A grand day out

Since the year before I was born, the olds (and now me as well) have been keeping to one side all the pennies etc found on the pavement, and putting it into a special account with my name on it, to be saved up forever and ever, and only used when I buy my first house.

It was originally supposed to be for the things I'd forgotten, like a washing machine, but now we're thinking I should put it with the big lumps of moolah from Blind Uncle Len and use it as a house deposit. Yesterday the fund reached £1000. So this weekend we'll stick it in a high-yield tax-free kiddie bond and start all over again. Straight to the hairdressers after school where I got a sticky tropical fruits lolly in return for a grade 2 trim, which I enjoy running my fingers over.

Then yet another of the long list of jobs - hoovering the car. We haven't done it since, well, ever, in fact. Since I bought it we've transported my dead plastic house, bags of compost from B+Q, wood from the pirate ship pub and 4 loads of Elizabeth's dead fence.

So there was lots to hoover and we had to buy the extended hoove-a-thon so we had enough time.

The evening saw the Beavers/Cubs/Scouts AGM which was fairly dull for me so the kiddies absconded to play paper aeroplanes. George from my class got the Scout leaders' bronze badge and we didn't win anything on the raffle. They will have a stall on the Picnic on the Green (by St James' mad hospital) on Sat 2nd of June so we ought to go to that, I'm sure to meet several people I know on the fire engine like last year.

There is 1 vacant position in the Beavers. So if maybe a Ben or similar wanted to join up.....

The contraceptive invader

Woke up and disturbed their cuddle.

Todays' shopping was in Giant Tesco in Havant so Jof could get craft stuff for the Jubilee party. I got yet another Lego Hero but as soon as we were home, I complained once too often and the whole box of Lego Heroes went onto the top shelf of the booze cupboard and didn't come down. I howled.

We'd already invited Ben to Pirate Pete's so that had to go ahead. We met them down there in the lashing storms and got straight to work while Bens' parents shopped. Bud played the role of wandering assassin as usual and we chased each other round and round firing high velocity ballpit balls at each others' bottoms.

We got 2 hours of Piraticals so managed to build a massive den in the soft play area (reserved for 5s and under) and another round of Ball Attack and some enormous cookies covered in smarties before we went our separate ways. We were all pink with exertion. The green sea was roiling and splashing up over the sea wall, the hovercraft was having lots of difficulty again.

Shanks' pony

After filling up the bottlebank, we just kept on walking. We visited 9 charity shops and a church sale, spread from Highland Road to the Bridge centre. We got 2 fancy glasses for the Puddleparents, 5 bath fizzers, 8 toy cars, a wallet and some sweetcorn.

Last time I was at the YMCA, both Erin and Elizabeth had purses, so I sought out a wallet in the Salvation Army shop which has sections for all my credit cards, coins and notes: currently I use it for keeping my Lego heroes fund and all the receipts. I demonstrated my urbane wit by saying I knew all about late-night kebabs on a Saturday after the pub. Meanwhile, Jof went to the hairdressers and had her eyebrows done, so now she has an expression of permanent surprise.

In the afternoon I visited Erin to design T-shirts: here we are wearing our creations.

We danced and pranced and pestered and eventually Erin got the huffs and had to go to bed. Then Bud turned up for Beer'o'clock just as we were going.

At home (with Happy Feet) I had the chinese take-away I've been banging on about for ages and didn't like it.

Bath fizzer night music was donated by ErinsDad - the Stranglers greatest hits. I asked "How did the first man get to be a man?" which turned out to be a complicated question. Bud consumed the final Crunk Juce left over from New Years' eve, it was black and tasted of medicine. Youtube videos: some breakdancers on the NY subway, rhythmic gymnastics and Zep's Stairway to heaven.

Mungleton Mystery Incorporated

It is obvious to me that the summer has been stolen, presumed dead, by persons or agencies unknown. So, a few days ago, I passed the case to my in-house detective agency BRICKPORT, staffed by the following:
Brent Angostura - bitter ex-cop and beer diviner. Can tell 300 kinds of beer apart by looking at the pump alone. Wounded in 3rd vestigial leg 3 days from retirement, he enjoys abusing Jehovah's witnesses and eating doughnuts.
Rockport Fulton - granite-jawed Private Investigator, ex of No Such Agency, now works part-time at the Spanish Inquisition. Allergic to grapes, he always brings his own fireaxe.
Dick Greeting - enthusiastic amateur, abandoned at birth and raised by coypu. Then abandoned by coypu and raised by San Salvadorean missionaries. Former French Foreign Legionnaire, Yemeni slave trader and milliner.
I expect their report any day now.....although it looks like the perpetrators are lying low until the heat's off - we actually got sunshine today

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Grandma and Grandad are going to sell their cars and buy one of those wizzo ones where you can get a wheelchair in the back. She's throwing away the detailed diaries she's kept since the 60's, lucky my diary fits on a data module.

Because of the unexpected sun, I walked to the park with Baby Edward and played football and wrestling with Willow the Mad. So it's not just Erin, then...
First thing I asked was whether we were going to the Pirate Ship Pub for beer.
After swimming, I had half of my supper and went to bed before 8pm with headaches. OK, so we didn't go to Beer'o'clock, but if we had, one wonders whether I'd have been the tetchy type person that'd have picked a fight with my best mates eg Ben. Given that I'm, like, actually, dude, 2 feet shorter than him, like, whatever, it was better that I didn't.

Lester Carry, inventor of the anti-grav trolley

 Today I got into the golden book twice! Once for moving up a reading level to Turquoise, and the other for a well-presented Show'n'tell. I displayed the football tickets from the last home game of the season last Saturday, and a printout of the penalty we conceded on our way out of the Championship division.

Once I'd done final revision for my spelling words, I settled down in front of the TV but was disturbed by: mending my bed.

One of the support slats was somehow broken asunder last Wednesday when the JBs, Ben and myself were under the bed. So Bud brought home a bit of pallet and, instead of burning it, did a "There, I fixed it" unprofessional repair. It'll do the trick.

Later, because we'd cleared all the burnable twigs out of my playhouse, it was good to go. I bravely bashed at it with my battleaxe (sturdy sycamore stave from the forest a couple of weeks ago) while he did the boring pointless stuff like removing screws and support clips.

Eventually I gave it one almighty smack and it collapsed completely in comical circus style. It has done us well for £32 over 3 years and losing it has doubled the size of our garden. We will move on.  

The day of being underwater

This morning I woke up to a changed landscape. Scotland had finally achieved independence and had floated away into the North Sea, Wales had migrated to warmer waters and England had a new wet room to be called "Cornwall". I think to protect against future sea level rises I will spend my pocket money on the penthouse of the "Lipstick" #1 Gunwharf Quays, a snip at only £4 million, but 100 metres above the ground.
Again, like last week, it was obvious that Wednesday park was a nono. Well, it had stopped raining but the ground was waterlogged so Jof thought Pirate Pete's would help.

There were only 2 others there - Jack and Lily, a pair of reception years from my school. We stayed in the kiddie area and built dens and threw the surprisingly hard giant lego around. Then I sat in the ballpit and filled the gently sloping exit tunnel with as many balls as possible, as you do.

When my time was up, we visited the hovercraft landing zone just before one took off. The viewing terrace is a wind tunnel at the best of times, today it was difficult to make my way along it.

When the hovercraft tried to take off it blasted stones and shells and spray against the wooden cladding of the pier and I got a bladderwrack in the face. You can see the airborne debris and the exact moment when we quoted Monty Python "Run away! Run away" and bounded off like wind-assisted lunar astronauts.

The one your mother warned you about

 Our washing line has been stringing out a sinecure role and is just hanging on, pegged for redundancy.
Today is payback day for last week when Erin came round to ours for play. We both went straight round to hers and got started on "Indecision: the Marathon". We followed ErinsMum around from room to room demanding things to do, accepting none of them (even the game of Cafes lasted less than 3 minutes) and making sure she couldn't get any rest. There is a new meme at school which is "DJ": it means cool and the rather complicated gesture (now known to be based on a Snoop Dog pose) is as follows.
1. Gurn like a methamphetamine user who has experienced a sudden loss of oxygen supply to the brain
2. Cross your arms in front of you and extend the index and middle fingers (ie the wrong ones)
3. Say "DJ" in a growly and threatening way.

ErinsMum is not DJ. But Bud is, apparently, and he rescued us from our afternoon of attention deficit sequencing by turning up to collect me. Erin made him a coffee and we paraded through the conservatory room hooting and speaking in tongues. Then bit by bit we did dancing, flashing, prancing, baring, sliding and streaking. Before long we were jumping up and down in a comparative anatomy masterclass. Nudie room? Nudie house, more like. ErinsMum was helpless with mirth. This is the one usable picture, although it tells a thousand words. Then we were chased out of the room because they were trying to discuss optimum departmental size in a university establishment.
Upstairs we went and did some anatomical investigation of our own. I found that she is not built like me and she found she could make me jump by pinging the end. We (the Southsea Willy Waver and the Fratton Fufu Flaunter) returned with our new-found knowledge and started again with the hooting and streaking, eventually the only way to keep us clothed was to leave the building. He says it doesn't matter quite so much while we're only 6 but I wonder how long we can keep it up. Er.

Red hair and black leather, my favourite colour scheme

Another rude awakening from the late mornings of the weekend. The weather continues to encourage us to de-evolve into amphibians. I'm supposed to be doing fitness training in the park with the Beavers today, lucky that Beavers are accomplished swimmers.
Once we'd waded home, I did my spelling and bicycle homework for Grandad and then helped Bud make CrackleBombs.
These special items, invented by Ben and myself, are a cunning mixture of natural and manufactured components. First get your giant clingfilm inner tube, then shove loads of dried evergreen twigs (with leaves still attached) into both ends of the tube, enough to wedge it in place. Favourite tree for these purposes - Bay tree, but all manner of firs, holly, Xmas tree, eucalyptus etc are all just as good, and in fact variety helps it all along. Then once completely dried, these go on the bonfire and go up in a frantic incendiary crackle-storm of igniting oils and waxes from the leaves. We now have 9 for the next PuddleParty and this frees up my plastic house for destruction which will mean more space in the garden and we're too old for it anyway.
At Beavertime the park was a soggy quagmire with vast puddles. I am an experienced Puddler so didn't drown but it meant that the promised fitness training was off. Three Beavers got badges today, 2 got bronze leader's awards for getting 6 challenge square badges, and then Jake got promoted to cubs when 2 "Sixer" cubs jumped him across a plastic river. Yes, it's complicated.
Bedtime saw the return of the post-exercise leg pains and a howl-in-the-shower. It never takes long for the kiddie ibuprofen to work but then Jof went on the NHS Direct website to get advice about preventing re-occurrence and got locked into an urgent callback from a qualified nurse. Jof actually had to phone them to cancel the call. They are more trouble than they're worth.

Bribery and corruption

Another 930 start to the day and why not. Jof is going to the PuddleMummies cake'n'coffee extravaganza (these girlies sure know how to live) so to make up for it she got me a Lego Yellow Truck. While he ran in the rain I built it as per spec, my favourite part is the driver's coffee mug.
Will it ever stop raining?
Grandma is getting used to life at home. The house is full of contraptions and robots and grab handles and things to help her move around and the nurse that puts her to bed came right in the middle of supper, so not so much fun being under everyone else's control.

The last home game of the season

On Friday I brought home an invitation from Portsmouth Football Club saying I could go to the last home game of the season for £1, and bring a pet adult for £10. This was too good to miss so we sauntered round to their office at the allotted time and got in a queue where I saw Teddy from my class and at least 1 other from my school. Having got the tickets, we delivered 4 more tubes and some seedlings to Erin who was just getting back from swimming. Jof has bought a very large candle-lantern thing to go in the garden during Puddleparties for only £37, cheap at half the price.

At Zero-hour we joined the throngs of fans heading to the stadium where we met Ansah, LittleMax, all the Teddies and several others from my school who had had the same idea. We were near the Derbies who were safe from relegation and had many balloons and inflatable guitars and so forth: many were wearing pink dressing gowns and they threw a blow-up sheep to each other and made complicated hand movements and rude gestures at us.

The seat boings up if you don't sit on it so that is why I fell off my own chair many times. We all sang many songs, my favourite was the Der-der Der-der song because I could remember the words: one of the Derby players was called Wayne Kerr because all the Pompies shouted his name and booed him every time he got the ball. Many bad words were spoken in the stadium but not near us really, our bit was full of kids, so my vocabulary hasn't increased.

At one point we were waiting to take a free kick when a drunk man from the crowd jumped over the fence and bimbled out into the middle and tried to take the free kick for us. He was escorted off and 3 large stewards in orange tops met him at the side and told him he couldn't come back ever. It did make everyone laugh.

I was a bit short to see past the people in the row in front and haven't necessarily got a comprehensive understanding of the game but it was a groovy experience, especially for only £1. The goals against us and the fact that Bristol won made us go down a division, we shall play next year in the 3rd, against luminaries of the game such as Hartlepool and Yeovil.

As soon as we got home Jof said don't look in the dining room, so I did. We have finally killed a mouse. After months of setting traps and getting nothing we put the poisoned blue barley out for them and they came back night after night to feast upon its deadly goodness. At last we have outwitted a small rodent. Looking back, it's obvoius that the Milton Mouse Massive have been having pest parties and rodent raves for ages, we'll know next time.
Then Bud ran to the pub for the PuddleDaddies beer festival; they consumed much Vitamin Beer in a display of bravado and bibulosity, and talked about ships and football again, for that is all that 2 of them know about. In retaliation for this wanton act of independence, the PuddleMummies have booked - an afternoon in a trendy cafe eating cake and bintering. Bintering is the female equivalent of bantering and Mr JoniBobs is proud to have got this word added to Roger's Profanisaurus.
Bud was still home in time for bath fizzer night and then I watched Torvill and Dean win 6.0 medals.