May 2017 2/4

Verboten in Sixty Seconds

Dread! Fear! Well not really, just the exams that the teachers have been terrified about for so long.

We started with Reading. Not the unnecessarily ugly town by the Thames, but reading comprehension. It was an hour long and before long, Child A had stood up, walked over to the teacher and asked loudly to go to the toilet, even though we had just endured a lengthy speech about not leaving your seats or making any noise. We all knew he was going to mess it up one way or another, because he cannot help himself.

Then, after revision for tomorrows' spelling and grammar test and some differently shaped breaktimes, we had a second round of auditions for the Year 6 play. 25 kids were challenging for 18 parts and they made me do the voice of the narrator to hold it all together, because they knew I could do it properly.

While I do want a large part, it is not the part of the narrator, so I made sure I told them to cast me as the baddie. And it looks like one of the 2 contenders has suitably won himself the role of Warthog, and the other was sent away for being naughty, so I should be a shoo-in, but you can't count on anything in this world, or a hill of beans in this crazy cosmos.

And after school I walked home with Ben and we went to the beach hut and played Manhunt until they got bored and opted for football. I was quite tired by then and had a slight huff but Jof made kedgeree which is good for you and filled me right back up again.

In Scouts we opened the Vicars' garage and did some outside work with the stoves and camping equipment and we have a new girl doing the try-out and Bud took home 3 tents to mend or replace. We had to have 3 attempts to find a Camping-Gaz stove with some gas left in it and then Child B tried to set fire to his shoe and was Banned from Matches. Someone at Buds' work brought home some Turkish delights from Cyprus but as he is from the Greek side, I guess we have to call them Greek delights.

Speaking of delight, it's lovely to see a modern country like Ireland can still have a law against blasphemy. In a hilarious move, Stephen Fry from A Fish Called Wanda was investigated for criticizing the gods. One must wonder how many other developed countries (unlike the islamic ones) still have protection for fictional characters enshrined in law. Perhaps the USA or Germany or Oz also ban defamation of helpless supernatural beings like Santa, Hedwig, Donald Duck and the Grinch. Incidentally, my latest Singalongamax earworm is 'Something tells me I'm into something good' by Hermans' Hermits.

Puto, ergo Sum

Tuesday, and the torture continued with spelling and grammar tests. It's only the 11+, so there's no Also sprach Zarathustra or Veni vidi vici.

But I rarely concentrate on my spelling so much as I do on Minecraft for one simple reason. In this modern world of spellcheck and autocorrect, all I have to do is Cupertino warthog as cryogenics, and milf contractor Whelan collagen implant enantiomer Alaska topless for me.

And after the tests we had so much free time I was able to play benchball and Lego for hours. Jof picked me up from school as a treat and I played her at "Hotel Tycoon" in the sun. I have a special talent, which is to babble inanely without respite even when being told to shut up, for your words are like farts in the wind that I cannot hear over my own far more important shouting.

And Jof has a special talent which is to land on all of my rentable properties and founder immediately in a Femaelstrom of bad luck. Lucky she has my constant vocal assault to keep her distracted.

Wednesday was a day of maths, with an arithmetic exam and also numerical reasoning. We discovered that our resident maths whizz still has trouble translating centimetres into metres and metres into kilometres, he's always wrong by a factor of 10. Sure it won't matter when he's a civil engineer or a spacecraft designer. I still haven't found out what part I have in the Year 6 play.

One of Jof's favourite viewing pleasures is the 'Take me to the Country' or 'Houses under the Hammer' genre, with lots of properties to look at and either criticize or yearn for. This is why she can now stipulate that our next house has to have a staircase up the middle, 3 reception rooms, a hidden servants' staircase at the back, and a kitchen island.

I decided that what I want (what I really really want) is a swimming pool. So I announced that if Jof dies, I will convert her bedroom into a pool.

I'm a SlumberJack and I'm zzzzzz

Today was the last exam of the SATs - Reasoning. Not so much the cut and thrust of learnèd debate on the floor of the House of Commons but bar charts, pie charts and associated mathematical trivia.

I think I did quite well, let's just hope it doesn't come back as 12% after I said that. There are limits to the human mind - as has so often been shown in this blog - but I filled every unforgiving minute with Venn diagrams and bell curves and kids coming back from the shops with 3 junior hacksaw blades @ 14p each and Anusol cream @ 2 shillings and sixpence and how much change did little Alfie spend down at the amusement arcade before coming home and trying to fob off his mother with tales of the unexpected price rises.

Anyway, this isn't the end of term but certainly the end of the exams. So we had a party with popcorn (I don't like popcorn) and blackjack and hookers and herbal chocolate brownies for relaxation. And we got to watch a film!

'Storks' is about ungainly long-legged birds who migrate to Scandinavian countries and nest in chimneypots, but also deliver newborn infants to those villagers who have not yet learned about the birds and the bees. And delivery failed for one such youngling, which means a card through the door saying we'll try again tomorrow otherwise you have to come and collect your firstborn from our local distribution depot in Windy Bottom, only 75.3 miles from your location.

This is exactly what happened to the new Gazebo tent for the Scouts. It does not matter if you specify on the order form that you won't be home until 4pm on that particular day, and even insert a line in the address saying so. Because the Stork is controlled by a computer that decides on the route the Yodel-Stork has to fly, and the automated Female Dork sorry Stork on the phone is only programmed to attempt redelivery the next working day between 0900 and 2100, which is fine if you are working from home, perhaps attached to an iron lung (working from lung?) or to collect it yourself, rather reducing the need for the Stork in the first place. Lucky this Stork Regional Processing Centre is just over the road from Bud's work, making him as happy as an agoraphobe in an iron lung.

INCIDENT SLOW DOWN

Today was one of those embarrassing in-between days like the Mayan Days of the Dead, when you've finished your exams but are technically still waiting for the weekend.

So we could concentrate on our Year 6 play: at last, the roles were handed out and I am Mufasa. Again. Maybe he doesn't have the biggest part, but I am the King, as befits, perhaps I'll grow up to be a movie star with regal gravitas like Morgan Freeman who keeps playing god or the President.

And I tried not to think about those ghastly old French lessons which are probably not actually finished and may come back to haunt me. I may not be a Francophobe, but I don't want to be a Francophone either.

I suppose the most alarming part of the day was when some unknown Year 3 micro-kid was doing some experimenting. As with all seats of learning, controlled experimentation with theory, reproducible results and peer review is a vital part of expanding the sum of all knowledge, creationists take note. So anyway, this kid was seeing how hard he could hit the little glass window on the red box fire alarm thingy with his pencil without actually setting it off. Well, he found out. We all found out the joy of an unplanned fire alarm with actual fire engines in the street outside and lots of angry teachers saying well it wasn't me, and has everybody got out alive. Child C got a week's suspension and the rest of us got a very shouty lecture.

And Bud lost his job again which makes Jof the only breadwinner in the house. It must be a very strange game you play if you hope to win bread, no wonder adults are so stressed all the time worrying about toast landing butter side up. Give me oblivious childhood any day.

Great Balls of ... Pasta?

I like Saturdays so got up really early at 0930. Jof was at work and sent a text home asking for breakfast to be delivered so while Bud did that, I spoke to Grandad about maths.

In acting we are learning 'One man, 2 Guv'nors' and now our group has Sydney, myself, 'Arry (not 'Atchet 'Arry) and the tall girl whose name I still can't remember so has to stick with her stage name of Gareth.

I play Francis, the two-timing butler, so I have to serve 2 unrelated masters as sole manservant, with hilarious consequences. We're only doing one scene for the showcase but it is the funny one, following our winning performance of Under Milk Wood at the last showcase. This random image is of the Hard Bus Terminus which has been completely renovated at a cost of insert cost here, and you can now go in the newly opened main building and ask for tickets or buy a tin mug.

The road surface is very new and smooth and will be fun when the frost returns. It all looks rather swish and all that remains is for the actual buses to find this ready-made international transport hub. After acting, I fed some more birds in the park and then met Sydney in cyberspace for some more Skype-Minecraft. We played 'Bed Wars' which is less erotic than it sounds and 'Happy Slappers' or similar in which you have to slap each other off a grid suspended in mid air, as you do. Meanwhile, Bud mended tents and Jof had a snooze on the sofa. I'd run out of time to select a film so Eurovision noxiously clouded the airwaves once more, with well-known European country 'Australia' showing off far too much hair and some truly disastrous entries from countries who should have stayed annexed, vassal states to some greater power such as Guernsey. For supper Jof made me 'Mac and Cheese Bites' which are macaroni pasta tubes rolled up and deep-fried. I tried one, and never again.

Devil Boy

Up last, once levels of dehydration became too much. Managed to find Sydney online and set up a Skype/Minecraft combo call for extensive gaming. That was when Bud loudly said hope you're not as naked as he is, before he knew I was on a 16-way group Skype call. This is bread and butter for future Psychiatrists. Anyway, I was wearing pants.

The latest replacement for Schools vouchers at the supermarket is "Create the World" Lego cards, much like Match Attax. Each pack contains a super-card and 3 normal cards and there are about 140 of each to collect, so I said I'd open 2 or 3 packs and save the rest for the Zoo school trip but within minutes I'd opened them all.

After an awful lot of nothingness (what are Sundays for?), the JBs invited me round for a Random Barbecue. This traditional event takes place in their back garden whenever sunshine abounds and we certainly had some today.

OK, so global warming has not fully reached our northern climes so the adults wore blankets while Robert and I played stupidity football which is where you joust on plastic motorbikes that would be small for a 6 year-old but can now be used as roller skates by us advanced beings. Later, I played Golf on the Wii and we all had a go at micro-Ping-Pong and Fussball and air hockey and they spotted my fatal flaw in that I am quite crap and a total cheat when pressed and we all had a really good time. May our association last forever.