Laser Soldiery @ the May Unfayre 2016

Even though I was still reading at 2330 last night, I was up for 0730 to play Minecraft. But because I'd not done as I was told and read in bed for only 5 minutes last night (instead of the 45 I chose to take), he said do a homework before you get on a screen.

I chose the time-related questionnaire which took me about 2 1/2 minutes (150 seconds) including sticking it into my homework book, so he made me do the bonus Numeracy 3 as well. Outside we could see the Early Morning Traffic Warden bringing joy to people's lives with his brightly coloured £30 fines for parking in a Monday-to-Saturday zone, even though it's clearly Bank Holiday Monday. We moved the car, and then noted later that he failed to come back and dispense tickety joy to the 10 cars in the 1 Hour Zone.

Jof kindly offered to drive me to the Fayre as a means of avoiding having to actually attend so we got there really early and went up and down each aisle of the Tacky-a-thon checking out all the stalls and recently-invented niche charities and aromatic fatty-substances wagons.

As you get older, your tastes and requirements change so the traditional merry-go-rounds with the single-seater fire engines and ambulances with the button you can press to make it go tweetle even louder go out of fashion. I also no longer wanted anything to do with the trampolines or the fun bus but we marked down the plate-smashing stall for future use and left a radar beacon on the AK-47-everyone's-a-winner tent.

I met Bradley (from my class) in the Marines Cadets, our Group Scout Leader, the guy from the Co-Op, Fridge Fraser from my old swimming group, and 3 others.

I got 5 Minecraft figurines but no Lego. I won a bottle of wine on the Tombola but didn't want to take penalties. I won a Katana sword but didn't want any sweeties. This is because I listened to the Dentist and desperately needed some worthless weaponry for the Puddle-Army competition on the playing field after the MAIN EVENT.

All year we look forward to Laser Soldiery because it is awesome in the extreme and we love it, regardless of actual ability. Eventually we all gathered under the Tree of Life for the Great Reckoning but not before we'd smashed some plates and won some plastic guns and had a burger and stroked the unreasonably obese rabbits. If you spend £3 on plate-smashing (with an option to kill Hitler) you get a Free French Resistance Fighter dolly, so we got 3.

The Somerstown Soap Dodgers were out in force, as were the Fratton Tattoo Appreciation Society, the Screaming Dribbling Toddler's Brigade, the Tipner Toothless Crew, allied with the Copnor Leather-Bikers and the Not-Quite-Human Gang of No Fixed Abode.

But we avoided the children killing each other with silly string and shot each other to bits in the Army Section and then gradually wandered off to the Rose in June Pub (as per tradition) although I'd got myself a self-inflicted huff which dissipated when Ben and I destroyed our rifles to see how small we could make them while they still went *Rattle* when you pulled the trigger. With extensive reverse engineering we found you could remove the entire gun, leaving only the trigger mechanism, so we tried to light the Free French Flic Poupee with the sparker and failed, but that kept us busy all the way home.

Some years go well, some don't. This year had all the ingredients, but somehow the spark was missing. Come back, Bobert, and associated sunshine. Nobody went on the horses.