Skippers, Movers and Shakers

Well, this time I didn't have to wear school uniform on a non-uniform day.

First, we got the bus to the inner-city school where we sat and learned about the beat and clapped along to the rhythm of various well-known soft rock ballads such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and then we went outside for break.

This was epic because they have a much better playground than us with a tennis court in it (although I made the mistake of describing it as a f***ing tennis court) and an obstacle course and a 4-floor wooden climbing hut with an 8-loop curly slide coming down from the top. We all loved that.

But then we had to do our performance and we did individual demonstrations and then a combined effort. First, the trianglers tinged. Then the shakers shook. I was a shaker but this was a seated performance so my options for artistic dance interpretations were limited. Then the drummers banged. Then the strigilators scratched. It was deafening.

The teacher blew his whistle (well, we could see him kissing one and going pink, but we couldn't hear it over the infernal cacophony) and they gradually toured the class shutting down the noisier kids until we were all silent, minutes later. Child C broke his own drum.

Then some bright spark dropped his bangstick onto his drum and we took that as a sign to restart and we all banged and scraped and tinged and shook all over again.

Back at our own school we did skipping for Sport Relief, as many skips as you can manage in a minute. Caitlin did 111 but I only managed 8, because timing your jump right is tricky for a first-time skipper. But I got 2 certificates, one for effort and concentration during swimming and one for effort solving maths problems with clear reasoning! Maybe I won't have to be a roadsweeper when I grow up. My swimming teacher says I can move up to Silver Hat as soon as I increase my lung capacity. My plan is to breathe heavily for a while, I know there's this thing called running but I'm having no part of it. Later we had a chocolate platter to die for, let's hope I don't get heart disease.