark to get my breath back and cycled home to do Lego.
But it wasn't long before we went out again and dropped Jof off at Giant Marks and Spencer in Hedge End, for she loves big shops like that. We continued west and bought a 6-pounder artillery shell off a man in Totton for a tenner, as you do. I put it on my arm and pretended to be the liquid metal terminator, because that's practically all I talk about nowadays.

A Fungi to be with

But we did have time to rediscover Millbrook Park in Southampton where I climbed and swung and did all the stuff I never get to do at home. The zipline is missing its rope and the spinning cup falls over but the climbing frame is ace and the park didn't have mattresses instead of trampolines like the one just up the road, and it wasn't on fire like the one in Somerstown.
I got an ice cream (of course) and we wandered the rather large open spaces and found a little yearling frog and a lot of mushrooms like the ones that Dave Lister fed to Rimmer for his special breakfast. It was a magical time. A chap kept riding his motorbike over the fields.
When we got back to Hedge End we scoured Giant Sainsbury's in disbelief looking for her but she hadn't even made it out of M+S, turns out the shop was so big she'd got lost in it. We spent oodles and got home in the dark.

When Psychiatrists Attack

Not only Friday - but Half Term as well! For this we get to wear cheapo Mufti because we expect to get covered in paint for Diwali.
The workmen have continued their construction of the seating area in the playground and just before kick-out time, were bagging up cut-off end bits of logs to take to the tip. Never one to turn down an opportunity, we begged one of the bags and had to carry it home, but now have several day's worth of log for our fireplace. Reuse, recycle ...
We have now finished our topic and have been given a new one for next half-term: dreamscapes. Thus on the way back home, I explained the plotlines of Terminator and T2 in great detail to Ben to illustrate why poor old Sarah Connor had recurring bad dreams about a nuclear explosion ruining a good afternoon at the swingpark, and why Doctor Silberman didn't believe her. We have to make a little diorama-in-a-box about dreams so that might just be mine, use your psychiatrist here.

The Madness of Queen Jaffe Joffe

In school we had to play catch-up on our religious studies because we hadn't done any yet. We had to perform parts of the Diwali story which was good but Oakley and Ines and Ingrid messed about and by the time we got to our performance, OtherBen and I had run out of time.
Afterwards we had a day off. It was wet so we just did Lego: I destroyed everything while screaming at it, he built the new tower which has now turned into Big Ben. Once the roof is on, technically I'll have to enter Ben from beneath, I'm sure he's looking forward to that.
But Dear Followers Martin and Zoe came round to investigate the house. Martin liked all my signed photos of stars, while Zoe negotiated a cleaning contract with Jof, taking on all the jobs that make Jof mad, for we don't want that, do we, children?
It means I'll have to clear my floor of Lego before Zoe comes round to hoover. Do you think I could hire a Lego picker-upper?

Space: Only 24 Hours from Pulsar

The workmen in our schoolyard have dug their trenches giving a nice outline of our new seating area. This is delineated by a row of thick log posts sunken vertically into the tarmac leaving a couple of feet standing proud of the playground: they had a hilarious rubber mallet that was taller than me (but not called Timmy) to bang in the posts.
We made our chocolates in class today. We used ice cube tray moulds, put in some chopped marshmallow etc and melted a bowl of choc chunks over a boiling water-bath to pour in. The actual designs we made may never be realized in solid form (I invented Roolo, a rectangular milk chocolate block with ruler markings in inches, and Ben invented Ben's ChocStraws which are strawberry shaped sweeties stacked together so you can bite one off at a time) but we printed off our designs.
After the bare minimum of Lego we hit the park and tried kicking the ball up the tiled roof and over the thatched building, Ben can actually manage it.
When the JBs arrived we got distracted by a large branch that had been felled by the storm. We dragged it over to the tennis court hedge and built it into a fortress using other fallen twigs, and proceeded to beat the poor old privet hedge with sticks to make an escape tunnel behind.
In this simple way we were profitably and amicably self-employed until the parents got cold and we all went home.

Psychedelic Furballs and Sinister Cyborgs

Stuff Snakes On A Plane, they've just started filming Sharknado 3! I mean, srsly ...? Bring back Celebrity Water Divining ... on Ice!
At school today the men with the little digger are doing trench art of their own by digging a trench around the storm shelter. Looks like they'll make a walled-off area so that non-footballers can eat their lunch in peace.
Today in assembly a small dog tried to perform tricks for us. It couldn't quite do a back-flip and had to be helped up, and when some Year 3 kid made a loud noise it hid behind the piano.
But the Halloween party is what I've been waiting for. My year gets the early shift so maybe next year I'll get to arrive in the dark and really scare people. This time I'll just go around asking for Sarah Connor in a menacing voice, for I am Cyberdyne Systems Model 101.
I walked there and got many admiring glances. The queue outside was full of the usual zombies, spray-painted pyjamas and fairies/princesses darkened to become witches. I stood out somewhat. You know that thing where you shine a laser pen and cats chase the dot? Well, I was just demonstrating the laser-sighting on my assault rifle when some toddler started chasing it.
Anyway, there were a couple of surgeons, a wolverine with only 1 hand, a gloop-monster and an Enderman, but I blew them all away, purely a personal opinion. Loads of people liked my outfit but mostly they wanted to play with my gun. Somehow the event wasn't as good as last year, you couldn't go outside and I hid in the toilet when it came to the put-stickers-on-your-face game because I didn't fancy doing the loser's forfeit. We all ended up doing it anyway (YMCA-style dance with booty-shaking).

Paying the Price of Reality

Well, I suppose the most interesting thing about today was the mini-digger. We are having some Astroturf fitted in the playground which requires the removal of a tree and lots of spray-painted lines on the asphalt telling the workmen where to dig.
They brought a micro-digger which was really funny, it had 2 tank-like caterpillar tracks and a back-hoe digger bucket, but once the guy had finished digging with it, he could practically pick it up and take it with him. We'll have to see how much they've destroyed by tomorrow, because the weather won't be conducive to outside work.
I got a merit certificate for "being a great helper in the computer suite", not exactly an NVQ3 but a start.


The A-Team

Ben came over before scouts and we built laser-droids that shoot electrics using the Lego Star Wars 75034 Death Star Troopers with new blasters (nuevos blásteres).
In the churchyard we met the local fox (not Poppy, an actual fox) who stood there and surveyed us calmly. He obviously lives round the back of the church because we've seen him there before, all he wants is to be left alone in his average home, still made me feel like I'm in the twilight zone.
I'm in the swimming team, I only have to beat 1 person to get in the relay team.

The Grand Splashional

Well it started a little slowly for Jof which was something to do with Tequilas apparently. But overnight we'd caught another mouse, making it 3-0 to the mousetraps. We have now run out of Jof's home-made flapjacks which is a blow to future trapping because the little devils really appreciated her cooking.
Recently I have discovered the joys of the café at Sainsbury's which gets me out of doing the shopping. I took Jof this time for a slap-up fry-up and we were held up for so long that Bud came to collect us having completed his circuit and put the shopping in the car and we still hadn't been served. We were not amused.
But on her work night out last night, she did the counting-up of the bill at the restaurant so came home with £30 more than she started with, even though she'd bought drinks and stuff. This creative accounting was a bonus for me as I got a Lego Star Wars attack platform with 4 minifigures and firing lasers.
Because it was actually sunny (and a hurricane is due to arrive on tits-up Tuesday) we cycled to the seafront to throw rocks. The unkind wind was very strong in our faces and we complained lots but Bud said be quiet. Having inspected the debris thrown up by the tide we were pushed back to Canoe Lake by the kind wind. I climbed a big tree and pretended to be a narcoleptic Ocelot which really takes me back, I can tell you. Jof and I had Magnum ice creams, for we deserve them.
Late in the day was the great Scout swim-athon, a try-out session for getting swimming badges and to see who could be in the teams to compete against the dreaded Scout group that the JoniBobs belong to. The parents have been going on about it for ages, and now is our chance to meet!
We swam. We dived. We messed about. Jof got bored and walked home and Bud tried to teach Ben to dive but he may be a bomber for some time yet. I got Badge #2 and I'm in the team! We weren't allowed pictures of kids in swimsuits so here's the pool which had been full of kids having a laugh just minutes before, honest. Bud forgot my 2 day-old swimming goggles and had to drive back to get them.

No Goats were harmed during the making of this post (Tank!)

On Thursday Jof said that she was going to work on Saturday. So even though she felt left out because we always do these major excursions when she's working and we never take her anywhere, we decided to do another day trip to a destination of my choice.
However in deference to her unreasonable demands, we deliberately chose a boys-only location of no interest to her, in this case the Tank Museum at Bovington Camp, Dorset. Football 'Arry had told us that he went there while having a holiday on the south coast so we had a decent recommendation.
Plus, it's almost all the way to Grandad's old house, but turning left at Bere Regis instead of right. So we left the house at 845 and got there 8 minutes after it had opened, a tradition for us.
The museum is located in the middle of a functioning army base, for the armoured division. Thus there are tanks left right and centre with warning signs on the highway about tanks crossing and tracks and obstacles visible through the trees.
Upon entry, we went through Trench Zone. This explains why we had to invent tanks, because every time we stuck our heads above the parapet, some bunch of German machine gunners shot us and so nobody was going anywhere and the war was a 500,000:500,000 score-draw and stalemate.
So we invented this trundling ironclad behemoth of terror with guns and tracks and roaring engines and to be fair most of them got stuck in shell holes and caught fire but the concept was born.
There was a big section on war horses which is where Great-Grandad started his military career back in good old 1914.
We saw the mock-ups of the trenches on both sides and the first tank and the Mark IV and the Tiger and the Panzers and the Chieftain and about 300 more. Once you've seen the first 50 they're just so many steel-armoured metal monsters but I liked the specialities de la maison:
* The one that isn't a gun, but a flamethrower
* The one that isn't a gun, but its own bridge
* The one that whips the ground with chains to explode mines
* The one with 5 turrets, all with guns
* The one that was the heaviest in the world
* The one that's gold-plated (for Shah of Iran)
and stuff.
Most were British. But some were Russian, German, Arabic, and South African. Many of them had sample shell casings with projectile attached sitting on ammo boxes alongside: we liked the 75mms and the 37mms because we've got some in our collection but we're yet to acquire a 120mm round.
For food we had a packed lunch outside on the Kuwait Arena where some army chaps demonstrated how to knock out an enemy machine gun emplacement using stealth, smoke grenades, a Scimitar and small arms fire, but due to budget cuts they didn't have the grenades, Scimitar or bullets so they hid behind a small mound and shouted BANG until the machine gunners were dead.
In school holidays they do rides around the arena in tracked heavy vehicles so when we come back (free pass within 1 year) we'll do it - only £3.
The shop is one of the main attractions for me but this time it nearly didn't work out. He offered the not-Lego Minesweeper and Rocket Launcher but I wanted the giant plastic tank with extendable 120mm gun. In the end I won but almost didn't. We also got special Tank Museum dark chocolate for my favourite mummy and a Kalashnikov bullet and a pen, because Jof always says we don't have enough pens that aren't green.
After 3 hours we left and tried to get back on the A31 east for home, but on the way to Bere Regis they'd moved the road and we didn't find it. It was nice to zoom along on those little 1-track roads you get behind Dorsetshire fields where it's only wide enough to get one goat down at a time (and then only if it's malnourished) but eventually we consulted a new invention called a map and regained the highway somewhere near Winterbourne Zelston, deep in the Ooo-Arr Hinterland.
We still had lots of time after our random unplanned polygonal detour so stopped off at Ringwood to check out their charity shops because we'd never been there before. Nice parish church, but no Roman numerals on the gravestones and no resident priest to ask if we could climb the clocktower.
Amazingly for October the sun came out so we played football in the park and Jof said she was going out with her work friends so it was Naughty Film Night all over again. Not that kind of naughty film, just the one where the age (15) might be slightly in excess of mine (8).

Living in a Town that Nobody sings about

Friday at last so I did some Lego and Jof phoned to say please pick up all the shopping I've done because I can't fit 17 empty shoeboxes on my bike.
Once she'd got home she revealed that they were for presents for the Orphanarium. We do this every Xmas and do present boxes for boys and girls but you can't include bangers or knives or tanks or soldier figurines or anything else to do with war or refugee trauma. It is my job to even up all the pressie-piles to make sure they don't get pressie-envy.
 But my homework was Roman Numerals. I'm quite good at them and Jof and I set each other numbers to decipher. The homework was to find de facto bona fide examples of Roman Numerals in situ, habeas corpus or in vitro.
Bud's idea was to go into one of our old churches and take pictures of those tombs in the floor. I have a picture of me standing on Ethelwulf or Caerdelfwulf or someone in Sherborne Abbey, and other 12th or 13th century places like Chichester Cathedral, Romsey Abbey and St George's Chapel (Windsor Castle) must be packed with them.
But Jof said why don't we look at some of our antique books. An old French one did the trick and turned out to be printed in 1748, not bad. But it has a secret, a bit like Tequila Mockingbird in the film "The Game". Ours doesn't have a Saturday night special pistol in it, though.
Then she found some lists of sub-clauses of legal documents detailing the second sale of our house in 1917, very chunky.

(Don't you) Step on my steel-toed Boots

Today was the much-vaunted chocolate show-off day. Thus from an hour before going-home time, parents various invaded our classrooms and we showed off the terrible no wonderful creations that have occupied our minds for the last half-a-term.
This included a chocolate box designed by each of us, a pile of demo sweeties and a wall full of Roald Dahl imagery.
I also brought my literacy book to the table and Bud mentioned my atrosh terib fupin' awful spelling a few times. My Religious Mania book remains empty, haven't recorded any spiritual studies yet.
In the afternoon we paid a dentist nothing at all to confirm that I do indeed have teeth. I did, however, show the ability to plan ahead using retrieved memories and forward planning, by requesting a cheese sandwich before the visit because you can't eat for an hour after the dentist paints the fluoride gel on your teeth.
Most of the evening I spent underlining how much I wanted all the items in the Lego Pr0n catalogue that came through the door, some are as much as £250 and plenty are £160. I have £17, so I kept having to drop really big hints about how much I want everything, and counting my coins loudly to see if I'd missed a £200 coin.

When you hear the Air Attack Warning ...

What a foggy start to the day! It was as if my brain was full of mist and murk. Normally you have to wait until you're a student for that.
Today was Ben day so we walked home babbling loudly about Lego cannons and grenades filled with crab guts and old men's willies that will fly into your victim's mouth when detonated. Some old dear walking the other way didn't know what to think.
Like last week, the Weatherguessers had predicted a washout for Wednesday Park but you have to give it the benefit of the doubt and we were right again.
Joined by an Erin and a bonus Beth, we played football and climbed and swung in the hanging basket with LittleMax and generally did all those things the Puddle Collective does.
But some background first. Both Ben and I had severely warned ErinsDad not to interfere in our game of football. He does keepy-uppy when the ball goes out of play and teases us and we got very angry last time. I warned Bud to not even kick it back into play, but to let us retrieve it and put it back in, for only we know whose throw it is.
Bob and Ben had a joint last warning to not get in a kicking-each-other-in-the-willy fight because we always have to go home when it happens. In the end, of course, everyone was absolutely fine apart from me with a tantrum and sulk-under-the-slide combo, when Erin tried to take my hat off during swinging basket time, slight over-reaction possibly. But then the predicted rain did arrive, and we declared it after 45 minutes or so, still worth it.
Back at mine, Ben and I set up for an epic Lego battle with a series of crack-bang magnificent men in their flying shooting drilling cannoning lasering machines.
But on the way in we found a Lego Xmas 2014 catalogue that had come through the door. So, for several minutes, 2 young men stood in a world of their own leafing through a glossy colour magazine with images of unattainable beauty and desire, going "Ooooargh, look at that" and "I'd like to get my hands on that, woof" etc.
Our actual battle was noisy and once he'd gone I had to clear up the debris of war, took me ages. On the wooden toybox by the window you can see the latest tower taking shape.

Delirium Tremendous

This morning there was a lamentable sleeping-in incident and I earned some afternoon TV for my part in getting us to the school gates on time in just 30 minutes. Maybe I'll ask for some Schrodinger's cake - you can have it and eat it, but you don't know if it's chocolate or carrot until you do.
Today I handed in my homework. While the Forum Moderator helped iron out the turtle-y cramp spelling, the rest of this cut-down version is mine.
Tom, who was a small boy adout 12 years old, most of the time he had spent with his friend Kelly. One day after school, Tom and Kelly had found old, dusty cave in the of a tall hill. The cave had been abandond for years and moss clung to the seeling and the walls were covered in slime.
Sounds like just my kind of place.
We learned Roman numerals. This will be useful for railway station clocks and working out how old a BBC programme is, but not for arithmetic.
We also had one of the regular visits from a priest who made us sing a really catchy song about breaking down strongholds with the infinite power of one of the gods, can't remember if he represented a red hat god or a blue hat god. But in the end even I was singing along, that's how they hook you in with their outlandish beliefs.
In music we actually got to use bows on our violins! Although I have been moved up to a viola. We still make a dreadful racket.
This novelty item is something Jof found at work. I didn't know there was any such thing, might be a surprise if I get it for, oooh, I don't know, a birthday or something.