We're off to see the Lizard

Today was the longed-for trip to Marwell Zoo, partially paid for by our antics at the School Fayre.
It was very hot so the coach was fun and sticky.
Some of us had been swapped between classes to split up the giggling troublemakers although I maintain that wasn't my fault.
We worked our way around the zoo trying to see the animals' willies and lots of us had cameras and Miss M said she was sad I wasn't in her class this time and she didn't have an official photographer.
There were zebras and meerkats and Oryx and buffalo and an endangered snow leopard and poisonous frogs and fish and plants in a hothouse and snakes and lizards and giraffes and penguins and flamingos and foxes and marsupials and an ant colony.
I tried to get videos of the meerkats but they move too quickly. At lunchtime all my food had re-cooked in the bag so it wasn't very nice.
In the shop I got a polished slice of geode and a squashed penny: but then in a heroic feat of selfless spending, I bought a Souvenir Penny Booklet (£5) which cleaned me out, but at least my squashed penny will have somewhere to live.
The bus trip back was extremely hot so I scooted home shirtless and hid in the lounge away from the sun. I needed pink medicine for my poor tired feet and was unchuffed to hear it was gymnastics day. But then I loved it anyway.

Small Man Syndrome

As of a few days ago, the council have started digging up the entire road network outside my house. Having stood around with clipboards and drawn patterns all over the pavements for miles in each direction, they have finally sent in the Polish workmen to do the actual work.
The bit I liked was when we got home today and they'd left a note through the door saying "As we previously told you ...". No, they didn't. But they were kind enough to say that the 6 weeks of digging, shunting and drilling (to replace the traffic lights) would only include 5 night shifts.
So today I am 9 1/2 which means measuring day. I was specifically promised that this time I'd break through the legal minimum height meaning I could ditch the child car seat. Sadly I grew only 2 mm this quarter-year so I must sit atop the plastic charabanc throne for another 3 months. It's not fair, all my mates are interfering with the ceiling fan.
Because it was such a nice day (and partially to escape the roadworks) we did 30 minutes in the park, extended when Owen T. Destroyer turned up and we played ball-tag until I banged my bonce evading a ball.
I'd only been on Klash Of Inappropriate Komedy for an hour or 2 when it was Cub Scouts time. I complained that I hadn't had my chocolate and stated that I wanted to give up Scouts as it was boring. For some reason this did not work and they thought it was because I was taken off the tablet, like when I said I wanted to give up gymnastics last week. I sulked all the way there on the bike, to the Rabbit Stones where Ben and the JBs and I used to eat fish and chips.

Anyway, Scouts was excellent, we hunted bugs and plants and played batbatbat mothmothmoth where 3 blindfolded bats chase walking moths who have to echo when you say bat and you have to tag them. I tagged "Fridge" Fraser because I could hear him walking through the grass. The guest teacher was actually a real biology teacher and he gave us pencils from his college.
We played hunt the cleverly-concealed bits of wool of various colours (to demonstrate camouflage) and I was the winner with 14 bits but my group came last because everyone else was pants.

Wall to Wall Filet Minions

In a change to our normal Sunday schedule, we all met in my room at 0900. Things have been speeding out of control at the Renty house so Bud went to paint it while Jof and I went to choose carpets. The smell of cat wee is most resilient so the current carpets have to go.
There were far too many choices, sometimes you just need it to be like LIDL where you get a cheap one and an expensive one and not 37 different makes with swatch books and colour coded charts and options to have it blessed by the Dalai Lama or have a traditional Cherokee Sundance ritual performed on it.
In the end we chose some suitably dull functional carpets and I was reminded of a floorcovering company in Ooo-Arr Land who were caller Walter Wall Carpets.
But lashing out loads of money just didn't cut it for me and I got Jof to agree to a cinema trip. Minions is now out and was the talk of the swingpark yesterday. OK, it was very busy in Gunwharf but they have 4 screens and it was starting practically every 15 minutes so it wasn't long before we were getting squashed botties and being deafened by loads of Blatverts (like Blipverts but very loud and blatty) that stretched the very fabric of space-time in their banality and went on for ages.
The film is very funny and the Minions aren't very clever but the good old Queen kicked some butt and drank pints of real ale in a pub, as she so often does.
Afterwards we had food at Frankie and Benny's place and Jof had to send her broccoli back because she doesn't like it raw.

Madness at Tiggleton Corner

Jof went to work today so I took my time and got up with a 9 in it. I proceeded to watch Youtubes of Minecrafters with their bottoms on fire shooting each other. He got up at 1030 which was good considering I have to be at the Theatre for 1130 so it was Don't Panic Mr Mainwaring With Nobs On, we scuttled around putting up laundry and hoovering toast and I made it to acting with 12 minutes to spare, not bad.
In acting we had yet another new teacher and we mostly played games like ZipZap and Woops, The Teacher's Lost His Keys and Sitting/Standing/Lying in the doctor's waiting room. I played an old man who'd swallowed a nail and perforated a lung, and a boy played the incredible Hulk who had lost a hand and some blood in a fight with a supervillain.
Then we needed lunch so in an obvious move we drove to Southampton in the bright sunshine to investigate a new park. 'The Common' is a large green enclosure with forests, lakes, meadows and streams right in the middle of Southampton.
Searches on Google Earth had hinted at a splashpark, playpark and lots of bike paths. Our mission was to assess the threat to our freedom, eat lunch in 'The Cowherds' country pub and generally plan for an invasion. Even as we approached we could see millions of little people in the splashpark so once we'd ordered food I went off incognito on a scouting mission.
The kiddies menu in the pub had some colouring-in pictures of happy rabbits and hedgehogs and sunflowers so I added bombs and the soldier out of Predator with a mini-gun and a Harrier with missiles and the trees were on fire and a meteorite was coming in to land. We left it for the social services to find.
The meal was excellent and so was the splashpark. It's deeper than usual and has added fountains and some zorbing balls and we hit the swing park which has a roundabout, castellated climbing frame with slides, and a curious isolated double-L-shaped asphalted road system like an outback airstrip which was good for bikes and skateboards.
Nearby we could see a tempting ice cream van so I got a choc dip cone and it was very tall with added quick-set choc sauce and we went to the duck pond and there were a few ducks, millions of pigeons and seagulls, and a family of swans with 4 cygnets. I fed them some crunched-up cone off my ice cream and Bud kicked a pigeon.
We saw rats in the bushes and a chap juggling skittles in the giant meadow and there was a fallen oak tree which was ace for climbing. I climbed higher and higher and had to be slightly rescued and didn't fall into the blackberry bushes hardly at all.
We never got as far as the boating lake or the ornamental lake or the wildlife centre but we did see a sign saying protect our hedge-pigs so we called it Tiggleton Corner. Many people were having barbecues and half a dozen medieval warriors were having a swordfight under the mature oak trees by the long tree-lined avenue but when you're me, you get used to temporal distortions and flanges in the fabric of reality. A girl with pretty eyes and I twizzled the roundabout so fast, a small boy fell out, oh dear.
We will return to this hallowed spot one day with bicycles and swimming costumes.
I bought some fruit shoots at the bar and we drove home where Jof was tired so I elected to watch 'The Running Man' because it's all about acting. And chopping, and shooting, and electrocuting ... Jof finally put me to bed at 11 thirty-something, but who's counting..

Feeling the Fresh air on my Balls

In PE today we did juggling again. Now, I missed last week's lesson so I am a ball behind everybody else, Grace can juggle 5 balls with impunity but I can only keep 2 balls in the air. Apparently Nanna tried to teach Jof how to handle balls but she never got the hang of it and Bud never played with balls at all.
Personally I reckon that the skill would be another feather in my cap, like doing the Eric Morecambe catching-the-imaginary-object-in-a-paper-bag trick, or doing cartwheels. At supper I threatened to juggle the doughballs.
So, it is the end of another hard week, we all need some rest. Sadly Jof has to work tomorrow and I've got acting, but with luck we'll all sleep soundly.
In other news, the deputy head-teacher of a local school wants to rent our renty house so we'd better finish painting it pronto, possibly with the periodic table on the wall.
And Jof's hard work has been recognised again. She has been awarded a "Most Valuable Person" award and invited to a swanky lunch at a posh hotel in the New Forest, nice to be noticed.
I did my homework early. Bud mentioned in passing that I'd got so much of it wrong I had to do it again, the crossings-out and stuff made it truly illegible...
Recently I asked Grandad if he could make duck noises, he said why, I told him Bud had said 'when Grandad croaks, we'll be rich.'

Of Ducks and Munchkins

Well, what a day! Jof has roped us in to her new hobby which is bossing people around for the school charity. We get used as free labour during school events such as winter fairs, summer fayres, and any other fair they may invent. First, as newbies, we started on a trestle table selling air fresheners, gloves and scarves (yes) that they had found in an understairs cupboard that had been bricked up and forgotten about since 1977.
Then, because we sold out due to our joyous sales patter, we were promoted at the next event to "Cake Stall Operatives" where we again sold so much we ran out of both cakes and paper plates.
This time, the Summer Fayre saw us manning the 'Hook-a-duck' attraction which is basically a small paddling pool, ten yellow plastic ducks with hooks up their bottoms, and 2 sticks with hooks on the end.
Our official guidance from the event organisers was minimal at best, make it up as you go along, they said, so we charged 10p a go, win a sweet of your choice from the paper bag whenever you successfully hook a duck, we don't care what number is painted on its underside.
It was busy. It was very busy. It was ages until it was quiet enough for me to go and spend some of my own money on the 'Higher or Lower' card game, buy cake or buy a raffle ticket. Most kids spent 10p with us but several wanted 2, 3 or 4 concurrent goes and at one point we had a massive queue and 2 contestants battling it out penalty-style, having both paid 50p. Some people did it easily. Some people made a meal of it and needed help, some gave up.
We had to get our prize bag refilled 4 times and by the time the raffle prizes were being announced, we were mentally drained (drips only) and had taken £15.30 and hooked 153 ducks! It must be a record. Jen cooled off in the pool and little kiddies joined her, it is a paddling pool after all. Jof sold all of her Jarbola tickets and had to stay behind for 90 minutes to clear up. We scooted home and I was exceedingly grubby so showered and sat naked on the sofa reading a book I'd bought for 5p.
But we don't want to leave it there, do we, children? Oh no, we don't. So we drove to the King's Theatre to see the Wizard of Oz played by the Kings Youth, which is effectively my opposition. My theatre group had block-booked some cut-price seats in the stalls near Stanley from Scouts and Bud took a seat in the dress circle above to show willing.
Above the dress circle is the upper circle and above that, the gallery (or gods). The inside of the theatre is very swish with gilded mouldings and plaster cupids and curlicues and velvet curtains with gold tassels and little binoculars you can hire for £1.
The production started in black and white and a chap in the dugout played many of the right notes on the piano. Dorothy sang in key very well and Toto was a teddy bear and she was generally a spoilt brat. The stagehands had a few sticky moments especially when the curtain fell on them and the witch dropped her hat twice and it was great. I liked the noises off and the projection of a plughole vortex on the OHP representing the twister/hallucination.
The Munchkins were numerous (and one of them was Poppy) and danced in formation apart from the smallest who toyed distractedly with her head-mike until she came alive and delivered 4 lines perfectly. There were a few uncomfortable silences not including the Vicked Vitch of the Vest who was excruciatingly loud.
In the poppy field scene, Poppy was poppy #3 stage left, instead of poppy #1, missed a trick there. Fortunately, all the way through there was a 2 year-old girl right behind me who kept saying "Wossee doo-in? Whyza tree dun that?" etc very loudly until she demanded to go home when the lion appeared, but this was fortunately offset by some mature ladies on the other side who discussed Co-op vouchers and the difficulty of getting to Bournemouth airport.
In the interval we found the bar and loaded up on fruit shoot and Pringles and discovered the entire Poppy family sitting 2 rows from my position. Part 2 had some very long dance numbers of unknown purpose and lengthy piano solos while scenes and costumes were changed. Pops appeared as a third character with green lipstick and the Wizard himself was a giant child's face projected onto a screen with a Goa'Uld voice-changer from Stargate. He had a couple of problems handing out the goodies at the end not helped by howl-rounds on the actor mics but I loved it all.
The youth group is very good and I am torn between stage-fright and thinking I could do better. Bedtime was 10pm on the nose. In other news, today we bought a personalised numberplate, in my honour. Golly Gosh, life is dull.

"Shiver me Timbres" said the Philatelical Pirate

Brought home the proof for the class photo today. You don't get the traditional formulaic whole-school-on-trestle-tables event any more, this modern lark is all tomfoolery, arms round each other and mini-groups lounging in a variety of easy-going poses.
I also brought home a Ben and we watched some New Simpsons before heading off to the park.
No JBs today, but many known faces were there and we played a bit of ball tag but football attracted Ben away from us so LittleMax and I went to the climbing tree and when he had to go, Ben swapped with him.
We spied on the road and the football players and bombed them with our blind bombs and smoke bombs and laser eyes and AK47s for when you absolutely have to kill everyone in the park. It is the way of things. I used the 3-point laser-sighting from Predator to paint targets on the dog-walkers and Ben cleared the plain in 20 minutes with his Gatling (King Solomon's Mines). Thus the little leaks between realities and different universes begin ...

Sawing on my Vile Din

Today was the Violin concert that we have been practising for all term. Sadly I told Jof that I wouldn't be performing in it, despite it being compulsory for every child, so Jof didn't take the camera.
Let this be a lesson to you all never to believe anything a child says. Jof came to the concert and sat right in front of me but I didn't see her because I had my head permanently turned to one side as I was chatting the whole way through, and playing with the violin box etc. You will all have to believe that the vile din made by 30 kids (classes took turns) sawing on cheap violins was akin to the chap in Jaws who drags his fingers down a blackboard and says I'll catch your shark.
On the way to gymnastics we saw people loitering on roundabouts and junctions wearing outsized franchise pizza boxes advertising the latest offer. This has become the latest threat, taking over from 'Didn't pay attention at school? They'll always need street sweepers...'
At gym my recently broken finger only twinged slightly when I did overhead-backwards-support-bridge-lift, and I spent the whole way home inventing a new face with big lips.

Offsprung Durch Technik

Today I really didn't want to get up. To be fair, I usually don't want to get up but today I made a special point of it.
In school today we did another paragraph on how my animal-of-your-choice got his special power. And that's funny, because I have a special power, which is coconuts. On Saturday at the Scout stall at the Village Fayre, I had 2 goes at the coconut shy (6 undersized cricket balls) and got 4 coconuts.
I might get barred next time or told to stand in Honolulu to throw the balls, in which case I might as well pick my own luvverly bunch of coconuts.
Now, we know from the Hitchhiker's Guide that the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys. But I wielded the far more efficient 2 1/2 pound lump hammer and on strike #1, the hard outer shell of Nut #1 split asunder, spilling its lifeblood all over the garage floor, which we had to wipe up.
We saved a mere driblet of coconut milk and he made me a bowl of the white lumps from inside but in an oleaginous and high-calorie dollop of irony, I hated both. I had to tell the Scoutmaster.
In Scouts we hunted for invertebrates in the churchyard, possibly practising for survival after the Zombie Apocalypse. We found predominantly snails, but also some woodlice, an earwig and a crowbar hidden in the hedge, which was confiscated even though it clearly didn't have a backbone.

Wrong Ducking Colour

Last night when I went to bed it was today. Today it was still today but it felt more difficult, with a very late start. I got shirty when Jof kept making me do things like go shopping and actually help, so I sulked a bit until pizza was made for me.
Bud painted the renty house because painting is quiet, soothing, and does not require much brain power. So when we enquired about progress, we found he'd put Magnolia in the dining room (deep purple, might need 3 coats) instead of Duck Egg, so we told him off and I destroyed the back step with a pickaxe head and we're all very tired and stupid. These Puddle Barbecues always seem like a good idea, perhaps I'm just getting old.
I spent most of my free time watching Klash-of-Klans comedy channel which is very funny but rude.

Not Shy about Coconuts

Following Tuna-pasta for breakfast, I cycled to the theatre for my acting lesson. I am crippled by shyness which leaves me unable to talk above a whisper or show my face in public, and the nice Thespians (from the planet Thesp) are slowly but surely bringing me out of my reinforced shell.
This one was completely different and we learned new ways of expressing ourselves and made up stories about a man from Scotland and some cats destroying a fruit and veg stall.
On the way home I missed the slope on the pavement, fell off my bike and broke one of my 2 bells.

Then we cycled to the fair on the field by the Mad Hospital. This annual event is twee and local with many stalls in favour of cat protection, hedgehog rescue and mental health charities.
We toured the field and I spotted many of my school friends and Scout buddies and then we saw the coconut stall, run by my Scout leader. Last year I cracked a coconut and they still talk about it so we both had a go, Bud got one coconut and I got 2.
I stuck 2 stickers on a diorama of a mountain (treasure hunt) and played football with my friends and went on the super-hero bouncy castle with George who was so bouncy we started kicking Spiderman in the willocks and then George had some bounce left over so went and won the sack race.

The fire engine actually left on an emergency call so I had another go at the coconuts and got 2 more, 5 hairy nuts is not a bad haul, he said I still have to eat them all. On the way home I accidentally put my brakes on while thinking about something else and fell off my bike again, crunching my willocks with the handlebar.
Then Ben said come round for a BBQ. Erin was there and we played hide'n'seek on the common, danced to music and made youtube videos. It was all totally epic. We had to walk home and I got to bed at 1252, which was tomorrow!

Kontakt

Today was an epic day, mathematically. I got 141/144 on my times-table test, my best ever. But Bud said almost good enough and still not as good as Ben, then, what a downer.
Stanley gave me the name of a newer, better Klan to join (I have to join a new Klan at least once a day) and I rushed home only to be told that I had no access to any screen whatsoever due to lying last night.
He'd asked me had I done my teeth and I said yes, but the bone-dry toothbrush said no, so the divine hand of retribution lightly caressed my buttocks by way of banning me from KlansKlash, Minecraft, X-box, Minecraft videos and the TV. It's not like it was anything important, I hear politicians lie all the time.
Jof gave us a job which was to analyse and fix the error stopping the ground floor lights working in the Renty house. I climbed the ladder, opened the fuse cupboard door, flipped the RCD and hey bleedin' presto, all the lights came on again and I was finished after about 12 seconds including getting the ladder from upstairs. All I had to do was to collect my £65 callout fee and I was outta there ...

See a Penny

At school today we had to write a new Rudyard Kipling 'How So' story about an animal of our choice, and how it got its special power. I chose the leopard and how it got its speed, not from a shifty chap on the street corner.
My leopard was slow and had races against a tortoise for exercise. Then one day the rainforest volcano went off and he was so scared he ran for his life and got his speed but the tortoise got fried.
Anyway, Thursday is a day off for me so I had planned to join a new Klan because that's what I do every day, fickle whatsisname.
But really it's because I couldn't find Sam's one because about a million Klans are called the Invulnerables or the Unacceptables or the Unstoppables and with the inventive spelling of a 9 year-old in a state school, you've just got no chance. And I didn't qualify to join Ben's Klan due to insufficient trophies.
But to justify our own existence we had to do some more painting in the Renty house because there are some people who want to rent it already and we haven't even cleaned the carpets. I Minecrafted while he did an hour slapping on "Light Drizzle" or "Manchester Morning" paint in Bed 3 and then Jof got home and said look what I found in the street when I was cycling home from work, a bit of litter cluttering up the place so I tidied it into my handbag.
And we saw that it was good. And due to the "See a penny, pick it up and all day long you'll have good luck" rumour, we thought we'd better cover our bases so we got a lottery ticket each, mine designed around Minecraft numbers and his around brass shell cases.

I can see Jesus' Peanuts

Jars have started to arrive at school for the Jarbola. This is the stall for the school Fayre that Jof has been put in charge of, so she has kicked butt and stuck her oar in and put a cat amongst the pigeons to make it a success.
The 'Jarbola' is a tombola where all the prizes are jam jars full of trinkets and small delights for little people such as Lego bricks, sweeties, hair bands and all those other indispensable items. You never know whether you're going to get a 25p jar of lemon curd from Walmart's 'Not Quite' range or a 75 Sovereign flagon of Harrods' Java coffee. They came to me and we had to carry them home, despite it saying leave them at reception.
So we took Ben home as usual but not before he'd stood in reception waiting to get seen for so long that the kung-fu caretaker had locked the gate. We told him about the time we had to gain entry to a granny's house after she locked herself out and so we spent the journey home comparing what guns to stealthily open doors with.
Also we have been learning about tortoises at school and Miss M brought her pet Torty in to show us and it pooed and weed on the table so Ben told me about when his gerbil got a carrot stuck up its bum and the vet had to do a colonoscopy and it was the funniest thing I'd met since the Terminator threw the guy onto the cooker and I nearly did a Torty in my pants I laughed so much.
The park was very well attended with a bonus Erin and Owen the Destroyer and a guy I'd met at Scout camp and Edward who's ditched his first girlfriend when she turned 5 and LittleMax and the JBs.
I imprisoned LittleMax for murdering me because he's the only bloke smaller than me and I had to re-incarcerate him at least twice and we all had snacks, including a picnic up the pyramid of ropes.
And yet again the giant tennis ball that cost us less than £5 came into its own as we occupied all 4 swings and the 2 or 3 leftover people were ball-shooters.
We all rotated strike with various levels of generosity and the idea is, 4 people swing frantically and loudly ask for the ball and the 2 shooters try to give them the ball at the right height for the swinger to kick. Of course we're all pretty bad but there are at least 4 professional footballers in our team including Erin so if anybody hits it, it goes miles but it's impossible to control your swing. So one said give me the ball for I am your holy demon and the next guy said no, give me the ball for I am jesus and I command you and it just went on. We leant backwards, raised our eyes heavenwards and said I can see jesus' peanuts and we traded stories of how the sky rained peanuts and it's no worse than the legend of Cronos, just created by kids instead of bearded mystics with a load of mushrooms and lotus flowers.
This game went on for so long we left at ten past 6. It was very loud.

Critical Mass: Too Much Grass

A pretty good day at school. Jof accompanied me on a whistle-stop tour of the classrooms and we doled out the little flyers for the Jarbola stall at the upcoming Summer Fayre. Jof is a member of the Friends-of-the-School so she babbles with the committee and spent almost the whole day nagging, sorry, cajoling people into sticking up the flyers and getting involved in the Fayre-type activities.
Some RAF research fellows came to teach us science. They demonstrated a musical instrument based on EM fields that was invented to detect submarines and they lit a gas in a pipe and played music under it so the flame on top wobbled to the beat. I liked Uptown Funk and I definitely heard one of the teachers saying Oh no not funking uptowns again.
Then I heard about yet another new Klash-of-Klans group I want to join, it's one a day now, I can give it up anytime, honest.
So as soon as I got home, that's what I did. You can look up the names of the available Klans and Sam had written down his Klansman name and I looked and looked but his spelling was quite inventive and I think he did it phonetically as opposed to correctly. So I couldn't find it, and I was in a mood.
Then Bud said we have to go and paint more in the Renty house. I did not want to do this. So he said as you're still not doing gymnastics because you broke your finger, let's do a bike ride up to the common to see if we can find those conker trees we planted.
I did not want to do this either, and that's when the Huffalo appeared. The Huffalo is my magical alter-ego who strikes when I am in a huff, bate, strop, sulk, miff or plain old Whinge-a-thon. My bate did not abate.
So I had to go anyway and on the road we met Elizabeth but I did not want to talk. Then we met Owen the Destroyer and Stanley who has an attachment on his bike that acts as a ratchet with pretend exhaust pipe and goes R-r-r-r-r-r when you ride along. Bud said does that not get annoying, and Stanley said funny, that's what my Dad says.
On the common it was full of grass taller than me and I got lost with the help of the Huffalo and we didn't find any conker trees but got very itchy eyes so went straight to the Renty house, which was what I wanted to do all along, honest.
So I sat facing the wall until I was given a job, which was to remove the radiator so we could paint the bit behind it that you can't see, because of the radiator. So we took it off and painted a special message there, can you see it?
I cheered up after that and Jof got chocolate and that always banishes the Huffalo. We discussed which rooms we need to paint and it looks like all of them.

The Son over the Yardarm

Today in school we finally did the mathematics challenge as issued by Grandad. The teacher didn't follow all the instructions so some of the numbers chosen by my colleagues didn't work, and we might have to try again. Grandad says the proof is a degree-level treatise so we shall have to see how well our teacher does.

We exhibited our boats this afternoon but mine wasn't good enough to get onto the top tables in the assembly hall, don't see why, it just screams catamaran to me.
I am changing Klans again. Erin says I never stay anywhere long, but that's just because I can always see a better Klan elsewhere! I'm trying to improve my Level 5 Town Hall but it's difficult when you don't have an enchanted Sink Plunger OR £750,000.
The council workmen have been painting the climbing frames in the park so we went to investigate and have a climb. They are much brighter, but also more slippery due to the new paint, that's why I slipped off the monkey bars, honest.
At Scouts they had a Table-of-Tribute (same after every camp) where all the forgotten clothing and cutlery etc is displayed for the owners to reclaim. I won my pyjama bottoms and my hoodie. We went into the park to hunt for leaves of different shapes. Soon we'll visit Ben's Bumpy Paths and try to find the conker trees we planted.

The Biggest Bath in the World

Today we played Pink Fluffy Ponies which is basically the hunger games but we weren't allowed to call it that or British Bulldogs so we ended up with PFP.
At camp I got 3 cheers for being an epic wood collector and the gazebo tent blew over in the wind. We actually left 2 large boxes of wood for the next Scout group to visit the site, still wrapped in their plastic sheeting against the weather.
Our cauldron was used twice, for soup and pasta, and Jof came to pick me up so she got a big hug and a tour of the forest. At home I got straight onto Klash-of-Klans and harvested all my elixir and had tired feet. It's good to be home. When I got undressed for a bath I really needed, leaves fell out of my clothes and everything in my laundry bag went for giant boil-wash. I played Cops'n'Crims on Minecraft and ate oodles of noodles. Here's one of me in the cauldron, why not.

Out Of Office

Thank you for reading this page. Your views are important to me. But I am currently in a field in Hampshire learning archery with the Scouts, burning beavers on the bonfire, and generally camping around, nice day for it. I will get back to you as soon as I return.
Meanwhile, my Cyber-Klan is probably being attacked as I speak, but hopefully my Level 3 Hedgehog Sanctuary will be enchanted and my Level 4 Bus Shelter will have nobs on.

The Naked Rambler: Baptism of Fire

At last! I have been waiting for a Scout camp for 2 years, having had to miss the last one due to badly placed holidays. 2 years ago, I was a Beaver Scout and only got one night, this time I'm older so get 2.
Last night I put on my giant rucksack (a freebie from Bud's work) to see how well it fitted, and it's got 78 pockets and 2 straps across the front and if you looked closely you could see 2 sacks because I was naked at the time, and Jof laughed because the Naked Rambler™ himself appeared (naked) in court again this week appealing against his conviction for naked rambling.
So here I am reconstructing the event but with extra clothes. Every last pocket was filled and I could hardly stand up. I set off some upgrades in Klash-of-Klans knowing I wouldn't be able to visit my cyber-village for 2 days, pigged out on scampi and said goodbye to a tearful Jof.
The WeatherGuessers have been predicting a severely stormy end to the warm weather and altering their "Best Guesses" every forecast, and this screenshot was the latest attempt this afternoon. It didn't look good, with big spludges of nastiness right on top of me.
We sped along the motorway noticing that the eastbound carriageway was totally blocked, and made it to the camp 25 minutes before we were invited, but that was OK as we had to deliver even more wood. The Camp Leader was very pleased with the vast golden brick of goodness we'd delivered yesterday so we added to it as only true pyromaniacs can.
The new toilet tents and the new gazebo were being put up in advance of the expected monsoon (with added godly wrath and lightning) so at 2 minutes past 6, I was officially handed over to the care of the Worldwide Scouting Movement and he drove home over the hill to avoid dreaded traffic jams on the motorway. I volunteered and was put to work erecting tents, for scouting is all about teamwork and doing your best.
What are my parents going to do without me for 2 days? How will they cope with the silence, undisturbed sleep and lack of proffered insights?