Griefing, and Being Unfayre

I was up first. Not by much, but then I'm only a trainee teenager. Today is the middle day of the bank holiday weekend and as such, was full of rain and wind.

This predictably coincided with the fayre down on Castle Field (right next to the castle built personally by Henery the 8th I am I am) with the rides and the dog show and the heavy horse parade which is always really whiffy and we went there last year. And there was another fayre down by the big war memorial on the seafront, with the really tall rides and the ghost train and the hook-a-duck and the shoot-a-duck etc. And because of the freezing gales with sideways rain, there were only 37 people at both fayres, and they were all in the beer tent. I could see this coming and elected to spend the entire day griefing people on Minecraft, with only limited breaks for cake. I wandered from village to village, pillaging and stealing any items left by other players in unlocked booty chests. This is griefing, although I really only steal stuff, rather than demolishing buildings and wiping poo up the walls. OK, so I killed a few dogs and all the villagers, but my numerous booty-chests are very full, and all locked. It was only later I discovered I'd been banned from the server for griefing. Unfayre!

Escape Plan

Actually up at a sensible time and was force-fed scrambled eggs and bacon on toast, somebody has to do it.

Yesterday I brought home dreadfully important missives about sex education and the uniform list for my new school. This brings home the reality of change, it's no longer just something that will happen in the misty future. So I agreed to walk the route to see how long the daily commute will take: I predicted 30 minutes and Bud predicted 12.

Now, you can't just do one journey for one thing, you have to make a circuit that completes several tasks. My favourite action hero is of course The Right Reverend Arnoldius Schwarzenegger and I intend to have a wake for him the day he finally benches his last press.

So I was just scrolling through 'Best Arnie Movies' etc on Youtube when 'Escape Plan' came up, also starring another favourite, Sly Stallone. So we visited 3 charity shops to try and find it. It was supposed to be 5, but due to advanced urban decay, even the charity shops are closing: Age Concern and Barnardo's are no more.

We walked home via the churchyard of the tower on my title page, above this post. And I said, when is the next May Beer Fayre here, because I can play laser-death with Ben and the JBs again. It's in 2 days, the beer tent is already up. Later, Bud visited a further 14 charity shops (would have been 15, but Aladdin's Cave has died) and came up blank so we bought Escape Plan on ebay for £2.15. Still, at least we made the effort.

Film night (after Minecraft afternoon - Minecrafternoon) was Conan the Barbarian (1982) with decent music and an early appearance by Sven, Killians' bodyguard from the Running Man and Voice of Darth Vader. When James Earl Jones and Madge Sinclair played King and Queen Jaffe Joffe in 'Coming to America', who knew they'd be back together playing Mufasa + Wife in The Lion King. Time to walk to school: 15 1/2 minutes.

After her 3-hour haircut, Jof made the effort to make supper in plant pots and tin mugs and the bottom-batting boards straight out of 'Animal House', and it was lovely. Please sir, can I have another?

Balconi

Hurrah for the Friday before the long weekend! Today, the teachers must have been in a good mood for some reason and we were allowed to have our PE lesson in the park.

OK, so it was a PE lesson so we still had to learn, rather than just run around and tread in dog poo and climb trees and play manhunt in the desolate wastelands of the municipal recreation ground and write rude words on peoples' gates and yeah whatever.

So we played Rounders and I got a Home Run and we played cricket and also had to do some athletics because the House Athletics-A-Thon is coming soon and we can't all have 'Fridge' Frazer on our team so we have to do stuff for ourselves.

And I took the Mother-Of-All-Handouts home which included the Notice-Of-Sex-Education and the uniform list for my secondary school, so quite large stuff actually, talk about pressure when you're only 11. Mostly I was intent on collecting my Daily Prize on the Minecraft Server but made time to meet a new chocolate bar Bud brought home from a [nice Iranian man who owns a late-night Kebab Shop] at his work.

This chocolate item is called Choco & Latte (Soffice merenda farcita al latte e con gocce di cioccolato extra) and is lovingly contained in a brown plastic wrapping like all the best surprises in the world. But as a Neophobe, I fear new items and tried it sparingly. Turned out, it was basically Swiss Roll, just unrolled and presented in flat rectangular format (as if legitimate businessmen had bribed the council to look the other way when they employed cheap foreign labour and stole all the cement) with 2 sturdy chocolate foamy sponge cake outer boundaries and a soft internal creamy lipid bilayer, rather good in fact. But Ye shall know it from its Italian makers - Balconi. Luckily it was balcony-shaped.

Misappropriation of Pig Eggs

School is becoming one long drag towards the SATs (11+) exams. Due to this paucity of detail and some other factors, this blog will change format shortly. I did do my acting show'n'tell with my script and several pictures on the overhead.

But afterwards I was on this Minecraft server, right, and I opened some of the chests provided for people to store their winnings, and some weren't empty. Or locked.

So I acquired 2 chest-fuls of assorted goodies for no outlay apart from some effort. And like a true Pikey, anonymously auctioned off the Pig Egg-Spawners which you need to build a Pig Farm and fraudulently obtained about 13 grand from my nefarious activities, hooray.

Pif and The Blob

Today we played a new game in ICT which is about coding. You control a blobby thing which moves around in a malleable environment and our task is to make our blob move erratically, as if running away. Then we have to spawn another blob and make it chase the first blob. And when Hunting Blob catches Evading Blob, they swap roles. Hide'n'seek sounds easy, but you try and code it.

And we discussed the pronunciation and meanings of the Swahili names in the Lion King as part of our African project. But my pick of the days' events was the re-ordering of our ICT, PE and French classes into P.I.F. May not seem much to you, but having French at the end made all the difference. All I need now is for French to be annexed by German, or similar.

And Grandad phoned to discuss the results of his graph-based homework. Even over the phone, he soon spotted that I'd misunderstood the equation and plotted an incorrect graph. I did it again. Talk about learning to read the question ...

Non-Linear Relationships

After school, I met Jof and went for a haircut, for I have become a hippy with a blurred cranial outline and sideburns. Every time I go there, Bud tells me I can choose my own style and many styles are available etc. Once I tried one, but I didn't like it, and have stuck with good old Grade 2 since. So I chose wisely (or simply, it's easy to wash and dry) but somehow I was talked at by the ladies around me until I ended up with a Grade 8 on top, 4 sides, 2 neck.

While being gently nudged into something I hadn't planned is a blatant infringement (aha) of my inhuman rights, there may come a time quite soon when styles and appearance matter more, so why not get some practise in.

Last time Grandad and I met, he taught me more about graphs and had me work out a matrix of Y values where Y = 2X + 1. Then I plotted the co-ordinates on graph paper and Lo, the relationship was linear. And I learned about axes, quadrants and the origin. Not my origin, that's biology.

Today I did my G-Dad homework which was of course to fill the matrix (not Schwarzenegger in Commando this time) for the equation Y = 4 - X and plot the graph. It was also linear but crossed the axes in different places and strode off to +/- infinity at a different angle. Jof didn't know what he was on about, but I worked it out anyway.

Manhunt

School. Everybody's got to do it. So we had tests with Lego bricks as the reward for each correct answer with special blocks such as doors for 2-markers or 3-markers. It was still a test, however you dress it up.

And we got forewarning of a topic project - The Lion King. I have, of course, met the Lion King before, both on screen and onstage.

We are invited to audition for roles of varying sizes and I'm hungry for lines - I want to be the Line King, aha.

So I was very happy right up until I discovered that my doorkey was missing. No, I didn't check my bag this morning, not my job.

Clearly I have only 1 man to blame for this and sent 2 angry texts and 2 missed calls and then Bensmum picked us up and took us to Jabba the Beach Hutt where I had cheesy chips and we played Manhunt in the forest of unforgiveness and the toilets are miles away and I had lots of retribution to think about.

Yes, it does look like the swan is sitting on a bench. And then Bud picked me up and had found the keys in Jof's second handbag and all was forgiven and I went to Scouts. We played shooting-each-other-with-lava-balls and 2 Chief Scout Gold Award badges (the one I want) were handed out. I got the Scouts Entertainer badge for doing the 50 hours or so it took to complete the Wind in the Willows.

Cube Luck

I have had a busy old holiday. And it's only going to get worse at school with the 11+ exams coming up, and the trauma of moving to a new school after only 6 weeks of summer holidays.

So today I started a proper last-day-off with 11 hours of sleep, and a full English breakfast at the supermarket café with Jof. OK, so I don't like baked beans but you can swap for an extra hash brown if you ask nicely. And while Jof was doing complicated extra shopping after the main shopping event had finished, I got myself a genuine Mojang Minecraft Mystery Cube (£4). I love a bit of Minecraft merchandise and know in my heart that geeks the world over buy up all of this stuff and sell completed collections for oodles of cash. Personally, I wanted the Villager With Anvil figurine (who wouldn't?) but got the Pyramid of 3 Lava Blocks. Or are they Magma. Look how big it is, nearly as big as me. Not bad for £4, in my mind.

Last Night at the Toads

At last, my final performance in Wind in the Willows. While mine is not a great big speaking part, I had a few lines and was required in many other scenes to dance (look at me song), object vociferously (courtroom scene) and otherwise sing, prance and generally be seen to be believed.

The nice booking office lady said I was the best Portly Otter and certainly the best behaved. I was chosen to hold the begging-bucket on the staircase and also hand out leaflets.

Last night Child B was locked in his dressing room for running around the building but I was always good. The last performance is tonight but I signed off Red Groups' daytime show with a flourish and the audience was in rows, not on round tables like on previous events. This made photography even more challenging.

So, I left the theatre for the last time this term with face paint still applied, and a whole production under my belt. This comprised at least 30 hours' rehearsals and 7 performances on top of the auditions, so a good 50 hours the lot. And afterwards I said I wanted to be in the christmas Panto which is Aladdin.

Portsmouth Footing-ball club went up to the next division last week so the roads home were filled with blue people waving flags and the pub garden was full of Pompey fans singing the special songs which were we are going up hroogh hroogh and 'Gold' by Spandau Ballet for some reason. It made parking difficult so I walked the last 600 yards home brightening everyone's day by still being in baby otter stage make-up.

When we tried to buy a flag for the garage pub, they'd run out. Saturday-night-is-film-night, so my choice was 'Twins' in which Arnie still flexes while trying to act emotional with the help of Kuato (Total Recall) and Cousin Sam Klane (Killian's bodyguard in Running Man). As I went to bed, Pompey fans various were still singing the special songs from the nearby pub garden.

Invasion of the Killer Jellyfish

Friday, woohoo. If it wasn't for my generosity in offering to replace the absent 'Riley' for tonight's dazzling production of 'Wind in the Willows', I'd have had an empty day. Well, as you may know, I'm not allowed any empty days because I only fill them up with Minecraft.

So I crafted awhile as housework went on around me until noon when he said off we go then. Normally I cannot stand secrets and demand to know everything even if it ruins the surprise, but this time we'd practically reached the Gosport Ferry terminal before I realised that we weren't going to the local park.

It's always nice to cross the water (it's shorter by water) and we saw HMS Iron Duke in harbour and some Police launches and barges and on the Other Side, walked along to Haslar Marina and saw some yachts being painted.

Just over the promenade from there we met some listless teenagers and Bastion #1. This old disused fort is overgrown and covered with trees and its tunnels are pretty small and mostly blocked off. But we climbed it and met some Scouts camping at the top, with decent tents and a fire.

Just the other side is Cockle Pond (part of Walpole Park) which was experiencing heavy yacht use: some old geezers were having a toy yacht race - although these toys were about 5 feet tall and very techy and advanced.

Having used the roundabout and climbing frame and zipline and rowing machine, we crossed the Queen's Causeway to the café on stilts (well, the one with the balcony visible in the yacht race picture). And half way across, he said what's that in the water, then.

Now I may not have travelled the world and met interesting creatures and killed them, but I know a jellyfish when I see one, even though I've only ever seen them on TV. And there seemed to be several in this isolated lake with only yachts and swans for company.

So we just had to visit the café (because one must) where I had a fortifying slice of 'Fridge Lumpy Bumpy Cake' and then we went hunting. Over the other side of the lake we found a veritable swarm, nay, a cloud of throbbing jellied invaders. We surmise that a few jellyfish larvae entered the pond by way of the overflow pipe which is open to the sea at high tide, and survived the winter in the protective environment, and started breeding.

Now, they have bred quite a lot and there are millions of them, although they must be quite inbred, which is normal for Gosport. At first, I was afeared of the globular alien entities, because they are known to haunt the tropical seas and kill sharks and humans with their stinging tentacles. Hmmm. Singing tentacles. That gives me a fancy-dress idea.

And once Bud had picked a few out of the water to show me, I came to believe that they were not in fact deadly Portuguese men'o'war, but some harmless undulating transparent blobs of gucky mostly-water that just sat there going woing woing and getting stuck in the seaweed. And before long I had got over my tentaclophobia and was pulling them out of the water myself and hunting for the biggest specimen and teaching a passing kid to do the same and in no time we were practically having a jellyfish fight with blobs of whiffy goo flying through the air with added laughter.

No jellyfish were harmed in the making of this afternoon's entertainment, but I insist that it was a bizarre experience, especially when Bud was trying to take a picture and I put a jellyfish on his head. Then I did it again, for I am not a messiah, I am a very naughty boy. Sometimes we go searching for Bizarre, sometimes Bizarre-osity finds us. Apparently, jellyfish are pointless and devoid of nutritional value and have infinite lifespans, ie they don't die unless they're killed, either by being chomped up in a ship's propellers or air-drowned when they wash up onto a beach, for they are even more stupid than me. And all the way home I loudly called him Slime-Scalp and Jelly-Head, for I am a lovable and loving #1 son that is hardly going to get spanked to kingdom come at all.

Later I had luxury fish pie for late lunch and I am assured that no added marine monstrosities of any type found their way into the meal, very fishy, mmm.

This, and Minecraft, gave me the strength to play Portly, the Youngest Otter for the second last time, and a welcome chance to act onstage with Sydney for the only time in this run of performances. I stood near her for many scenes and we exchanged smiles. At the end, I got my own bow.

So, nobody will remember, but there was a competition to draw a design for Toad's car. He is the star of the show and as a convicted neophile, obsessively desires anything new and interesting. I came second in the competition and won a chunky design notepad with added Packet'o'30 coloured pencils!

My car 'Toadiacar' has a cowcatcher and rear spoiler.

And because this is a smaller, local theatre, it needs to post cute kids at the door with collecting buckets for the theatre restoration fund (entirely unlike churches, the biggest landowners in the country), we had an unofficial competition between blue, purple, red, green and yellow groups, and Blue won! As I am a Red, but subbing for Blue because of covering for Riley, I got an extra bag of sweets. And tonight's performance had the biggest audience yet, over 100, so the lucky viewers could hardly move without infringing on somebody's personal space. All in all, a compete victory! The clapping went on long after we had left the building. Life: I recommend it.

Hide'n'seek in the Urination Rooms

For a while there it looked like the only friends I'd spend the Easter break with were the ones posting Youtube videos about their Minecrafting experiences. But yesterday I crabbed with Sydney and today, Ben invited me over for a day of exploration.

They had recently explored one of the old forts which now houses the miniature village and rose garden, and I got to join in. We batted croquet balls at each other with giant wooden mallets where the heads kept falling off, and I got a flying croquet ball right in the leg. We explored thoroughly and hardly met anyone else apart from some teenagers rolling their own cigarettes and we discovered many hidden crannies, nooks, dens, bases and hidey-holes where you could quite easily have a wee and nobody would know, so we called them P-rooms and Urination Rooms.

I went home after 5 hours because my cheeks were pink and my hands were scratched and my Youtubers were lonely. Later I performed again onstage. The audience was tiny, and they were mostly parents. But I've only got 2 performances left, and one of them's with Syd, and the other is the Last Night, always well attended.

Flagpoling and Crabpoling

Was awoken at 9 which seemed early until I found my stage door call was at 10, then it didn't seem early enough. But still, we got there dead on time and I had a good show with a medium-sized audience (all the taller people come to the evening shows) and several players coming on stage well before or after their cues, and this is not because I wasn't stage manager this time.

I had been promised an easy afternoon off and it's so easy to promise, less easy to deliver. The Scout Leader had asked for a new inside flagpole for the church hall and over the last few weeks, we have obtained, cleaned, and painted one. Today was installation day and I held the 12 foot pole steady in the car and Father Paul, the actually quite groovy Priest in Charge, came out and told us exactly where we could shove it.

Because they use the church hall all the time for old people and brats alike, it had to be hidden in a corner behind the wheelchairs and trestle tables. All we have to do now is sort out a buffer to stop over-eager Scouts slamming it back against the radiator pipes or taking out the overhead lamps. Even I can move it on my own because it has wheels.

And we were just doing the installation while arranging a playdate with Ben, when Sydney rang in and said come crab-hunting with me, for they hadn't had much luck at Canoe Lake and Langstone is much better. I have been crabbing at Langstone twice: once we could pull crabs out of the water with our fingers, the other time I borrowed a reel of baited string off an unknown fellow bystander, threw it in without remembering to hang on to the actual reel, and lost it (beating a hasty and embarrassed retreat).

This real-human contact proved of more interest than yet more Minecraft Youtube videos and I got a better coat and went.

There was an old culvert with brick-built bridge that was too high at lower tide for even Sydney's long-poled net to reach. We tried and tried but caught no prey, although I reckon that one of her cast attempts was so accurate it gave a crab concussion. But you know, 3 hours of honest messing around with girls in a secluded environment and not catching crabs was OK with me because of the sunshine and real-world activity. I did get my MineWorld time and double-upgrade pasta surprise so no complaints from me.

Planes, Trains and Watermobiles

This being my one true free day where everyone else is back at work, we decided to make it Grandad day. So, as ever, we sought to contrive the busiest day possible for the 87 year-old, as he has less than 2 decades left.

Amazingly the motorway was empty and we got there in only 34 minutes. But this was still sufficient for me to write a report on the Scout Camp to enter into the get-published-in-the-district-magazine competition. I can't quite write as quickly as the torrent of ideas provided by my fellow passengers but got most of it down.

Grandad was visible in his front room so we picked him up and sped off to little-known coastal town 'Hythe'. We've been there before and witnessed a cricket match in which all the outfield players had to put their pint glasses down when the bowler started running.

But it was clearly market day (with added bunting and old people) in the buzzing metropolis and traffic wardens were patrolling the Waitrose car park so Bud hid the car miles away and we met up at the ferry. The Hythe ferry is very proud of its historical origins and longest pier with the oldest continuously running electric train and you can sponsor a deckboard on the pier and have your name carved into it.

And we walked the length of the very long pier with 4 minutes to spare before the ferry was due to leave and it sat there attached to the dilapidated pontoon for another eternity waiting for the train, like in all the best old blues songs. It was lucky I had a coat because it's quite windy out on the water, but Jof had bought a sunhat. Look, you can see the pier train coming.

Various container ships (such as Wallenius Wilhelmsen and CMA CGM and Hoegh Autoliners) wandered past and they are all curiously square and tall. The journey is only 15 minutes or so but we saw lots of big ships and ferries and planes flying over from Majorca and Jersey.

When a bigger ferry goes past, you rock'n'roll most amusingly on their wash. The Hythe ferry lands at Town Quay next to the international ferry terminal where Bud first set foot in England and only a couple of hundred yards away was the old Jewish Ghetto where we walked with Grandad last year.

From there we strolled past the 15th century old god tower (now Maritime Museum) and many splendid edifices and vast impressive monuments to the former wealth and importance of this port town. But an awful lot of it is now labelled 'For Sale' or 'No Entry' or '270 prime waterside flats coming soon'.

And there was a single-track railway with derelict sidings that crossed the road on its way into the port, not sure if it's still used but the tops of the rails were still shiny. We got to the Admiral Sir Lucius Curtis (with dental practice upstairs) which is a Wetherspoons. I get on well with Wetherspoons because I like the food and they're usually in nice big buildings in the middle of town.

This one had a huge bar with many unknown beers and a big line in historical photos and Southampton Football Club memorabilia. So we all independently decided on the corner table with the big windows in the sun and all got hot again. One of the beers was 'Stonehenge' and you've just got to try it for the name, so 2 of us had pints. What was not known before that decision was that Stonehenge Beer is green. And not just a little bit. So Jof and I laughed at the men with their green beers and we all got stuffed on the burger/scampi/lasagne/gammon meals and didn't need pudding.

From there it is only a hundred yards to Ocean Village which is like Gunwharf Quays but with more sleek expensive yachts and motor boats so we stood there choosing which ones we wanted.

And just round the corner was our main target which was 'Solent Sky', a museum of local aviation with a distinct slant on flying boats. Of course the Spitfire was born here so that figured strongly but they boast the only flying boat of its class where you can go in the flight deck and look out of the roof.

This purpose-built warehouse space has a special nook where the tailplane of the biggest plane can fit and there are planes and helicopters of all sizes hanging from the rafters and filling up the view with rotors and propellers and engines and wings and wing-floats and it's all rather fun. None of us knew it was here.

The nice man at the desk gave me the young persons' quiz and promised me a prize if I got 10/10 and you had to look for the caricature faces and note down the names of the planes or their engines depending.

This may not be Jof's thing but she climbed into 'Beachcomber' the flying boat like the rest of us and sat in the seats and it was built in 1947 with guns but then converted into a passenger plane when we ran out of wars. There is a 3.7" anti-aircraft gun and loads of planes and models and medals and a whole section upstairs for the Police and fire brigades and jets and hang-gliders and quite a few things with sticky-tape on saying don't touch, it's broken, and some transmitters*.

And they've got maps of where all the German bombs fell and maps the Germans used when they planned the invasion and photos of buildings before and after air raids. And they have a Guinness Book of World Records certificate signed by Norris McWhirter himself about Squadron Commander Rose who flew 54 different types of military aircraft for 11,539 hours over 47 years without a break in service.

At the end I got 10/10 so won a small balsa wood model that was on sale in the shop for 50p and so I got a Concorde model as well and gave them some coins because it was only £17 for all of us and it was all rather good and most worthy.

The ferry back to Hythe seemed quicker but our legs were getting tired so we got on the train back along the pier and it was rattly and trundly and funny. Hythe was still having market day so we bought 2 identical man-bags for the adults who have very definite ideas about what bag you need and ice creams too.

On the trek back to the car we passed over another disused railway, the one to Fawley which I hear is going to be redeveloped so they might need the railway again.

At Grandad's place he taught me about graphs and gave us chocolate and lo, it was a good day.

* Back in 1950 something, Grandad worked for the Post Office Telephones and came top of the whole country at their exam. So he was the youngest senior engineer until he did his National Service teaching people about electronics in the RAF and met transmitters and satellite systems and stuff, and they were so interesting he left the Post Office and went to Africa to run phone networks for warmer countries instead.

Bouncing Back to Bikini-Busting Corner

One of those days when you actually have to make something up to do. During a game of golf yesterday, we'd discovered that Jof's trousers had a big hole in them so instead of simply laughing at her bum we told her, which meant she had to go into town and buy trousers and tops and a skirt and crispy prawns for supper and luxury dark chocolate presentation assortiment and say they were for Grandad and eat them anyway.

This is why ladies' lives are so complicated, better them than us, for we don't have the brain-power.

And she had to revise for her job interview and so politely asked us to be quiet, and the only way to do that is if we are outside the house, perhaps at the cinema. I chose the Pyramids swimming complex and we got there for 230.

Then we got 2 and a half hours of wet play. First, there was aqueous battling and watery fighting. I lost the aqua-flume (waterslide) race because I have inherited a curious inability to slide downhill at speed in a lubricated plastic tunnel. I mean seriously, I get stuck.

And then I met Green Charlie. He is in Blue Group at the theatre and when I was watching Blue Sydney's performance I said hello to him but it was his identical non-acting older brother who was not green or blue, but addicted to online gaming and had been forced out of the house to get him off the PS2. Follow? We did extensive water-karate at each other.

And we ganged up on a certain common foe and fought over floats and had 2 standard wave alerts and right at the end, it was Super-Duper Wave Alert. We don't get this very often. Standard wave alert gets a siren sound and that tells you that the wave machine will provide gentle waves for junior swimmers for 3 minutes and you can see bright-eyed babies going woo for the period of that restrained wave action, then you all run to the waterslide queue because it will be shorter.

Super-Duper Wave Alert gets a loud Pang-Pang siren and 30 minutes of slanted waves of significantly greater amplitude. The entire massed ranks of lifeguards gathers poolside with whistles in mouth and all smaller people are told to vacate the Kill-Zone and it begins.

Received knowledge is that the hand-rail visible below that central white column is the place to hang on if you are a girl, and the dark corner under where the blue waterslide finishes is the place to stand if you are a teenager showing off. That is where the waves gather in a tidal bore of fury and you can jump several feet off the ground, get seriously pummelled by Tsunamis of Terror for 30 minutes, and are well-known for blowing the bikini tops off more generously proportioned teen lady-swimmers. I jumped with the rest but was forced out by teenagers 2 feet taller than me and by the time it was all-out-of-the-pool time I had been battered, bounced and blended like Jell-O by Scylla (and Charybdis), hence my world-weary expression and thousand-yard stare in this image taken after the event. You know when you've been bounced.

At home I had a 2 hour Minecraft + Skype meeting with Blue Sydney, who was much kinder than the waves.

A Nice Walk Ruined

Staggered down naked at 10 something, because, holidays. After a decent fry-up with black pudding and everything, I was just settling down to another day of Minecraft when I had to go out.

I put a brave face on these things because I know I can return to the World Of Blocks later. We cycled down to the seafront and I chose the large pitch'n'putt game near the D-Day museum because the crazy golf is a bit passé.

Like a Stig 'O the Dump, the Southsea Minigolf has a man who lives there. He only lives there from April to September, during the winter he has a bunker underneath the hut where he hibernates, having collected sufficient Spanish Oak acorns from just outside his perimeter fence to sustain him through the winter. We know this, because it is the same guy year after year handing out Golf rackets and ice creams.

And he handed us six Golf bats because on the pitch and putt, you get a sandy wedge with an angled frontispiece to hit the ball right up into a tree, and a flat-fronted putter to wipe the ball along the ground if you are ever lucky enough to get onto a green, which is the flatter area with a flag and only slightly fewer scattered twigs on the ground.

I am of course in charge so started. Then Jof hit her first shot straight out of the ground onto the path and we all laughed, for she is crap and had to have another go. On the next hole we gave one of the armful of Golf sticks back because you can share, and I hit my ball into a tree that was blatantly right there, well over to the side of the fairway I was supposed to be aiming down. Luckily, the ball ricocheted gracefully off the innocent and unrelated tree and scared away a Magpie.

And Bud hit his ball hard up into a tree whose trunk wasn't even on the course and it binged around in the branches and fell onto the Ladies' Mile footpath and almost hit a human. Another human gave it back, and we all laughed at Bud, for he is crap.

And I got it into a bush and she got it into a tree and he hit the fence twice and I hit a tree and people hit my ball twice and I knocked Bud's ball into the hole and we all threw our bats around a bit and ended up trying to bat twigs, because there were more twigs than balls. And it is obvious that we had been given malfunctioning bats that can't aim properly, or those errant balls that go sideways a lot.

After an ice cream, I set up a Skype call on Minecraft with Sydney and her friend Bunny and we were doing some really epic Parkour apart from one problem. Like the brash idiot who shouts self-importantly into his cellphone in a public place, I just cannot speak quietly. And after the 4th time I was told to stop screaming or disconnect, he made me disconnect! I couldn't believe it. What a waste of some promising 1M 2F action.

Jof slaved over a hot stove for hours and made us a roast turkey dinner including pigs in blankets. Some of the bacons had come off the sausages, making them naked stripper pigs and I went back for so many potatoes and vegetables there was nothing left.

Script Reader-Controller

Saturday. Didn't fancy breakfast because it just gets in the way. My only real appointment of the day was the 3pm performance at the theatre so at 1pm I was presented with a plate of pasta which is all I ever wanted anyway.

I'd just been dropped off at work when I noticed that my drinks bottle had leaked all over my bag again. This makes everything sticky and 'orrible and I was not best pleased. I summoned Bud back from shopping and told him off. Here I am, partially in costume (I play Portly, a baby Otter - see the way I'm cute, slightly round and a really good swimmer) but without stage make-up: this is important for later.

Once that had been dealt with, the show could go on and I did my main scene and that's when we noticed a glaring absence. The lady who sits downstairs, listens to the performance on the baby monitor and reads through the script wasn't there. Of course her task is to follow where the players have got up to, and send up the next actors in time for their cues and scenes.

Without a competent manager doing this, it could all fall apart rapido so I stepped in and saved the day. I'm not needed for large parts of the play so I just stayed there, calmly took control, and told everyone when to go on and they listened to me and it all worked out fine! Not that I like telling people what to do, or anything. My selfless action enabled the whole shebang to go off without a hitch, Hurrah for Me!

The house was a bit smaller today, 40 or so in the audience. Didn't stop them enjoying it.

Afterwards, I climbed up one of the tanks outside the D-Day museum for the next in the series of 'Otters Abroad'. So this time, I've got my stage make-up on, but no costume, the opposite of the first picture. To see the glorious ensemble, you'll have to come to the next performance!

Later there was chocolate aforethought and Harry Potter + Poisoner of Azkhaban. My honking great batch of duplicate coins (10 kg) sold for over £80 on a well-known auction site so I might get a few more with the credit. Bed slightly this side of the International Date Line, who's counting.

May all your coins be Gold

A good Friday indeed. I wasn't scheduled to start work till 1pm so I relaxed. Poor old Jof had the big splurgy cold so she required bacon, and Bud had to do all the hard work carrying home that heavy £20 note somebody had dropped on the pavement. My bank account will give the sad abandoned £20 note recognition and a new place to live.

On the way in to the theatre it was immediately obvious that it was Football Day. It used to mean more when we lived on the same street as the football stadium because of all the policepersons in the roadway but we still saw lots of police wagons and police horses and police strongmen, and our opponents were Plymouth so there were some songs about ooo-arrs and cider and tractors.

The performance went off beautifully. We played to a packed house and all the tables were full and the astroturf lawn in front of the tables was full and most of the audience wasn't drunk but they certainly enjoyed themselves.

The Judge (also plays the part of Fox) got Toad's sentence wrong again (12 years instead of 12 months) and Rat definitely said that Mole wasn't a bad chap instead of Toad and I got onstage late because I have to hold 2 doors open for Toad when he drives off.

But I was epic and the production was epic and if you don't believe me, buy tickets. Here follows another in the series of "It 'aint a bad place to live" with a view of the Spinnaker Tower and one in a new series called "Portly the Otter abroad" where I shall appear in person and stage make-up in a variety of local places. Today: Canoe Lake, just the right place for a junior Otter.

Saturday Night is Film Night (even if it's Friday) so we watched the real-life exploits of Mr Frank Abagnale Jnr as he blagged himself around the world to a permanent job consulting for the FBI.

Flagged: a Spy in the Midst

At last, a day off. For somebody who is reputedly on holiday, I have been working suspiciously hard, not sure when that tax bill will arrive. So I took full advantage and woke up at 11, very slightly under the 12 hours' sleep barrier that I just can't overcome.

Little tasks keep being finished around me such as the mobile indoor flagpole for the Scouts, formerly known as a basketball hoop and stand for teenagers. Even on this stepladder I can't reach the top so waved a flag anyway.

In the afternoon he unfairly made me go to the park to unstiffen our legs and boy, was that painful with the hobbling and the staggering and no acting at all. We met some known faces and did chin-ups. Well, one of us did.

And later, just as Jof got back home to a long weekend off before her job interview for the position of Chief Operating Officer (East Coast Division), we pigged pizza and totally abandoned her to go to the theatre. For someone who may sometimes complain about how much time I spend there, going in on my day off may seem unusual. But I wanted to see the performance for myself, and particularly, to see Sydney. So we arrived nice and early and loitered with distinct intent because I'd scoped what I considered to be the best seats in the house and I was first up the stairs and bagged them.

Now, being an insider, I knew that the stage extensions on either side were full of players waiting for their cues, including Sydney. First, rabbits and other underground creatures emerged stage left and we could see Sydney's flashlight under stage right and it began with a bang, a song and several major characters. It was incandescent! Ebullient! And more than Sooty's Magic Wonder Show, had humanoids galore, all of whom I knew. For some reason I concentrated on the mistakes made by my fellow Thespians and Bud concentrated on how newcomer Harry had a bigger part than me but we jigged along to the songs and I knew all the words and in the interval I bought ice cream.

At the beginning of the second half, several small actors sing 'Silent Night' to denote that it's Christmas time as Toad of Toad Hall languishes in Jail. I knew this so approached the group to say hello and Sydney was pleased to see me.

In the audience, loads of very little people sat transfixed by the ongoing spectacle and a bodacious spectacle it is, with laughs and running around and some inventive costume changes where shoes don't quite fit and it took the horse a long time to help Toad into his cross-dressing escape suit. Cyril Proudbottom the horse is one of the best characters and has a lot in common with Marvin the Paranoid Android with his world-weary attitude and series of menial jobs. Badger has 3 different accents, some running concurrently and the dancers may not add much to the plotline itself but boy, they're good.

All in all, a triumph of set construction, colourful costumery and able performances from people of all heights and ages, 10/10, would go again. Could benefit from a larger, drunker audience less concerned with their cellphones and more concerned with joining in with the fist-waving and the clapping and the woo-ooing, like the little 4 year-old ginger kid at the front, who was the clear winner in my opinion with the running on stage and dancing strangely at half-time, even though I told him to get off. You could be part of that drunken audience. Buy tickets now. It's totally worth it.

Opening Night

I was looking forward to a short day with only a 5 hour rehearsal. Later, Skype and Minecraft Murder Mystery was on the cards with Sydney. But just as we were looking at the acting schedule, we noticed that it was opening night and I was doing the first performance. Nice!

The play itself is 2 hours long including the 20 minute intermission so technically actually, performance days will be shorter than rehearsal days. I'm in 7 performances (including an extra one where I'm covering for an absentee): what a way to earn a Scout Badge.

Getting to the theatre at noon, we asked when the lunch break was, and it was right now. So we walked to the Co-Op and I found some melon and sandwiches and soss rolls and I sat with 1000 twittering girls on the bleachers outside the theatre, in the sun.

For the first session we discovered who hadn't learnt their cue lines and dances and who had to be prodded from offstage when they forgot to move or speak or smile or do anything at all. A lot of it was Child B (it's always Child B).

But the relatively short Final Dress Rehearsal was over at 5 and I walked to the Hard and sat blinking in the sun watching ferries ferrying and pigeons trying to nick my sandwiches and Japanese tourists with cameras bigger than their heads and had a welcome break in different surroundings, it's not a bad old place sometimes. Some people tried to get me to go paintballing, but you know, busy.

And I wasn't nervous because I know all my lines and cues and songs and dances and my costume fits and I'm a veteran and old pro, really, so I insisted on going back early and buying some lottery tickets.

The performance was great and I was epic of course and we saw Badger for the first time because all along he's been the director. We listen for our cues downstairs on a baby monitor and one of the rabbits was shouting much louder than the rest, nobody fell off stage and we all got out a bit early because we were quicker. There were about 60 in the audience and tomorrow, I'll be one of them! I was pooped. So I sang the poop song (highlight of the show) and hit the sack at 11.