What goes in the Classroom ...

Today was an epic Friday in which the deadline for the Stop-motion Olympiad project clanged shut and we reviewed the entries.

Out of the 6 or so groups, our effort was deemed the best. Other, less competent groups failed to employ a gaffer and we saw various schoolboy errors. In one, the camera angle was too high and we could see the teacher's head over the set. In another, a weightlifter whose arm was supposed to move upwards lost his arm completely for several frames and in another, giant human fingers appear from out-of-shot heaven and hold the character's head steady.

Then we started puberty. It's one of those things you have to go through whether you want to or not, although we worry that at least 2 of our compadres will not make it. They giggle at the slightest mention of body hair or DNA transfer so they're on severe warnings not to giggle at willies or else, Rule #1 is to not giggle at anything, however hairy.

We are also under strict wotsits to keep totally schtum about the whole affair outside the classroom. It is said that if somebody as young as a Year 4 was to hear about vaginas they would explode in a cloud of purple smoke, so that's Rule #2.

Of course, puberty itself used to be delayed until 17 or so due to poor diets but today, it's different. One of my friends already has a thin line of bristles under his nose like those moustaches you had if you were a 2nd Lieutenant in the First World War, and there has been an outbreak of er, girliebumps amongst the better-nourished members of the year. I myself have the odd period of unexplained anger, possibly a hint of things to come.

A new Gin Palace has opened up nearby so the PuddleMummies went to perform an undercover inspection, a perfectly reasonable scientific fact-finding endeavour. So that left us chaps with Film Night, for which we saw 'Love Actually' as part of my acting training. There were no guns or bombs or aliens at all. Jof didn't come home until tomorrow.