June to July 2017

Another tiring Monday with far too little Youtube.

Today we had a visit from the head-teacher of my next school. He explained how the 2 try-out days next week would work, getting split into our tutor groups and so forth. Apparently it's the biggest school around and there are so many groups and classes and subdivisions and stuff, but in each one of them there will be a familiar face.

And in Year 8 we get to choose our favourite subjects for the GCSE exams and get to drop the subjects that we don't like, so that's spontaneous academic combustion for all languages, which I hate. And tomorrows' sports day was cancelled due to rain.

This section of the school year is a bit empty, we've done the exams already so we've been kinda filling in with sex education, cycling proficiency, and acting. So us important cast members in the school play (only 18 characters have lines) did a run-through for the rest of Year 6 to show them what to expect, and even though I declaimed loudly when I spake my lines with emotion and gravity, I could still hear lots of brats muttering and mumbling in the audience.

Us proper Thesps got an extra goody-point each for our performances, but then the non-players got a point each for being such a good audience! Well, the teacher must have been deaf, blind or just approaching point budget cut-off day, for it was a lie. We had a proper rehearsal later.

Joined Ben and the JBs down at the beach hut for some more salty play action. I stayed in the sea the longest and on the way home we espied an abandoned shopping trolley by the side of the road, and generously picked it up, our civic duty to keep our streets clean. It fitted in the back of the car (just) but we'll have to do something about the bricks in it. Ben was allowed to cycle all the way home on his own, more than I can do at the moment.

In Scouts we hardly had time to do anything useful because Flynn has a foreign exchange student (or he's adopted a Spaniard) so we spent the whole lesson shouting useful phrases in Spanish such as 'You have no friends, fight me'. But by the time we'd mangled the phonetics it probably meant 'You three ferrets, dream putty'.

Expect lots of confused parents tonight. But we did hammer in tent pegs with such force we lost one to China and broke, like, 5 mallets.

Tuesday was a day of broken dreams. Because the weatherguessers had predicted thundery downpours for the whole day, Sports Day was cancelled, which may well have disappointed some of my sportier colleagues, but not me.

In fact, because the authorities that be had denied the school permission to have Sports Day on the field next door, we had to have it 4 miles away and all be driven there by non-working parents, so I suspect few tears were shed. It did in fact rain but only after Sports Day would have finished. In school we mostly did 'Lion King' and practised the songs.

Jof got to have a whole day sewing and sorting out the cupboard under the school staircase, and I was on hand to help her carry out several sacks of leftover unsold stuff from previous school Fayres etc, including 3 bags of quality DVDs that remained stubbornly unsold however many Fetes and Fayres and Raffles we held. The binbag of DVDs split all over the playground floor as we were going home.

Meanwhile, the shopping trolley was released with no fanfare back into the wild B&Q carpark from whence it came and Bud tried to offload several boxes of fluorescent lights from his work before they had to be thrown in the bin. Maybe one day they will illuminate my school.

Ni-nga di-nwa!

Today we got a hint of things to come with a big handout from my future senior school. I am in Group A which probably means I'm a thicko, and there's all sorts of rules about body piercings and what kind of skirts we all have to wear.

I have to choose a language to learn. I've been pretending to learn French but I think I'll surrender that and go for German instead. In one of our classes we had to assign values to various subjects, and my bottom 3 were French, Religion and Sport.

At school we were awarded our Level 2 Bike-ability badges. It enables us to navigate moving traffic without experiencing death, always a useful move. And on an African theme, we rehearsed the Lion King again, this time it was all about the songs.

My songsheet has all the main songs and boy, they're full of native African dialog. For example, I-ngo-nya-ma nengwe' na-ma-ba-la and the uplifting Ingonyama nengw' enambala, and who can forget the enchanting I-bam-be ni nja-lo ba-ki-thi, may she live forever.

We also learned about Nigerian internet scams and international currency transactions from Lucys' Dad and I did a show'n'tell on the carved wooden African mask from our dining room. I didn't take the ceremonial paddle/spear that we inherited from Blind Uncle Len because it was too fragile when you're showing 90 eleven year-olds.

Thursday was dull, damp and grey, like a former Prime Minister. In Maths we learned about speed which sounded exciting and drug-related but then it was neither.

I am 4200 days old today so I got measured and have grown 12 millimetres in the last 3 months. I am in 2 minds about this because I don't want to be short, and complain vociferously about the treachery of the dwarf genes I'm sure I have. But then sometimes I'm quite sanguine about who and what I am, what will be will be and all that, and then seek release anyway in being somebody else on stage.

Currently I'm Mufasa (they lose me after the Wildebeeste scene) and comfortable being a genial yet doomed monarch of the Serengeti. Today we went through the whole play and the various Rafikis (the role is split between 5 or 6 kids) were having trouble with the African lyrics to one of the songs, so the teacher made us all try them so we wouldn't laugh and huff at their incompetent pronunciation. We all found it tough.

Thank Me it's Friday was a welcome if sticky event. As I left, it looked a bit rainy so I insisted on taking my big raincoat which proved to be a boy-boiler, and I roasted on the way in and the way home. In English we started our adverts (we all have to design an advert for the Lion King play, the best will be selected for the official poster) and then it was more maths, still about speed.

This is very boring for me because my speed is greater than the rest so I'm on the second additional sheet of questions while the drongos are still asking Miss about the super-simplistic stuff on sheet 1.

Pausing only to avoid the large vomit-stain in the playground left by a basketball player, I joined in with the scripted run-through of the school production including added songs, and got measured for my regal leonine head-dress costume.

Later, most of us were sufficiently well-behaved to deserve an hour of games, see earlier comment about the bulk of actual schoolwork being over.

After school Lucy and I (the only 6th formers in the gardening group) were allowed outside by ourselves so we witnessed the workmen putting up the flash new academy sign by reception.

Saturday started so well. Nobody else was up, so I went downstairs and fired up the Minecraft-o-tron and located some worthy adversaries in cyberspace for a Skype session. But as I am incapable of talking quietly, my screaming and shouting woke both parents up and I was turfed off the computer in ignominy AGAIN. That's the second time in 3 days, what do I pay these people for? Will I ever learn?

Still in a huff, I walked through the park and threw a selection of elderly bread products to the birds, most of which had been scared off by dogs. Opposite, Kev at the butchers' shop said he didn't want any of my duplicate coins because he mostly collects Queen Anne and George 3rd, but he did give me a Hampton Court Medallion free of charge after we bought some sausages for tomorrows' breakfast.

The Year 6 Prom is in a couple of weeks and Jof has made some robes for the Prom King and Queen. When Syd arrived we tried them on, here we are modelling the latest in low-cost silks and ermine for those on a restricted budget. I have already ascertained from my Prom date that we are not going in Penguin suits and ballgowns, far too formal. I probably won't be wearing the Fez.

In acting we ran through the performance many times and I had to annotate my script with pages and pages of stage directions. Mine is a complicated part and as it's a comedic farce, there's lots of dancing around and timed moves and so forth.

In Langstone Harbour, some seals have taken up residence. I myself have seen them from my boat when I was at the sailing club: they have now gone past novelty and are a permanent fixture. Apparently we now have a dolphin, who gambols around in Portsmouth Harbour and the Solent, chasing boats and generally having a good time.

And we also have a tame Spitfire, who graces the Solent with aerial displays of acrobatics, and buzzes the beaches with special emphasis on the nudist beach further along. And today we got an extended performance in which it was clear he was having fun, to the delight of the flotillas of yachts out in the sun, and the hordes of German tourists by the Castle. It's nice to have local characters.

In the evening we went back to the Tennis Club to wish Johnny and Robert's mum a happy birthday. That meant we had access to all the tennis courts so the rest of the kids played tennis with footballs while the DJ played oldies.

We built a 'Trump Wall' which was just a pile of bricks that we gathered together. After a while someone came up with the wheeze of climbing the fence into the splashpark and that was good for a while until Johnny and Robert's dad turfed us out before the council childcatchers (like dog wardens, seen in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) came to take us away.

So we re-invented Manhunt and chased each other round the local area until some of us went too far - as far as the big war memorial. So we were rounded up again.

I had 3rd helpings of the buffet with extra salami and then I boogied the night away on the dancefloor with an increasingly drunken Jof.

It all ended at midnight and in an identical situation to last time, the JBs and us were abandoned by the taxi companies and were left sitting on rocks until 0030 Sunday morning. But at least the seafront lights were pretty.

For the rest of Sunday I Minecrafted while the rest of the world hit the beaches. There was a live music event on Castle Field and a babestorm on the beach but I missed it all because I have Skype and Bed-Wars on Minecraft, what else does one need?

Tomorrow I find out what tutor group I'll be in next year at Big School. With any luck, it'll be the same one as Sydney.