Hot lager with croutons

Following last nights' national debate on self-determination and the right to choose the time and manner of your own death, Mungletonix Products brings you -

Ten Top Tunes to Top Yourself To™

INTERVIEWER – “So, did the TenTopTunes™ work for you, Phantom Presence formerly known as Mr Higginbottom?”

SPIRIT – “Yes, I wanted to kill myself anyway what with the bankruptcy and everything, but the TenTopTunes™ really pushed me over the edge”.

INTERVIEWER – “Well, that’s not quite true, is it – you threw yourself over the edge, aha – of Clifton

suspension bridge, wasn’t it?”

APPARITION – (Laughs jovially) “Yes, that’s right. I just couldn’t stand it any more – had to get away from it. But even as I fell, that dreadful noise haunted me all the way down.”

INTERVIEWER – “So, you were using the MP3 version, then?”

GHOST – “Yes, it really helped me not to change my mind halfway down”.

INTERVIEWER – “So, Shadow Wraith the late Mr H, or can I call you Julian, would you buy our product again?”

SPECTRE – “Well, I’m not sure. Do you have any tips on how to play Death at chess?”

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At going home time, Erin arrived and asked if I could go round to her place on a playdate. Tragically, Bud said No because we were busy. However much I hit him, howled and bubbled on the floor etc all the way home, he wouldn't say why. They say parents screw you up and I will have surprise-related psychosis for the rest of my life. When we got home I forgot all about this and was sitting naked making a lego maze when LittleMax arrived on a pre-arranged playdate. We did lego, trains, searching for Bens' lost robot and so on. After a joyous interlude where we sat on different toilets and sang to each other, Bud took him home without even changing out of his carpet slippers.

You don't need another hero

Going to after-school club today because Bud is at the dentists and I really can't be bothered to sit through all that, with the drilling and the screaming and the not being allowed to bang on the fishtank.

For todays' show'n'tell I had planned to take a map of Paultons Park with all the rides marked off but Bud seems to have ditched it helpfully. So Jof and I made a pair of volcanoes with cotton wool smoke and that'll have to do.

After-school club has a real cash register and I particularly like selling things with it, only problem is there are hardly any coins. Bud made a huge bag of old 5/10/50 pence coins but Jof bought a packet of plastic coins and notes so I'll just hold on to the real coins until I go to the Junior school and can then get Brownie points for taking them in.

The wind and rain yesterday knocked over a lot of our plants. So we harvested the spinach and pre-steamed it for the freezer (smelled of heavenly ambrosia), it'll make me big and strong because we always make up complex extemporaneous fertiliser preparations like some kind of insane medieval Bio-Apothecary.

Then Pops arrived in a flash of purple and glitter and we scooted till supper. She has been given a second rabbit hutch for her one rabbit. Will she:

1. Organise timeshare between the main hutch and the holiday hutch down the bottom of the garden
2. Attempt to join the 2 together as a hutch with extension/ancillary accommodation
3. Install hutch 2 as a mezzanine level

For some, a fate worse than death (6,4)

Up at 8. Jof told me to go back to bed so I tried again at 9.

Rain all day. Might go down Pirate Pete's later, I've been lego-ing with Jof for hours.

After lunch I went round to ask Pops if she wanted to Pirate with me but she was out. Bud rang loads of my friends but they were all busy if they answered at all, so rejected and dejected, I went on my own.

The weather was horrible, with that horizontal rain that goes right in your ears and up your nose. The seafront is very exposed so it was difficult to fight against the wind especially if you only weigh as much as 2 sparrows.

Inside I only knew one person, one of the JoniBobs' schoolfriends but I joined in partisan games of attack the other team with ballpit balls etc and Bud and I spent half an hour seeking high and low for the fabled secret treasure map of Eleuthera but it has been officially lost forever.

Outside the numerous hovercraft struggled in the gales - they were having real trouble landing. I wondered why there seemed to be so many hovercraft - only later did I realise they were repatriating thousands of soaked Isle Of Wight Festival-goers, who had probably had quite enough rainwater without having to risk seasickness on the choppy Solent. Inside I struggled to maintain possession of Troll Bridge with a new temporary girlfriend with very bouncy pigtails, don't tell Pops.
Bud and Jof are being very unfair. They keep telling me I have to do what I'm told. But I can't hear what they're telling me because I'm jumping up and down hooting so what do they expect?

My mind is a beacon in the vale of the night (Kershaw)

Got Bud up at 0800 by jumping on him. When he suggested I get dressed, I burst into tears and hid in my bed for an hour, enabling him to have a quiet breakfast.
When I finally arrived at the fridge in the attire of the day, he suggested I have breakfast. I burst into tears and hid under the table for 20 minutes. He says it'll be cheaper if I don't eat, also he won't have to buy bigger clothes and shoes if I don't grow.
I do this to remind him that only a couple of years ago, I was 2.
On our standard bottlebank+tunnel park walk we met 4 of my schoolfriends and also current Puddler Laughing Boy Thomas who will join me at my school in the autumn.
After another sterling effort at my regular gymnastics class we took the bus right back to Milton where we went to the "Picnic on the Green" event at St James' field on Locksway road (known to me as the Mad Hospital). There were many stalls from the usual Tombola, cakes and face painting to the less usual Hampshire against Fluoridation and Young People for Their Own Political Party. Many people were leading their dogs around a course for no apparent reason but they seemed to enjoy it.

 We toured the tents (I threw the basketball nowhere near the basket but tried anyway), didn't really buy anything but then met Elizabeth and stayed to listen to the storyteller in wizards' uniform and then watch the marching band. HMS Tenacity provided the band and they were absolutely excellent I'm sure, video provided here so you can judge their talents for yourselves. There was a fire engine so I got inside and flashed all the lights and met one of my classmates, Bud says that if I get her back in the cab of a fire engine in 20 years' time then I'm well in there but I didn't understand.

So then Beth and I went on the bouncy castle and found Ben and family, Laughing Boy Thomas arrived (and Half-Chinese Emma and loads of schoolfriends) and I queued up to buy myself a blue ice lolly (Mr Bubble) that I didn't like last time (BensMum pointed out that Ben and I had one just before our pub garden punch-up, not sure if that involves E-number overloads) and then it was off to climb trees. Ben threw his red toy car up into a tree and it reportedly never came down so we all had fun drinking Bucks' fizz and searching unsuccesfully for it. Then an overly anxious Jof arrived and lavished hugs upon me, whether I wanted them or not. Happy 30th to BensMum.

Beth took part in the sack race and came last by a very long way but grinned and persevered all the way till the end, which is apparently what it's all about.

Then home to eat the top quality lunch (at 5.20 pm) that Jof had made for us before she realised we were down the Fayre and several hours of Tom'n'Jerry while she had a nap.

Bath Fizzer night music: Tom Jones and Jools Holland before supper #2 of sausages and even more sweetcorn, watch the toilet for updates. Fizzer night finished suddenly when I slipped and banged my head on the tap.
Here is one of a series, hauntingly entitled "Catalogue Man"

Orthodox, Metadox, Paradox

Bathing a dirty cat    Tragic hero-cat "Schrodinger" attained a bubblegum-related quantum fur entanglement so needed a wash. It was uncertain, principally, and began a high frequency harmonic oscillation which set up acoustic resonance in the confined test bed of the bathroom, and took up a superposition on top of the medicine cabinet. I shifted fundamentally to a strong nuclear force and got it in the bath. There was a certain amount of chaotic fluid dynamics: I tried to force a non-perturbative regime and eventually the complex spatial wave function in the bath collapsed and the bubblegum underwent catastrophic decoherence.

After that the cat and I experienced a permanent classical bifurcation and it never came back.

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Erin's losing a second front tooth! At this rate she'll never be able to eat again, and the tooth fairy will run out of money. Ran home to continue building on my boat project. I've put in several Mun-hours already, the fleet should be ready for Navy Day.

Funny you should say that

Many parents threaten their young with dire consequences if they do not study hard at school, pass exams and so forth, and mine are no exception. They have threatened me variously with becoming

1. Bus driver

2. Sandwich Board Technician

3. Bag packer at the tills at Asda

but only a couple of days ago I stated that my ambition was to corner one of my 2 favourite target occupations: Truck Driver and "To work in a shop that sells lots of things, like Sainsburys'".

So I might as well not bother to work hard at school, then.

We picked up Ben direct from his nice modern school and drove to Football where Bud played silly-goalie for us and the rest of the kids. Bobert arrived but Johnny was in a Big Strop so didn't get to play. During the football a van driver missed the middle of the road and tried to drive down an imaginary lane occupied by some parked cars. It squashed 3 other cars into a long joined-up line of vehicles, 2 of which were owned by the football coaches. This all happened right next to the JoniBobs' car but it wasn't hit. Many people stood and talked about it and then 4 large policemen came to talk about it as well.

Health and safety gone mad - know your enemy

A man visited Bud at work yesterday and told him he was bad for not having a "Caution - Heavy" sticker on his footrest. In other madness, he has recently had to complete Ladder competency, Lifting a Box skills, Pushing a Trolley coaching and Wearing Giant Plastic Spectacles While Tying up a Pallet of Boxes training. It's not just him, at Jofs' work, she is not allowed to change a lightbulb.

He has reached 41 without dying and recognizes the need for mentoring in not being dead so has started me early.

Balancing training age 2-5

  

Ladder, fire and firearms proficiency aged 2

Heavy lifting Qualification age 3

In the afternoon we went down the park where we met Poppy C, Zak and Zena. I played in the tyres with 3 girls as is my way, then the JoniBobs and Erin arrived to dilute matters. In the end Ben and Elizabeth made it as well so we ate and swung and hooted. Erin has lost some hair and a tooth. It was windy but warm so the last of us went at 615, a goodly 2 and a quarter hours down the park. Main topic of discussion still seems to be BensMums' party at the weekend that none of us were invited to. Did we miss something?

Lift me up, frisk me down

So Grandma got herself a new cat. I thought they might be cat-free for a while but they've rescued one that will hopefully be less pointless than the last 2. In its first week it bit Grandad on the hand so now he can't play golf. This is a shame, he was really good, he could hit those balls around for ages and never lose any down one of those holes.

Alannah is the bad girl of the class. She bit someone on the ear and put the whiteboard rubber down the toilet. Reception year students are not normally allowed to use the litter-grabber but I was selected to use the tool to remove the rubber from the toilet.

Here's one to make you laugh. I've no idea why Bud made me wave this way.
In the afternoon we cut the rest of the hedge down while Jof painted [she walked to the hardware store twice to buy paint and bought the wrong one both times, poor girl. Nasty shopkeepers for rearranging shelves like that] - well, I chopped one small branch and then was too tired so, my duty done, went off to play. This means we shall have to save wood and cardboard for a bonfire again. Incidentally, while we were chopping, a man in a van tried to sell us 2 king-size mattresses.
At suppertime I got my usual attack of the hurting legs at exactly the same time they turned the TV over to their programme.

Wynter of our discontent

I enjoyed my week off so much, can I have another one?
Jof had a day off today so picked me up from school. Bud did the shopping but then Jof told him about the shower - it puffed and spluttered and boiled and wouldn't work properly. This was lucky for us because Bud has now installed loads of these power showers that die at exactly the time their guarantees run out so he was able to nip down to the hardware store, pay loads of money, and have a new shower up and running in no time. I ate all the watermelon but that made me vomit so the carpet now has pink bits.
I got to try out the shower for the first time. What's a guinea pig?

Free at last

Up at 0730 to bring joy into the lives of others.
Jof did not come home last night so Bud says we can lock her out forever and we have to tighten our belts to pay for the house. I don't have a belt, so what do I do?

Jof came back this morning at 9. Apparently someone called Sam Buca didn't agree with her and she felt very bad about this argument and stayed in Bens' spare room. Her tummy wasn't feeling so good so she went back to bed but emerged 4-ish to come and watch telly with me.

Anyway so we still had Ben this morning and we went down to swingpark where we threw tennis balls in the skate park (quite funny graffiti - even we could do better) and got another go on the hanging basket. On the way we sang our special song:

"Poo and wee
On my plate
For my tea
Just for me"
There was hardly anyone else there. Drove Ben back to his house at noon where we discovered a bit of a mess, must have been a fun party. Walked down to Tunnel park but the trains weren't running in case it rained. It did drizzle a tiny bit but I think they could have made more effort, perhaps they're all too old.