Laugh Long and Prosper

While the educational aspects of school are an important part of my life, so often it is the extra-curricular activities that stick in the mind.

Today we practised our singing, happy in the knowledge that after tomorrow, we shall never have to sing here again.

And we worked on our final drafts of our case study for Goldilocks v The State of La-La-Land and discussed ways of incorporating gutter press reports into our narratives without placing undue influence on the independent jurors.

But then it was the School Xmas Fair. Being a man happy to stand behind a trestle table in a position of authority and order people about, I have extensive experience as a stallholder in the various fairs and fetes that Jof has helped bring to a waiting public.

This time I was on "Guess the number of sweets in the Jar" (50p a guess, contestants to write their names and classes in the little box on the matrix, as well as their guess). Estimates ranged from the low 30s to well over 100 and while business was slow at the start, by the end we'd taken a decent amount of money and my guess was 2nd closest. If you have access to a Tardis, the answer was 48.

We also did the Jarbola although the number of jars was a bit limited. Ingrid won 2 in one go but others found they had a handful of duds, it's all down to skill, I guess. The jars didn't last long and we were seconded onto ticket-folding for the raffle and I even found time to buy some sweeties from the rather impressive cake stall.

Later I had a bit of tablet-time but then Flynn arrived and we shot each other with Nerfs for a while before driving north to Flip-out, where the local Scout Association had booked out the entire establishment.

Amazingly for voluntary groups of a be-prepared type, the Brownies had brought 90 screaming little brown people without booking so it was a little hectic, with a disturbingly aromatic changing area. We collected our special socks and watched the special safety video and once the Brownies had gone, we invaded in force and took the whole place over like a load of soldiers visiting France.

Once the house lights had gone off and the place was in Disco Mode, photography is challenging due to adverse lighting conditions so this one is of the massed Scouts working hard in a bouncing arena when you could still see where you were going.

We played manhunt and bounce-attack and see-who-can-drink-the-most and we all got hot and pink and on the way out, our Dear Leader gave us all a wrapped present. Flynn opened his on the way home and declared the chocolate bar called a "Double Decker" to be harder than his school desk. This is because he regularly bangs his head on the desks even though he's told not to, and the choccie bar was harder. Jof had dinner ready for us and I was pooped.