A Bridge too Far

They'd persuaded me to reset my alarm clock to 730, no real sense in getting up at 0700. So I was fully rested, and today we jockeyed for position in the maths tables, everyone trying to rise up the arithmetic rankings. It's not like previous years where you have 10 minutes to answer 2 questions, it's 2 minutes to answer 10 questions, and a complete mental reformat and reset to a higher brain speed.

Our topic is homelessness so we all made up some questions based on the visit by a local charity and a tame homeless person they'd brought along. But there are only so many questions in our imaginations. So just before going-home time, all the parents were invited into the playground to be guinea-pig survey drones and we all circulated and posed questions to these members of the public. Of course, top of the list was Do you like homelessness Yes/No which was a trifle obvious but then we nipped inside and obtained a couple of biscuits for our trouble.

I have been busted for non-conformity. Apparently, black school trousers are simply not good enough, they have to be grey. So after school we went to Giant Tesco who had mostly run out of trousers but we got what we think is enough (although they came up on the till receipt as "Toddler Girl C") and went to collect wood.

All Scout camps require wood for the singalong fire so we targeted a nearby house that had a stack outside and that was it for tasks until my scheduled phone call to Grandad. He likes long walks in the countryside near his place and recently took a long walk along the river, crossing a ditch by means of a decrepit bridge with grabbing-post on one side. Unfortunately on the return journey he couldn't reach the grab-post and fell in.

It wouldn't be too bad apart from losing his car keys which meant a couple of taxis and the spare set, because even though he voluntarily re-immersed himself in the babbling brook, he couldn't find them. O the turmoil of life when you're 87. He taught me about the Great Fire of London. I didn't know the date, having only previously climbed the Monument and done the Fire as a school project. I didn't know that William came over in 1066, either, but it doesn't matter, because when I grow up, I'll be an actor, not a calendar.