Scotty's Magic wonder show

Max W had his 5th birthday party today in the hall in the park. It's 175 yards away but we were still late. Silly Scott did the magic show and we all had MacD happy meals. I got a party bag and a balloon turtle and stroked the real rabbit and danced around a lot with my schoolfriends. Max W is off to Butlins tomorrow so I wonder what apartment he'll end up in.

Then, while we were in the back garden, a small child my age called Finn from #30 climbed up the trellis in his house, through the little gap between the 4 adjoining properties and got stuck above our compost heap. He couldn't climb back so had to be rescued and piggy-backed back round to his place as he wasn't wearing any shoes. His parents were most surprised that he came back in the front door. After that there was a frantic bit of gardening both sides of the great divide with a trellis being dismantled their side and all the invasive virginia creeper and ivy going from our side. I trundled up and down the garden delivering chopped ivy to the now enormous compost heap.
Then Erin came round and took me away from all this to play in the giant Kardboard Kastle and have tea round theirs. I ate lots and had a great time, even got to borrow her magic wand expressly against her vocal wishes.

Popsio, Popsio, wherefore art thou....

Last night they said don't get up too early so I made it 0900, which was accepted. After an extremely relaxing morning (and a laugh at the test match) we wandered up to Gymnastics and stopped off at Kirby Swingpark to see the smelly animals and play on some new stuff. They have a skateboard slider which is always a risk.

Soon I'm going to swimming lessons, just as soon as the swim dept woman gets back to work. Football was loud, nice to hear all the old songs again, although I don't understand them yet.

Check #1 completed on PopsHouse: it's still there but a right old con as Pops said I could go round and play, I couldn't find anything worth playing with.
I spent lots of time today making rockets out of cups and toilet rolls. This was so I could perform my puppet show (based on an unoriginal idea from Butlins) called "Goldilocks and the 3 bears with rockets". Hollywood beckons, if they can remake Conan the barbarian, they'll do anything.

Back to reality - again

0030-0430. Jof visits toilet 3 times in a gesture of solidarnosc with my double-ended tummybug. He stayed awake all night with a lead-lined nearly-on-the-verge-of-joining-her tummy. The boys had an extremely light final breakfast (and purloined many small jams) while Jof hid in a dark room hoping it would all go away.

Then we exchanged all our yellow tickets (including 2 kind donations from random passers-by) for 2 identical fragile plastic tractors (best of Chinese manufacturing) and a bag of Toy Story marbles.

This pretty well did it for us so after a swift couple on the carousel while Jof made her peace with the toilet we escaped back to the concrete reality of Portsmouth to discover the world has gone mad in my absence, burning towns and going shopping at midnight with half-bricks. I shall have to re-exert control.

What could possibly better the holiday I've just had? Only a Pops, who's been away on her own holiday up north. She came round to save me from my 4th consecutive hour of TV so we played, visited swingpark (I've missed 2 Wednesday parks so far) but this was cut short by exposure to locally occurring dogpoo. It turned out she'd been looking after our house while we were away and with Erin's help had checked in all our cupboards saying it wasn't the same without me. She's right. It's good to be back with the girlies that adore me.

The fun of the fair Vs the tummies of splutch

Late in the night I vomited again, this time in my bed. For the second wave of nausea I made it to the toilet and the double-ended tummibug reared its ugly doublehead. This meant I had to have another shower. The subsequent moist and aromatic loss of one of the twin beds in my room meant that we all had to swap round again, now all 3 of us have slept in all 3 beds. We voted to only get up at 0930 today.
0400. Seagull attack.

0900. Down to housekeeping to order up a new bed and thence to first aid where the nice highly-qualified man told me to drink plenty of fluids. Having got this out of the way I went on a variety of indoor kiddie rides. I watched Bud eat breakfast (I had juice) and then I enjoyed the Fireman Sam Magic Wonder Show in which he and his cohorts of assorted dubious accents urged us to wear helmets while riding bikes.

Eventually I hungered for a ham and crisp sandwich and visited the activity centre to do some quiet arts'n'crafts.

Last visit to the splashpool: final go on the boat ride of death etc until I banged my head on a slide (he tickled me so I fell over) and home. After supper we went to the bowling alley (fully booked) so frittered away our last remaining pennies on the machines with flashing lights. If I had my way, I'd never run out of coins.

The lurgy takes hold



These structures are made with hundreds of tiny neodymium magnets out of old hard disc drives.
830? What sort of a getting-up time is that? We are now more accomplished at stealing food from the breakfast room.
Morning foray: minigolf, carousel, tugboat, dune buggies again. Then I pretended I hadn't heard him say get out of the playzone: that's why we had to go home.

 

 

 

Then we lost Jof for an hour. Finally she reappeared (it's so easy to wander around missing each other in a site this size) and we had a picnic on half-inched food in a kitchen we didn't expect. Then I took Bud to the seafront where we caught the land train to the pier. It was low tide so we strode out onto the exposed sands and threw rocks at seagulls in a revenge attack for all the noise they make. We couldn't get on the pier but I watched a game of bowls and a horse-drawn funeral cortege. The promised minigolf would have been £7 so instead I was allowed on the bouncy castle/slide; the man forgot to take the token (£1.50) so I got a free go on the motorbikes as well. We bought some fudge for Jof (rule #17 of life, always buy your mother some choc or similar) and took the train back to go swimming.

We did the orange/green waterslide combo and then got in the boatride queue. We waited ages because one of the boats had overturned in the tunnel and they had to switch off the water and a lifeguard in a hardhat had to abseil down to rescue them. It was all very funny but it did waste 15 minutes of splashtime.

In the evening we went down to the giant pointy tent again and played pool and the 10p shoving machines and the horse game and all the machines with the flashing lights and went upstairs into the giant music hall where they were playing Cotton Eye Jo. I elected to get tired at this point even though I'd wanted to start a £15 game of bowling. On the way home I vomited into a completely different flowerbed, it's because I didn't drink all night and also because I like watering the flowers. I won't be allowed out at night again, shame about the pub.

I'm sorry. All our Batpeople are busy.....

This morning we rose early and hit breakfast buffet style. I had a banger and 2 hash browns but refused more as I have not yet gathered that that's it until supper. We strode forth to ye olde seafront and threw rocks. We were heading for the pier when Jof got the hump, I had a retaliatory tantrum and we agreed to go inside. I did playzone again, failed dismally to operate the broken dysfunctional unlabelled controls on the digger-scoop-O-matic machine and Jof went back to read on her own.

 

 

Thus I took Bud to the neighbouring Hotham Park (like Gotham, but no Bat-persons) where I climbed on the adventure playground, and he pushed me so fast on the rope-slide of death I went upside down at the end (but didn't fall off due to my immensely strong gripper-hands (and moveable eyes)). An american was sent by god to talk to us, amazing how often that combination crops up. There was a miniature railway, say no more squire. Lunch: chocolate and 2 bananas.

Afternoon activities: carousel, shimmying tugboat and go-karts again. Further swimming, in which Jof tried out the orange waterslide and on that basis elected not to go on the more complex and scary green, blue and boat slides. He did the blue one twice (with integral spinning cone-bowl of death) and we did the speedboat tunnel ride again.

For supper we accidentally went into the wrong restaurant but they let us off. I'm beginning to understand the term 'buffet' and made a cheese'n'fishfinger sandwich out of garlic bread. No greater ambrosia exists, in my book. After showers we went out again to the Red stage where I saw lots of big shouty men pretending to wrestle after waving flags at each other. I got a Butlins foam hand which I waved religiously until I destroyed it. After the event I got so hot I vomited in a flowerbed: this infraction was detected by a passing redcoat and he enlisted the help of 3 others to fill in some forms about how I didn't have legionnaires disease, salmonella or food poisoning etc. They just wouldn't accept I was a hot kid with a loose tummy.

The taking of Pelican 113

Strange, but true. Because we were going away for 5 days worth of drying time it was the best time to re-mastic the bathroom. While he did that, Jof balanced loading the car with my incessant demands to play hide and seek. And then..... we're off! 35 minutes later, we reached Butlins Bognor.

Jof booked us in while we went investigating directly into the large playzone climbing apparatus: very tall and extensive. Jof told us we'd been 'accidentally' upgraded from "Silver Room" to "Wizzo apartment" so hooray. I went on the free cars, teacups, bouncing ladybirds and rocket planes. Unexpectedly hungry, we had "Burger King" and I crowned myself king of the table. Outside there were dune buggies. One girl didn't understand the Go pedal and just sat there while everyone bumped her in passing. Then we had a go on the twirling pirate boat and watched the noisy multicoloured drummers. Then because she was still carrying the swimkit, Jof insisted we visited the giant pool. It's massive in there, bigger than the Pyramids. We tried out the terrifying boat ride (another load of expletives I haven't heard before), the orange waterslide, the "Norman" whiteslide, wave pool and spa. They also have many hoses, bubble volcanoes, giant hamster wheels and so forth but I'm only big enough to go on some of it, still, we did 90 minutes without blinking, they had to close the place to get rid of us.

After that it was buffet surprise at the Coral Beach. We went round twice which is the thing with buffets and I set a personal best with a 3rd course of ice cream. I poured it down my front but a lot of it went in my mouth. We snaffled many teabags, jams and sugars for tomorrow. We checked out the entertainment in the giant pointy tent: it seemed to be a world record attempt for the number of straws in a mouth. Clientele are in 3 categories: impecunious families such as ourselves with 1-7 kids, the elderly and Northeners, or a combination. The very tall pointy roof is full of lost helium balloons, Thomas Tank, Dora Ex and teddies. Then we went to the pub for 1 beer and 1 wine (total cost £9.50) because they had thoughtfully installed an adventure playground for us important people while the parents do the boring beer duties. Even after that I constructed a lego digger while Jof unpacked and collapsed. Showertime. There is only 1 very cramped shower cubicle so I was entrusted with my own washing. I had a sponge and a bottle of bodywash to last the whole week. I soaped and shampooed and resoaped until the whole bottle was gone. I was so clean that PopsMum could have eaten me whole but I would have to stay wet and smelly for the rest of the week. Either that or use Jof's bodywash which is pink and could turn me into a girl. They made me read my own bedtime story. What a bunch of poo. During the night we heard a lot of drunken teenagers trying to find their way back to their apartments amongst the endless serried ranks of apartments (ours is Pelican Terrace #113). There were also outbreaks of seagulls.

Colossus of roads to recovery day

I arose at 11, as befits a gentleman of my stature. I'm now going for the record of hours spent in front of the TV.

The hole in the fence II

In the mid-afternoon I adjudged myself recovered and announced that we would now visit the waterfall on my bike. The waterfall is the outflow of an ancient sump under Fort Cumberland that fills up when the tide is in, only to slowly disgorge its watery load when the tide is out. It thus makes for an excellent afternoon's work digging, damming, changing the course of the resultant river and generally mucking around. Even Pops loved it.

So Jof dropped us off in the car and we locked the bike and went looking for the hole in the fence (that we had found and investigated 3 days ago) to the old radar station. As suspected, it had been resealed with lots of new bits of wire. This is when we remembered the second, unrelated hole in the fence that we saw on Thursday, so we strumbled past the few hardy nudists in the howling gale and crashing waves and accessed the restricted military zone further down. We walked around the razor wire Maginot line-style, had a couple of blackberries by the gun emplacements and went in a derelict building (but didn't climb the ladder to the roof). Just when we were going round the corner to see the Victorian fort proper, we saw humans in the dry moat so basically ran away. Nobody chased us so we threw rocks into the sea for a while then rode home via the trains at tunnel park: we arrived at exactly the right time to catch the last train of the day - I mean, they were packing up even as I went round the track. 

I can't believe it's been a Yurr

  Today marks the first anniversary of the original PuddleParty at our place to mark the farewell PuddleDiaspora to our respective schools, when we assumed we'd move on to new friends. I suspect this is just the beginning, there'll be many more and indeed, 2 weddings (one civil, one crass).

Let's hope this rain stops.

On the way to Gymnastics (used the giant trampoline for the first time, you know, the one with an X in the middle) we delivered beer, stickers, garlic bread, aircraft carriers, solar lights and wine to Erin. She was earning her pocket money by washing the car. How come I don't get pocket money?

After yet more TV I helped Jof make the piňata. I painted it in a mishmash of garish colours including a slice of pizza. Then we filled it with goodies and readied it for hanging.

Jof was battling with her makeup for ages so we went on our own. All the noise was upstairs so I got stuck into boxwork straight away. Then it was just another 8-hour blur of Puddling during which the following may or may not have happened:

• Piňata
• chasing each other round and round the rooms that open at both ends
• flashing of tummies etc
• the invention of purest green
• cheeses of all nations
• dancing to hits of the 80s

The piňata was very resilient and it took a lot of banging to open. We didn't have anywhere good to hang it so in the end BensDad had to stand outside the garden in the bins'n'foxes passageway and poke a broomstick in through the fence, even then the hangy bit broke twice and the assorted PuddleDaddies had to poke sticks through it to hold it up.....at last, it showered us with chocolate, starfish and party poppers. As a group, we can get through 100 party poppers in under 3 minutes, we may have to enter some kind of talent contest.

There were also at least 2 3D HDTV DVDs, we had to pay Erin for our tickets which caused nearly as much trouble as Johnny's spinning tweeting motorbike which he kept setting off.

Homegroan. Stronger than you expected

At one point ElisabethsDad invented Purest Green (in liquid form, unlike Lord Percy's crystals) by carefully blending Blue Bols with orange juice, making it bright green. This habit became widespread so whenever we went outside we were confronted by our parents drinking greens (it's not one of your 5 a day) or in some cases, purples (add cherry brandy here, still not one of your 5 a day). ErinsDad got stuck in the Krazy Kastle and pulled a muscle trying to reverse out again, making him the only casualty, even though it was in constant heavy use. Erin has been allowed to keep it for at least 3 more weeks.
The speech that should have been
Fourscore and 1 years ago, our four fathers gathered together to recite the parrot sketch.....

In the end some of us started to drop off but when we had to wake Erinsdad up to get him to bed, it was time to go. Jof said I had to walk home, Bud couldn't give me a safe piggyback because he had the Jollywobbles. We got home at half past midnight, then it suddenly rained heavily so thanks to ErinsMum for booking just the right slot of good weather.

We'll be doing a bonfire party round at ours, luckily the 5th is a Saturday.

Come for the rattlesnake rodeo. Stay for the spinal reconstruction

Going to Erin's place later today to begin installing the Kardboard House of Kraziness. I suspect she'll sleep in it tonight.
Had a very lazy morning, so ended up going shoe shopping later than planned. Met Elizabeth down Gunwharf (I meet people I know everywhere, preferably female).
On the way back - TRAGEDY!! The bus driver asked how old I was and promptly charged me for riding on the bus. I thought this was excellent as I got my very own ticket, but it sadly means the end of plausible denial and a cheeky 50% rise in travel costs. Let's hope I don't pay for trains for a while yet.

Erin's holiday writing diary is much better than mine. For a start, she can write, and secondly, she can write in English.

So while I was buying shoes, Erin Towers was built and safety-tested by an adult (carpenter, test out thine own scaffold). It's good to bounce on as long as you don't fall off the roof which has no retaining fence. By the time we get there, it may have been completely redecorated. Her word of the day is "Wensleydale" so expect to see that on the box.

 In an unpredictable move, The JoniBobs revealed that they would be at the Pirate Ship Pub this evening so we all managed to join them,including Ben's parents, even though they didn't have a Ben who was in Cornwall.

We did our best to drain our parent's pockets by demanding many costly pineapple juice bottles, and played hide and seek on the increasingly complex junk pile by the gate. There's now a trailer and some random bits of fence to go with the dead bench and disembodied door that we played on last time. By the third pint we all got a bit ratty so they called it and we went our separate ways, busy day tomorrow after all.

I changed Sky channel during a timer recording so they recorded me changing channels 8 times and finally landing on the Little Einsteins instead of Futurama, they'll love that when they find out.