Eggy Crush Saga

By the time I left for work it had stopped raining but then it realised its mistake and re-started.
We began with stand-up paddle boarding but we had to get towed by the speedboats for a lot of it. Most of us went in at some point but we didn't care. When I fell in I went under the board and got caught on the fins, lucky that seal from yesterday didn't come and beat me up as well.
Supermodel 'Pops' and fellow Cub Scout Jessie were with us today and the rest of the activities were inside.
There was Egg-dropping. Teams bought equipment to protect eggs from being dropped from heights. Teams were named The Royal Egg Force, The Rock, Very Important Egg and Wise Egg. The winner was one of the parachute brigade and Rock (7 layers of foam and binbags) failed to survive the last drop onto the paving slabs and covered some bloke in yolk.
Roller-Marble used the tubes from Bud's work and we had to get a marble the whole way around the walls of the playroom using ingenuity and whatever we could find. On the 11th roll we were successful and the marble circumnavigated the room and shot off down the corridor, ending up in the changing room where it entered the wetsuit sleeve of a chap wearing only pants and a surprised expression.
Even after several more games I still had to go to gymnastics but then Jof made us a roast turkey dinner which we always pig. Or gobble.

The Definite Farticle

I was rudely awoken this morning by Jof snuggling my shoulders as I lay face-down in bed. I retaliated by releasing a night's worth of pent-up gastric gases, serves her right, should know better.
And it rained. Sometimes it only bucketed, but there were also lumps of ludicrosity as the car swam up the Eastern Road and we got out at the Watersports Centre, very funny I don't think. At least they have wetsuits, he said, before abandoning me to the wrath of Poseidon, armed only with a box of goodies and some foam.
As it happens, they have wetsuits and hoodies and waterproof trousers and shirts and shoes and those rubber bands you put over your sleeves to stop the leeches getting into your armpits.
We put them all on and went canoe-rafting up the river, by lashing 2 canoes together, one pair for each team of 8. We splashed past 4 seals, 2 babies and 2 parents, which was nice, like junior dolphin-petting. On the way back, one of the seals came out to see us. We were doing rhythmic rowing, you know, with the big fat bloke with no shirt and the drum going bimbombimbom and when the seal pulled up alongside me you know you can't stop the beat and I clonked him with my oar. He did a duck dive and scarpered. Oh no! I have become what Jof despised! For she was a hunt-saboteur with her angry lefty mates back in the sixties and now I am a seal-clubber!
Anyway, we did the climbing wall and the Adrian's Ladder obstacle course and at pickup time, the car park was so full of Range Rovers Bud had to park in the Tudor Sailing Club next door. Because of the full-on physical nature of this week, my bedside light went off at 9pm. I couldn't believe it, I don't switch off that early on school days, and I thought this was a holiday ...

Poster Boy: Pant Day

Following 3 hectic days of activity, I fought back by declaring a Pant Day. Based on the pyjama day favoured by my friends, it's a more boyish version where I don't get dressed at all but don a pair of pants to stop my willy freezing off.
Last week, Jof made me go through my poster collection. They had just been sitting on the top shelf doing nothing, so as part of a vain attempt to tidy my room I had to choose what to keep, and today was putting-up day.
I chose The Human Body, a map of the British Isles (there's a place called Cork!), the Solar System and a giant map of the world from Bud's work with all the flags on. Whether any of this information is absorbed into my brain, or stays stuck on the wall, remains to be seen.
For afters, we watched 'The Rock' with Cage and Connery and Michael Biehn, who seems to turn up in everything. I laughed at the car chase and the moving gunfight in bulletproof rock-buckets suspended on an overhead railway.
My coin collection has increased by 111 in the last week alone, mostly due to the Leprosy Mission. More on that later.

Wet Play Away Day

Last chance to soak up the rays and the weatherguessers predicted 25 degrees and hot sunshine.
So over my fried egg breakfast, he gave me the hard choice.
Stoke Bay Splashpark by bike, stopping at every park on the way, seafood restaurant on the beach for lunch, chance of minigolf and diving museum
OR
Southampton Common Splashpark by car and bike, explore the common, nip down to Houndwell Park for the Pirate ship, pub lunch, chance of ice cream.
It was a tough choice, but the pirate ship swung it. Trying to score a companion for the trip, we discovered that Pops had broken her leg again and Ben was in Cornwall getting thunderstorms so I drew a blank.
We drove to our neighbouring city and football rivals and took time out to cycle gently around the Common looking for the Ornamental Lake and anything else of interest.
As it happens, the lake itself was distinctly un-ornamental but it's very countrified with mature trees everywhere and rampant wildlife including toads, frogs and newts. But it wasn't too long before I headed where the hills went downwards and that was back to the playpark, Tiggleton Corner.
Only 10 minutes away (at my speed) is Houndwell Park which is part of yet another massive set of green areas in the middle of Southampton. Now, I've already got a picture of it on Google Earth but I'd forgotten just how big it is. Memorials lurk behind every tree-lined avenue and the playpark itself had a fortress, pirate ship and its very own Titanic, not to mention swings, tunnels and climbing frames.
Back up the hill to the Cowherds, we put our shirts back on for the first time since arriving and I had scampi medley again and polished my plate, which is a good habit. Then I co-opted many sturdy Southamptonians into my games of shoot-the-stranger-in-the-face and stayed in the extremely busy splashpark for an hour and a half with 3 of my favourite weapons. That's how I earned the £3 worth of New Forest Ice Cream, strawberry and chocolate, 2 scoop heaven.
The journey home was swift and the signs said A27 closed after A2025 which turned out to be a plane crashed onto the road by Shoreham Airport, lots dead.
Film night was Blazing Saddles. Now, I'm not going to know that Governor Le Petomane is a fart-related joke or anything about Marlene Dietrich but the campfire bean-farting scene and similar were funny. That's the problem with youth, being wasted on the young (and wasted).
Right at the end (nearly 11 pm) Bud and I had a sing-off, I did musicals like Singing In the Rain and he did Flanders and Swann like "The Gas Man Cometh".

Above us the Waves (and Bombs)

I am being brought up in the best possible way, honest.
For example, certain things are stressed and underlined such as eating up your greens and so forth, and that's worked out well. In addition, we like to go shirtless cycling in good weather for the fresh air and Vitamin D and also to re-use those special gift-aid tickets from museums and castles that allow you to go back for a second visit free, within one year.
So we got out our tickets from the 'Done-it Box' for the Explosion! Museum of Naval Firepower and the HMS Alliance and Submarine Museum, both in Gosport.
Leaving at the crack of 0930, we cycled to the Gosport Ferry and took the wrong road. This is because the Haslar road bridge is out, like in True Lies when the Harriers missile it to death. We found this from the local transport and tourist guide website, so planned a route around Stoke Lake (a large smelly tidal lagoon) which added 25 minutes to our journey.
This did not deter Bud who found a new pub called the Fighting Cocks and a new swingpark which we shall visit again. We got to the Submarine museum at 1030 as planned and waved our free tickets and investigated all the subs from the Holland 1 (the first Navy sub, 1901) to the models of the Vanguard class and got our trip around the HMS Alliance with some tall people who hadn't washed and then I bought a T-shirt with the double-dolphin badge and had a large bit of fudge cake to keep me going, you know the way it is. You can see the sea out of the periscopes which is nice.
On the way out, we thought we'll just have a quick look at the Haslar road bridge just in case and hey bleedin' presto, it was indeed closed. Closed to cars, but pedestrians and cyclist were OK. So we walked back over the bridge saving us 25 minutes and a lot of complaining. At exactly 1230, the Holy Trinity church clock was showing 1203 and then it struck 57. It turned out to be a funeral, but they were on North Korean time.
From there we struck north through the more expensive regions of the Metropolitan area of Gosport and acquired the Forton Lake footbridge within minutes. This took us to the Explosion! Museum and a lot of empty derelict warehouses that have seen better days, although they were of course full of military personnel so I suppose it's better that we're not at war any more.
Personally I love the shells room with the 18 inch devils and the Gatlings and Nordenfelts and Hotchkisses and the AK47 and the bayonets and mortars and rifles and stabbing weapons and nuclear bombs and rockets and Squid and Hedgehog anti-sub weapons and mines and it's all a boy could want, apart from lunch.

So, in the NAAFI we had lunch. I ordered spinach and ricotta pasta and got beef lasagne instead, but who's counting. It was very meaty and cheesy and hot and of splendid quality and I was full, and it had lots of mushrooms in that I'm sure I don't like but he didn't tell me until I'd eaten them all.
The ride home was easy in comparison and we didn't put our shirts back on cos' of why not and I got Minecraft time before swimming. Afterwards I got cramp so proffered my aching legs to Jof to get a massage and make her feel better after her long day at work.

Having some Trouble taking off, Wing Commander?

Spare time is wasted time, and you never get it back. So, in honour, we drove back past Chichester to the Tangmere Military Aviation Museum.
It's quite small and was started by aircraft enthusiasts, not the government so it doesn't have the funding to buy in all the top planes but they've done very well with donations and the exhibits in their glass cases go on for miles.
Straight away I loved the Harrier parked outside because I am a fan of the Harrier and want one after seeing one in True Lies. There are several more planes outside and a little armoured reconnaissance vehicle but the wartime air raid shelter and pop-up fort are closed for refurbishment.
We paid our entry fee and got our stickers and a pictorial guide and I went round naming all the craft and trying out the flight simulators. When bogeys were coming in from the south I couldn't find them and got shot down but I did manage to blow holes in a lot of clouds and that naughty ocean.
I liked the SOE exhibits with their knives and guns and maps hidden in metal suppositories and you'll never guess where the agents had to hide them. There's a decent selection of medals and almost all the aircrew had big moustaches, even the ladies, and I liked the lady pilot who delivered Spitfires all over England.
You can have a good old nose in lots of the planes and they have a working 30mm cannon that goes ka-chunk ka-chunk when you turn it on and there was a whole cabinet of 30mm Aden rounds and spare parts and radios and 500lb German bombs and incendiaries and there were guys welding the back of the Supermarine Swift.
The Dambusters were well represented and you can pretend to land a plane in a French field to re-supply the resistance and we saluted the Spitfire and did some bomb-aiming and watched the video of the airspeed record attempt and in the shop I got an Avro Lancaster and a copper pencil sharpener in the shape of a jet fighter.
The whole thing is in aircraft hangars in the corner of the old Tangmere wartime airfield and on Google Earth you can still see the runways and taxiways but it's mostly industrial estates now.
But because we'd started early, we finished early and pottered off to Emsworth where I got a spy book like the one Erin got me and went in the shop called Mungo's Emporium and also got 2 more bags of funny foreign coins and we had lunch in the Coal Exchange which was very nice and I ate all my scampi chips and peas and did not leave a crumb.
And hey presto we still had spare time (2 hours left on the parking ticket - but at least we were safe) but it was raining. I mean, why do we bother, it's supposed to be the last 3 days of the summer holiday and it's rained on both of them so far. We stopped off and bought school shoes and got wet. So far 43 of the coins are new to my collection, and we haven't even finished the first bag.

The Traffic Warden with X-Ray Vision

Days off. We all like them: and with Bud, they are filled with activities.
We see Obscure Cousin Margaret every now and then, and it was our turn to visit her in Boring Goring, driving past the place we're going to visit tomorrow. She had sent us a couple of flyers for local attractions: Amberley Museum and Heritage Centre, which reflects the area's industrial history over the last 150 years, and the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum, with its fascinating collection of rescued buildings in the South Downs National Park. For some reason, neither of these blew our skirts up so we planned to basically reprise a previous visit and just mooch around Worthing.
Firstly, Margaret gave us some splendid tomes (The Romance of Lace, Linen Cut-out Work 1953 and The Book of Family Handicrafts 1975) and some more family items (Lorna Doone, given to Obscure Cousin Frank in 1900 for passing his council Conveyancing exam) and some pens.
Then we drove to Worthing and put some money in the meter and I put the ticket on the dashboard and we went shopping. Worthing has some splendid shops (and apparently some pickpockets from London on market days) and we saw none of them. I did get a Lemony Snicket book and a couple of DVDs but the best was the Flea Market on Bath St which had a top selection of things you totally need such as brass shell cases, semi-antiques and curios. We got 15 funny foreign coins out of the help-yourself bucket including some from well-known countries like Rhodesia, East Africa and Mauritius.
After lunch at the same place as last time we went onto the pier which is MUCH better than our pier because some rich businessman has refurbished it to its pre-war glory and it looks like an ocean liner and we'll eat there next time.
The sandpit park with bouncing female beach volleyballers is still there but has a new splashpark. We nipped next door to the minigolf and all 3 of us played: towards the end it started raining a bit but we finished the round because we're Pompeyites and therefore waterproof. But then it got heavier and we sent Bud off to get the car while we hid in a bus stop.
The parking ticket ran out at 1543. Between 1541 and 1546 a traffic warden monitored our vehicle and issued a fixed penalty for not displaying a valid ticket: at 1550 Bud got to the car. Problem #1: I'd put the ticket on the dashboard upside down so all the warden could see was the phone number for 'Would you like to advertise here?' on the back. But the warden obviously had X-Ray vision and so we had no comebacks, for technically we didn't display a valid parking permit, nor did we actually have one. Can't blame the dumb kid, however much you want to. Goodbye £35.

SPITFIRES! (Probably)

Hooray. Another lazy day with Jof.
But I was just doing 5 minutes on the tablet (a Greek 5 minutes - 3 1/2 hours) when the message came through from Grandad: Scramble! Scramble!
As I'd already had a boiled egg that morning, scrambling seemed unnecessary. But this was a reference to the 75th anniversary of the Most Tedious Day of the Battle of Britain in which far too many lives were lost fighting it out over the skies of southern England for air superiority to precede Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of Britain by Mr Hitler and his friends.
To mark the occasion, 3 formations of wartime planes left Biggin Hill and did tours of duty over England and our group, 8 planes including SPITFIRES came over Portsmouth and did a fly-by.
Well, I was planning on trying out my remote-controlled boat on Canoe Lake anyway so we arrived 70 minutes early in honour of a garbled phone message and I drove the boat around the lake, harassing people on their pedaloes.
I also scared off seagulls various and targeted ducks, not that I was ever going to capture one at the sedate speed my boat could manage. We had lunch at the Café and I had a go on the bungee cord trampoline and the caterpillar bouncy castle and I beat Jof at Mini-golf 51-57.
The Spitfires must have come over at some point because we heard their roary engines but it was cloudy and they were too high and we couldn't see them. I am programmed to salute Spitfires (and we do see a few over Pompey due to our historical nature) for saving our botties in the war, shame we missed them today.
Bud brought spare yacht batteries and I chased more gulls and some crabbers had caught 2 massive crabs and they had a fight in the bucket and one got its eye snipped off by the pincer of the other and there was blood everywhere, gross. In the end I dropped the remote control in the lake so we went home.
At gymnastics I got an orange gobstopper which was nice but it did not technically work as I kept taking it out of my mouth to babble on about it at length.

Shapes on the Road

The holidays of a child are greater in number than the holidays of both parents combined. Thus I spent another day care of the childminders I know so well, having been with them, on and off, for four or five years.
I declined to play the sporty games as they contained wrestling, so I did story-writing and drawing instead.
I wrote a brilliant story about a boy, 10, loose on the High Street, who is scared by an appearing wizard-type and runs in panicky fashion into the nearest pub where he meets his father. We never got to hear how this turned out, as I "ran out of time".
Perhaps he enjoyed a pint or 2 of Old Grumbler and shot a few frames of pool with his Dad, or maybe Daddikins turned out to be a sleeper agent for the Ministry of Magic and sallied forth spouting flares of revenge from a wand he has cleverly concealed in his vaping contraption.
I spent time with a small girl who is in the next gymnastics class to me and an even smaller boy whose football shirt suggests his name was Hazard, although he wasn't dangerous at all. My drawing is the good old N-dimensional folded-space free-form √∞ matrix, different every time, always loved them. I entitled it 'Shapes on the Road'.
Later we went to B+Q and bought a new bedside lamp for me. It turns out I already had the lowest wattage available, but if you use an LED lamp and put a sticker over the front ...
This is my 5 year blog-iversary.

Con Water

Today was effectively a day of Minecraft. Even meals were finger-food so I didn't have to stray too far from a screen. Having tried to break the internet by watching every Minecraft-related Youtube video ever made on both the computer and the tablet, I played it on the X-box and gave Jof a running commentary about how groovy my Redstone pyramids were, even though she never answered and kept harvesting her penguins on HayMaker or whatever.
He did briefly force me into the park for a climb, we found that someone had drawn a very big penis on the top of the pyramid-of-ropes pole, I'm not sure it's supposed to do that.
All afternoon I eschewed the fresh air, I did not try out my remote-controlled boat (an Xmas present) and did not boogie to live music on the bandstand, swim in the sea or view the spectacle that is the International Kite Festival.
But I did find time to get Jof to tidy my room. I made a Police boat. It is transporting deadly prisoners in little cages like in Con Air, and they are all in freezing stasis like in Demolition Man. But of course it's Con Water, as it's a seagoing vessel not a C-123K prison transport aircraft. Behind it is my new photo frame, of official school shots only. A bit sparsely populated, I know, but there's time for it to fill up.