The Darwin Awards and other Tails

Currently I have just finished reading Harry Potter 1, the Philosophers' Stone. In it, Fluffy is a 3-headed dog that guards the 3rd floor trapdoor leading to the Stones' secret repository. You can't help wondering whether if 'Fluffy' had a Tinder account, that good old Cerberus himself would right-swipe her and get a hook-up invite.
Due to their ... unique phenotypes, they're just made for each other. But would their pups have 3 heads, 6 heads, or a range? Would any of them be headless doggies, and which would be more frightening? Aah, the genetics of mythological creatures, never a dull moment. As for the couple from Topeka, it's probably for the best, people that clever would drag down the global average IQ.
Anyway, 'twas a day off today so as per instructions from Grandad, I located Austria, Norway and Port Elizabeth in the atlas and determined that his golfing friend from the 1950s lives further than where Grandma is buried but not as far as Torquay.
The latest art project needs the outline of my head (don't ask) so I gurned for this photo and the camera got so close I'm all distorted anyway, like in the house of unreasonable mirrors at Wookey Hole. It is the face only a mother could love.
The cacti have made their annual migration indoors due to the temperature and we're planning on buying a new Xmas tree.

DoubleDevilDare

Wednesday is Ben day and on the way home he challenged me to dares. These can get out of hand all too quickly but he did a little dance and sang a rhyme and I was so taken with the performance that we never got onto any dangerous dares. I tried the dance but could only manage running-on-the-spot and singing DoubleDevilDare Ding Dong.
Because we have to choose the 20 people to attend our joint birthday party we dared each other to invite:
My old friend BRICK and all his mates
Me old mucker SEWER and all his drainy friends
My old chum LEAF and all his frond friends
... Poisonous snakes ...
... Zombies ... and on it went, all the way home.
Jof had made new flapjacks so we replenished the mousetraps and took a box of them to the park where we met Poppy and Jessica and Edward and Owen and LittleMax and we all did football and throwing the ball at each others balls when standing on the baby swings, and all the usual games.
But once it had got dark we actually sat down and made a competent list of attendees which has been officially ratified by the paying parents and I have dared him to invite Jessica and he dared me to invite Holly and by Jove, we've got a full complement of 20 and 8 of them are girls, a very generous proportion for a pair of 9 year-olds.

Then we designed Willy World which has a boobs and butt section with a Wee shop, Hall of Willies, Boobs ride and flying poo. All standard stuff, really.

Chasing the Disco Ball around

Couldn't believe it. Jof took a day off to go swimming, she'd better not get used to it.
So she came to school and spoke to my teacher about the class bully, well known to all the parents but the teachers aren't allowed to admit he exists.
Earlier, I took in my homework and Miss M recoiled in horror at the large topless picture of Arnie flexing thereupon and so did everyone else, just as well my hero wasn't Pamela Anderson, that'd have opened a few eyes, I can tell you.
But I have turned a corner in that Harry Potter and the Filusterfers' Stone has become an obsession. I read it in the car to gymnastics, on the floor of the gym when we magically arrived 15 minutes early and in the car on the way home again. While I'm conscious that I will get maximum reading points if I finish it, I actually want to see what happens and revel in the idea of 6 other books, each bigger than the last.
Plus I got Badge 2 in Gym due to a decent cartwheel and am now working for Badge Bronze, confusingly. Jof was at a Friends of the School meeting and has volunteered us to be Satan's Little Helpers at the Grotto part of the Xmas Fayre, whether we wanted to or not.

The Pounding in your Pocket

Today was a day of Fail, and not just because it was a Monday.
The first I knew about it was when a bedraggled Bud picked me up, scooterless. This was because he goes running on a Sunday and takes a single doorkey in a bank bag with a couple of emergency pound coins. Of course, if you don't remember to re-attach the key onto the main keyring afterwards, you'll be locked out of the house ...
We walked home in the rain and drove down to Jof at her work and I queued up behind some elderly and slow grannies but eventually they shuffled off (no mortal coils involved this time, sadly) and we got her key and went home.
We sold Grandad's old typewriter on Ebay and where you start off at 99p to encourage bidding, if you don't look out, that's the price you get. So, having sold a typewriter for 99 massive p, we tried to deliver it to a house near the nudist beach but they didn't answer the door, so that was a journey wasted, possibly more in petrol than sale money.
Then we tried for the 32nd time to book my birthday party but they seem to be allergic to answering the phone.
Still, I got a Bronze Swimming Certificate in Cub Scouts, just like Rimmer. My homework is to do a little poster/information display about someone I consider to be my hero. I chose good old Arnold Schwarzenegger because he's the big shooter and bomber in all my favourite films, but I couldn't tell them about which bit of Predator I liked best or why Total Recall was better than the Running Man etc because I'm not supposed to have seen them all at age 8. So I focused more on his big muscles and prizewinning physique, and that he lived in Pompey for a bit.

A Truncated Pyramid

Not a bad sleep considering the late night, accepted egg on toast after exploding, babbling and making automatic weapons fire noises for only an hour.
When a day is registered as empty, I like to fill it with my own choice of activity and demanded to go to the Pyramids. This seventies-style waterworld occupies a prime piece of real estate right on the seafront and has been closed for nearly a year following salt water damage sustained during the storms of last winter.
Their website goes on about how much council money they've spent on the refurbishment and we got there with plenty of time to spare. The foyer has a new coffee shop. It also has a big poster saying what they've spent the money on, mostly "behind the scenes" stuff, which in Calabria would mean 95% of the money was skimmed off by the mafia.
Anyway, we were issued with orange wristbands and got changed in the same cold changing rooms with the same rubbish on the floor and the same cracked tiles and rusty bits.
The pool was functionally identical but they have definitely installed coloured lights at just below water level. The Cobra waterslide was darker inside, I think they've painted it, and there was much more water in it so you splash more on exit. The blue and green waterslides were exactly the same apart from a squirter 2/3 of the way down, but you can still get stuck if you don't push hard enough.
We did some handstands in the main pool and Bud launched me and I flew through the air gracefully and he even launched Jof which would not have been possible before she went to diet classes. The little pool was closed again and the lifeguard said it was because it wasn't busy enough.
The waterslides still have the old familiar warning sign about do not slide if pregnant etc but half of the letters are still missing so instead of "Green and Blue Flume" you get "GREEI   LUE    FL" which if you ask me is cute.
But we did get super-duper wave alert which went on for ages and I got up close and personal with a girl in bikini corner where the waves crash with extra strength and have been known to cause bikini malfunctions.
But then they closed the waterslides and then they turfed us out of the pool completely and we'd only had 50 minutes. It was because someone had booked an inflatable pool birthday party and we all stood at the side looking at the bouncy castle which looked like a spaceship. It was one of my gymnastics friends that also does Friday cricket.
So we just watched TV all afternoon instead. I'm going to make a Lego gun, possibly a .50 cal sniper rifle.

The Scouts Swimming Gala Event

Saturday at last so I woke up at 1025, just 5 minutes before the fair at the church where I do Scouts. I voluntarily put on my scout uniform and played roll-the-coin a few times and entered the meat raffle but there was precious little else to do unless you're a granny who likes tea and cakes.
Jof told us to take a load of assorted stuff to the charity shop so we drove to Southsea and went in the hoity butchers and bought Jof some blue cheese which will make her feel guilty but she'll eat it anyway.
Then I watched Commando again while chores happened, and then I watched Stargate to make it a double bill.

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We've been looking forward to the Scouts swimming gala for ages because my group gets to compete against the JB's group, not that the parents are competitive or anything.
Sadly due to paranoia and witch-huntery, I can't have a photo of the event, because stifling pool rules prohibit it. Written on the natural assumption that people will perform unspeakable acts when confronted with wide-angle imagery of distant children in swimsuits in a team event, it means I'll just have to remember it. In 25 years, when I'm an Olympic champion, I dread having the following conversation with my own kid.
"Daddy, can I see a picture of you winning an event when you were my age?"
"Yes, son. Here is a picture of my trophy. We couldn't do it on Leisure Centre property, so it's taken in the car park of a nearby Tyre and Exhaust workshop."
"But Daddy, what's that blobby thing?"
"It's my hand, sticking out from behind a brick wall. And I had to wear a gluten-free glove, which had to be pixellated. And I had to be identified as Child C. I was proud to join a long line of happy Child Cs."
Jof heroically joined us even though she'd had a gruelling day at work trying to please angry customers and then sell them stuff, and we drove through the night to the Mountbatten Centre. The Scout leaders met the contestants and took us through to 'Poolside' where we sat in numbered groups and babbled happily to ourselves.
The swimming pool area is absolutely ace although sauna-like - I just love the big curved roof beams and the echoes are funny - and we sat obediently and waited for our events, and when you see there's 46 events and 13 competing scout groups and oodles of contestants, it is a logistical nightmare for those lucky activity organisers.
We all got colour-coded hats, my lot were dull dark and the JBs were bright pink, I'm saying nothing.
But kids were directed to the leaping-off zones and the hooter blared and races were raced and bit by bit my turn came round and I came second in the backstroke first-round race which meant I was into the final! The top 2 go through.
Robert and Johnny also came second so were through to the finals but Ben got fear of failure and got in a state poor chap and went home. The under-12s went in the long lanes at the deep end but us cubs did widths in the shallow bit, there were a few also-swims (not also-rans) but mostly the standard was very high. Finlay also had fear-of-being-told-off-for-failure and sat sobbing at the side.
In other parts of the rather splendid sports complex our venture scout Ryan raised ticket money to fly to the Scout Jamboree in Japan and there was a judo competition in the sports hall where I got Richard Kiel's autograph.
In the end, Robert did well and Johnny got first prize in the relay even though he had to stop and pull his trunks back up, no pictures of this incident are available.
I was in the backstroke finals and came 5th, ahead of Samuel who is in my swimming lessons group but way behind Eddie F from my class at school who won it! He is the happy chap in green in the first picture.
Johnny's group was strong on girls who seem to be better swimmers than the boys.
This Scouts lark is a real crossover thing because you get to meet familiar faces from all facets of your life, from Gym, Swim, Class, Park, everything, amazing how many people you know in this town. In fact, our Scout Group Leader bought his house off Erin. He gave me a special award for being the only cub to not go off on one. Because my group had finished early due to lack of Venture Scouts, I got changed relatively quickly and Jof kept mentioning food in the car all the way home so we agreed on a MacDorgels and we had naughty burger and chip-type meals to make up for all that exercise, honest, and watched Futurama and football, knowing that I didn't have to get up tomorrow, hurrah!

In Need of Children

Today is Children in Need day again, you can tell because people keep Google-searching the picture of me in my home-made spotty T-shirt a couple of years back.
But my school is choosing to mark it by having a "Hero-Day" where we're all supposed to dress as a fictional superhero of our own invention, unlike those real superheroes out there. Expected themes are "Stop-a-Bully Man", "Clean-Teeth Boy" and "Spread-Love-and-Kindness Woman".
I have chosen to be the Terminator who prunes the wasters, expunges the wretched and deletes the worthless, although I grudgingly admit he's more of an anti-hero, plus I've got the outfit so poo to you.
In the end I came second in my class, the top prize was taken by Ingrid who was "Captain Cheese-Touch". While this may sound highly suspect for an 8 year-old girl, I can explain. "Touch" is a game rather like Tag or It. Someone has the touch and has to pass it on by sampling by physical contact an opponent, as before. But you get to choose what kind of Touch you have, and Ingrid chose Cheese Touch.

She had a shoulder-gun like the Predator that shoots whiffy gobbets of 6 kinds of cheese, amongst which are blue cheese, human cheese and mouse cheese. Any one of these can give a seriously cheesy discharge to the girls, and boll weevils to the boy victims, and we're not talking cotton bolls here.
At home I was just Legoing when Bud invited a work friend in for tea and her 2 kid girls invaded my room. Normally I am allergic to girlies in the Lego room after Alannah, Destroyer of Worlds, totally ruined everything, and Maisie The Even Younger (sister of LittleMax) broke my Lego helicopter.
But with these 2 it was a case of too many cooks don't spoil the broth 'cos one was dressed as Captain America and we made an entirely adequate world on a grey square and then at snack time I had spinach and ricotta pasta with yogurt and they asked for "ebola cereal" and they ate some of my coco pops in their bowls of cereal which is no problem because I've got bored of coco pops.

Dry Hard VIII (The one in the Garage)

Today my old mucker from Wimborne infants joined my class. Straight away Naughty Oakley punched him, for he is a Disruptive Pupil. I was out of school early for once and we hastened back home to meet the new tumble dryer.
But it hadn't arrived so instead Bune did, which was nice.
Bune is a strange old bloke who went to school with Bud in 1984 and visits every now and then to laugh at us. He admired the new book I'm writing called "Great Green Guy and the Disaster Devil" which is a tale of derring-do in the toiletries aisle of a well-known German supermarket.
He got the tour of the house and promised to visit again next time he was negotiating council supply contracts for a local nursing home, as you do. But he went after only 40 minutes to catch the train back to London and I got to eat biscuits and wait for the dryer.
We'd sunk as low as sorting through the old board games (suitable ages 4-8) when the delivery men finally turned up and they spent less than 5 minutes on the premises including the demo but Jof had a load of laundry all ready for it, maybe I'll put a cat in there too.

But Where do all the Calculators go?

Yet another day when lumps of rain sped across the world and anyone who went outside came back with manic hair.
On Wednesdays we get a bonus Ben so walked home talking about Pokémon. He knows all there is to know and has many cards and origami Pokéballs and all the patter but I am banned from all Pokérelated things because the program is rubbish and I am so hypnotized by its oriental awfulness I forget to eat my breakfast.
So we did some Lego and went to the park because drizzle does not dismay us. The JBs didn't make it so we played swinging basket football attack for 45 minutes and left just as the really angry black cloud of the troposphere family descended upon us. Amazingly, we'd eaten all the chocolate by then. Traditionally, we take nibbles to the park and it must be in packets of 4 identical items, otherwise one, all, or more of us will throw a wobbly, protesting that everyone else has got a better deal. As the JBs didn't show, that left twice as much for us, and while unsupervised, we predictably chose to hoover the lot.
That left sufficient energy for hours of Lego attacks at home where we screamed and laughed and threw Lego Police boats at each other loudly enough to get told off by Bud which hardly ever happens, like hurricanes.
I don't particularly care about landing on a comet. But I might have a 2-week holiday on Mars when I retire.

Max Attax!

This is an image of me holding a giant Nuclear-powered Lego Lasergun with Frangible Dichotomizers and 4-way Vertebra Delignifiers, taken a year ago.
Ben helped me build it and it was awesome. But some nice chap out there in Cyberspace has made me into a Match Attax! card - with quite good stats. Ben was impressed.
School was great today until the last minute when I was just getting my going-home bag and Eddie and Stanley totally bundled me into the cupboard and sat on my head. I had to have a Headbanger referral. Due to the oppressive weather I actually got home in the dark.
This was not a great start because at gymnastics I had to do handstands, headstands and dive-rolls so I spent a lot of time upside down or landing on my already concussed cranium.
But on the plus side I had 2 suppers (I love olive bread now) and finished Red Dwarf series 4.