Can't! Won't! Shan't!

Nowadays school life is just blurring into an endless series of identikit days you can't tell apart. Fortunately this won't go on forever, I know my life as a grown-up shan't be this dull. Every day we do maths revision, revise some English, and, if we're truly madly exceptionally lucky, we get to do some work on our Evacuee projects.

Now, over the period, my current owners have tried their best to help jolly up my school projects and activities: during the 2013 Nativity play I was 'Gold' King Melchior wearing actual gold chains, I have a wartime suitcase for my Evacuee project, and my own chimney-sweep brush for the Victorian Festival of Christmas. Some things cost money, some cost effort. This time I have 2 cardboard boxes that will make a very natty table at a price of £zero. But Child A in our group bought Ration book replicas and sweeties for prizes and we were just cruel to her. No fair.

And I took Ben home to prepare for Park Monday and that's when we saw the graffiti. Now, strike a light Guv'nor, we're men of the world, been there done that, know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, squire. But you don't need it drawn on your new back gate in permanent pen by some brat with big ideas from the local school.

So I took a picture of it and sent it to Jof, and Ben had the bright idea of covering it up with paper and he did a sad face to protect the smaller brats from the local school and then we did the park anyway, having used Microsoft Paint to clean up this image.

At one point Robert's birthday ball ended up on the roof so we repaired to mine for feel-better crisps and then Bud got home and we tried to clean the gate with white spirit and sugar soap and lighter fluid and in the end we just painted over it.

Robert reckoned that what they'd meant to write was "Fat, can't run" but that's just because he's young and innocent, and I just let him think that.

Then we took the ladder to the park (not for the first time) because doesn't everybody, and we got the birthday football back and a bonus tennis ball and then it drizzled so we all went home anyway, having done 90 minutes of sterling park work not including the bit where we used industrial solvents, sniff.

In Scouts I got my Level 4 Swimmer Badge and a section badge and we made Simnel Cakes for Mother's day. One of Flynn's marzipan nobs fell off and I edged my cake with lemon drizzle.

11 Hours of Snöre*

By the time I got up this morning, I'd managed 11 hours' sleep. Not bad for someone who's not yet a teenager.

I have very few duties per se, so I renegotiated down to only 1 homework, and helped unpack the shopping one item at a time. This left me righteously able to Minecraft, Youtube, Spore and fritter away the day while spring tried to arrive outside. This is our twisty-willow tree (not weeping-willow) with its first baby leaves of the season: soon the city will be bedecked with Devil's Lettuce and Diviner's Sage once more. Yes, I'm still in pyjamas.

* Snöre is a Swedish sweetie, that comes in the form of brightly coloured shoelaces (10 metres of Snöre!)

*Cough*

Last night I was commanded to get a good 10 hours + of sleep to try and help me recover from my cough and the tough week us 11 year-olds have. But somehow my heart just wasn't in it and I got up at a sensible time. The morning was passed in quiet solitude with a sturdy breakfast and the great god Youtube, who supplies my every need in return for daily devotion.

Meanwhile, more wood was provided for the Scout campfire, Ricin seeds were planted, and all the other little things that us chaps never notice happened in the background. In Acting we got to use the main stage which cheered us up no end, and we planned our performance of Under Milk Wood with choreography and costume changes and stuff.

I'm still coughing. On the way out, Sydney nicked a dog toy from the lost property and we fought over it all the way home resulting in 2 miles of giggles. On the way, we all went oooo at the 16th century house on the High Street that is up for sale (£1.5 million) with big chunks of history thrown in free. Called the Greyhound Pub in 1523, it still has a bar in its basement.

And we've got 3 new Schwarzenegger movies to watch (Conan the Destroyer, Expendables 2 and 3) but first I want the next 2 Matrices. Matrix 'Reloaded' was so long I had to go to bed before the end.

Imprisonment, Custody, Preventative Detention or Corrective Training?

Hooray for Friday, because it's Gardening. Apparently in later life I will see it as a cathartic end to the 5-day drag, and I'll have Friday on my mind. But, Blues classics aside, in Gardening we planted potatoes with an Irish accent and didn't even open my special care package containing 16 plant pots at low low prices and a bag of free highly poisonous seeds with explanatory leaflet and 14-day no-quibble guarantee.

Today I brought home an official school missive about our trip to the zoo. This educational trip is mildly different in that we will be sleeping rough in the giraffe enclosure, or the reptile house, or the Llama cabana or monkey world, I forget. So the municipal legal disclaimer letter is a little bit more comprehensive and actually asks us (we are 11 years old) if we are pregnant, have emotional conditions, or have been sentenced to custodial corrective re-education under the 'Cohaagen For A Better Mars' Directive 2113 for firearms offences. I mean, srsly, how many of us don't score at least 2/3?

But in the end my chesty-cough proved tedious and Jof's damaged wrist proved tedious and that meant Bud had to cook supper so we got a half-baked mixture of everything in the fridge which may be indeed full of vitamins but can't I just have chocolate pasta?

Working towards a Badge

This afternoon I had supper at 515 because of a 3 hour rehearsal for the Wind in the Willows. Bertie accosted us in the car park and asked us if we knew his mum was engaged: I guess that titbit passed us by in the society pages.

But soon enough we discovered it was only a 2 hour rehearsal, quite important for my personal chauffeur to know. All this counts towards my 'Entertainer' badge in Scouts. We ran through the performance a couple of times and tried on some costumes. Giving Sydney a lift home, she left a fart with us in the car, which was thoughtful.

Deja Mu - for the first time!

Yesterday, Pompey footing-ball club won 4-0 against fellow giants "Grimsby", I think I'd lose if I had a name like that. So that is what all the footing-ball-mad people were talking about today, even all the way through PE, and we were doing tennis. But I suppose the thing that mattered most to me was getting 40/40 on the maths test. This is something I'd never managed before - not because I'm a 7/40 innumerate cowpoke (with apologies to all those cow-pokers and associated dairy workers out there with degrees in applied maths) but because I am a regular 38 or 39/40 merchant, the eternal arithmetical bridesmaid.

Our project group had artistic differences about exactly what we could put on our market stall about wartime rationing, the chocolate bar prizes just had to go and we're now going to forge authentic ration books instead.

And after school I was just gently Minecrafting myself a 3x3 piston door when the actual door went and it was Dear Follower Martin, a person I have known since baby-times as a funny fan of mine, but who I regularly mix up with Blind Uncle Len, who died 5 years ago aged 92.

And so I showed him around and we spoke of physics, as you do. Then the others got home and there was a load of incomprehensible burbling, and not from me this time. Later, the fog descended and the ferries and passing night-time ships mooed their foghorns incessantly. I have heard this before (deja mu) but it's still pretty annoying.

Transcendental Medication

Maths, Maths and more Maths. That makes 3 Maths. See, I'm good at it.
Later, it was English. The standard form is a quantum of text and a randomly variable amount of questions, with a relatively high probability of being at least tangentially relevant. Sum total: boredom. (Baud rate of 100%, this'll never help me to become a Geek Orthodox Priest).

Jof was home before me so I got my time on Minecraft while she ironed and Bud sorted my Ringgits and Roubles, each activity a calming palliative after whatever kind of day they'd had.

A Park with Investment Potential

Well, right now, school is a collision of conflicting emotions. I look forward to it - and dread it. We will be doing a project on the Second World War and as such, will be having an Evacuees fayre. Also, we have to present mini-projects on our stalls in our allocated teams, I have 'Rationing'. Bud said that we should have an empty jar and say guess the number of sweeties in the Jar, win sixpence, but I think it's stupid. But so does Child A, who never shuts up. In fact, you can tell him to shut up while both teachers are telling him to shut up, and he will turn his chair round so he can talk to me more easily. I am looking forward to being in a different school.

Park Monday began (again) today and this time it worked brilliantly. The weather was acceptable, I took Ben home and we got to the park on time, then Robert and I came back to mine and raided the food cupboard, definitely putting a certain someone in charge of the plantation, lucky we'd bought all that cake yesterday. And we went back and we ran around and played football with varying degrees of success and Erin joined us and so did half of my class and, at one point, 4 Puddle-adults. Johnny told me about their sperms project and how they drew nuclear-powered jet engines on them to make them go faster, or gave them 'Blast' capability to kill all other sperms.

At Scouts I had Hurting Leg Syndrome and I stood dutifully for 25 minutes waiting for the rest of the Pack to shut up. Even when they were being told to shut up they discussed being told to shut up, danced, swayed, poked each other and blathered. It cannot just be me: I am surrounded by babblers.

In the end we discussed making a film for a badge and I got the Model Makers Badge and got invested, which is where you make the Scout Promise in front of a god of your choice to be a good Scout and help old ladies cross the road and stuff. Flynn told me all about 2 spiders having sex in a hole in the brickwork by his front door. Do you think we'd get a badge if we did a film about that?

Cake for Breakfast

Got up with an 11 in it and the fridge was empty. We could have eaten in the supermarket café while the shopping was being done but I opted for a roadside café a little nearer home. In the end we walked bleedin' miles to one that Jof had seen called the Cinnamon Café.

The food was nice if slow, I had a jacket potato. But the one complaint we both had, was that we were still hungry. So on the long trek home we popped into the Co-Op and bought chocolate and biscuits and cake, if your breakfast doesn't have a cake course you're just not trying.

Later I challenged Jof to 3 hours of Minecraft and I filled her house full of chickens and set fire to it with a Rain of Lava. She is quite good at chopping trees but I'm much better at everything.

One of my maths homework questions was draw a radius inside the circle printed on the page. So I did a radius, discovered it was a diameter, scrubbed out the excess radius and re-did the first radius a few times to make sure. Problem was, it now looked like a set of traffic lights on fire, and Bud made me draw my own circle and do it again. Spoilsport, surely 4 radii are better than one?

NOT Kicking the Bucket

Hello Saturday! So, I was up first and gradually the dyno-sores re-animated and complained about tired bones and stuff.

Nowadays there is a distinct gap between getting up and actually having to do anything and I took full advantage. Now that I am a Full-Blown Scout Scout, I have wide-ranging responsibilities including helping the Scout Group Quartermaster get wood. Every Scout meet needs a bonfire and we have special skills in getting wood: in the past we have obtained pallets, cot beds, logs, chairs and many other cast-off furniture items from the tip. This time it was pallets aforethought and the garage is a splendid dismantling charnel-house with the lump hammer and the pickaxe and radio. I may not have helped in any physical way but it was done in my name, practically royalty.

Also we have a good line in cardboard boxes which wrap up the destroyed wood in neat packaging for easy distribution from stores. Here is the proceeds of 2 pallets and the kindling we scored from the park, with 2 pallets left to go.

Jof was invited out with the entire massed ranks of the PuddleMummies to drink Prosecco in the historic ale-houses of the Auld Whore-house District and so we dropped her off when I went to Acting. Last time I mentioned that I have so many hats and wigs and props that I should have some kind of giant bucket with my name on, to keep all of my stuff separate for the Under Milk Wood play. So, as per the unwritten laws of parenting, Bud bought me a giant bucket and named it 7th time lucky (beer) in permanent pen and took it into the theatre. I got mightily embarrassed by this and said do not even, but the nice kind Theatre Manager said gosh, that's a bodacious idea, well done that boy.

So now my named bucket will appear on stage (behind a prop) for Sydney and I to grab our many wigs and hats from. The car park was full of big expensive cars because a group of men from the RMT Union were having a meeting and telling jokes about women are only cleaners and should stay in the kitchen. On the way home we laughed lots because she has a sound-effects app on her phone and we made up stories about the chicken on the lawnmower who punched the crying baby and went boing and the audience clapped etc.

We had an all-too-brief period of quiet while Jof was out with the Prosecco and the cobblestones and the babbling and we saw 'The Matrix' which was really funny with the bullets and the Kung Fu and the gucky human-pods and the Terminator-style leather coats and then Jof came back still talking and I had to go to bed.