Vingt-et-un Detentions

Golly gosh, some people can be horrible. We were playing Mathematical Pac-man and the teacher asked a question and the answer was 21. One of my co-conspirators answered the question correctly, which (in the game) gives him a chance to knock other players off. But, because he meight possibly have a teensy-veensy bit of en eccent, half the class laughed at him and said "Tventy-vun" in a variety of vowel-mangling accents like when the whole chimp troupe goes off screeching all at once.

Well, the teacher totally went off on one and all the miscreants were kept inside all break and they could only sit and stare at the wall, without even a book to stave off the boredom.

I don't yet have a fancy-dress costume for the new years' eve party and in the past I was an epic Terminator so I donned my balaclava and we drove to Southsea to buy a leather jacket. A charity shop had one that was only slightly too big and it was only a tenner so Bob's your second cousin. We were due to buy a light fitting for the dining room but traffic was building and I wanted to buy Pokémon cards so we set off an hour early for gymnastics, to go via Toys'R'us, which is where Ben said he gets his fix, sorry, his cards.

Straight away the roads were jammed. It was immediately clear we weren't going to make Toys, let alone the light fitting shop so we joined the queue, which was static.

It's lucky I spent 5 years as a Cabbie after leaving the Air Force, because I know all the unused domestic roads through the north end of the island. After some creative driving, we popped out 40 yards away from the Gym road, and upstream, so we could float down towards it, without annoying any of the static drivers. By then, the crowds waiting at bus stops were spilling out onto the pavement and some cars were running out of petrol in the queues for the petrol stations. I remember the fuel crisis a few years back when the newspapers said fuel was running out, but it turned out to be caused by all the cars filling up because they thought fuel was running out. And the time of the Great Cold, when cars were abandoned on the motorway, and the time of the Visit from Southampton Football Club, when our fans decided to trash the city.

Turns out, a woman had been found dead on the motorway which had totally clogged the whole area. What a terrible place to keep a body. Do I keep my dead bodies there? Not on your Nibelungen. That's what the chest freezer in the garage is for. Anyway, because of Mrs Stiff the whole island was locked down and I was the only gymnast to turn up for my session, and as I was waiting to go in, someone from the previous session finally made it, 4 minutes before the end. Gradually, up to 3 others arrived and we trampolined, played in the tractor inner tube and generally messed around on all the fun kit and I was sorry to leave.

By then, Corpserella had obviously gone to a better place and the traffic was moving so we employed further creative driving techniques to reach Toys'R'us and it was deserted. It closes at 10pm, for those more desperate kids. They didn't seem to have the promised 10-card packs for £3 but there were a few bumper tins with complicated selections. I got the smallest tin and had 2 duplicate cards in the 2 packs contained therein. You've got to start somewhere.