A Fragment of my Imagination

"Rain, rain, go away, come back another day." Problem is, too many people say this and now there's a backlog of waterlog to get through.
Jof drove me to work in the fartmobile and at the end of the day I had to scoot home in the deluge because a little bit of rain won't hurt us, will it.
Once I'd put my trousers on the radiator 5th time lucky, we had to go out again to give lots of bedding and towels to the homeless shelter. Oh no, they said, we can only accept towels. So we had to go through each bag in their little lock-up foyer and take out everything that wasn't a towel. Lucky for them, there were still 73 towels.
Everything else went to the charity shop down the road, so now we can see our own carpet again.
Jof and I play Hayday. We plan each purchase weeks in advance because it takes weeks to build up enough HayMoney for the big things in life, and you have to shear all those sheep or feed the pigs etc to make the money.
35 grand we needed, for a jam machine. Every day we discuss how close we are to achieving our goal, then she gets back from work to discover I've spent all of it on a reversible chicken spanner. This is why I'm not allowed to go on either tablet or watch the TV for a week. Twice today I've asked to watch TV and once I managed it while Jof was upstairs, and we're only on Day 1, for I am like Talkie Toaster from Red Dwarf, and I thought she might have changed her mind in the meantime. So I ate my luxury fishcakes at the table, with a book.

The Work I do for Charidee

I had breakfast in Sainsbury's again because it worked out so well for me last time. Nothing wrong with fish fingers for breakfast.
At home we got lots of Nanna's stuff down from the loft and sorted it into Keep, Upgrade the thing we've already got, and Charity. So now we have a better ironing board, stuff in the kitchen, long mirror, that kind of thing.
I like using the 3 inch tape dispenser to seal boxes, maybe I could get a job like Bud's, or maybe I'll actually make something of myself.
Yesterday we had a mystery. One of the mousetraps was missing. Who, we asked ourselves, would take the trap but leave the bait? Is it another of those little mysteries left by the Saturday Night Beer Monster to confuse us all, like the keys in the sink last week? No, it was in fact SuperMouse, which was incompletely dispatched and dragged the trap under the cooker.

Moving on to the past

Jof has a cold. We all have it and coughed and dribbled in unison, what family solidarity.
St Luke's church in Stone Cross was advertising a jumble sale and I've always wanted a jumble so we walked up in the rain to the tune of whose idea was this anyway.
Instantly we stepped back in time by 40 years which is something I try not to do, as I'm not qualified to deal with the sadly empty but spacious church hall with pictures of the local Beaver Scout troop and some chaps of limited learning potential and really quite a lot of linen.
Jof was savvy enough to bring up a bag of towels from Nanna's place and in no time, some were sold on to a man who went round sniffing all the towels and sheets. He didn't take the bath mat.
But there was nothing there for me and while they got 4 books between them (Delia Smith's books cost 50p each? Who does she think she is?) I sat at the exit waiting for the egress.
It came soon enough and I posed for a funny by the statue of jesus looking all welcoming and we left for the real activity of the day.
The Sovereign Centre is a big sports place on Eastbourne seafront with swimming pools, gymnasium and stuff. We parked in a really big puddle and got our car park token for 50p and saw a squash court with blow-up ship hosting a birthday party for lots of very excited 6 year-old girls and a burger outlet that we ignored.
The swimming pool was ace. It has a main pool with one waterslide of impressive length and a hosepipe and waterfall and round hot-tub where people were deliberately going round the same way to make the water spin and we jumped in and got told off by the lifeguards.
They do have a wave machine and it looked like 'Ripple Alert' rather than proper wave alert but there was a bit where the water gets shallower so the waves get taller and we dealt with 3 wave alerts and swallowed far too much pool water.

Then Jof found out that there were 3 other pools. One was a swimming-lesson pool of only 90cm depth and one was a boring going-up-and-down lengths pool so she did some lengths, but the other one was a diving pool with 1.5 metre springboard and 3 metre solid board. I couldn't believe my luck and dived off the springboard and jumped off the top board many times. Bud found some black bricks on the bottom (4 metres deep?) that are probably from the scuba diving classes and brought a couple up to show me but nobody else could get them.
Lots of other kids (all older than me) were rubbish and fat and mal-coordinated and jumped in (or bottled out) in a variety of crap ways and we showed'em! But then I snuck in a bit more waterslide and wave alert and we went back to Nanna's with chlorine-y eyes and emptied the fridge and the bins and loaded up the car.
Jof wanted a final moment alone in the house that represented the last 15 years of her parents' lives so I jumped around quacking and shouting are we ready yet and stuff until she just gave up and we gave the keys to the estate agents and left the area forever, bang, just like that.
At home there was quite a lot of unpacking so I watched 'True Lies' because it's been ages since I'd seen Arnie in action and it got me out of the way.

Give That Man an Eyebrow (no, let's be generous, give him 2)

Today we drove to Nanna's house for the last time. We only made it out of the house at noon and I got all sad on the way thinking about how much I miss her. I counted the traffic lights at the Shoreham airport turnoff - 23. The council must have blown their traffic light budget all at once.
We did one trip to the tip and one to the charity shop and our work was done. So to celebrate we bought a lottery ticket and hit the damp parks for the last time. 2 girls tried to teach me the hanging-on on the parallel bars trick and I did improve until Bud banged my head on the slide and I retired hurt.
The charity shop that will collect all of Nanna's furniture is very lucky indeed as there is an entire houseful. I got a Lego 3-in-1 orange race car 31017 to keep me quiet and that lasted all of 7 minutes. Then I helped by testing all the pens and going under the beds to retrieve long-forgotten detritus and wiping the skirting boards and jumping around with Nanna's collection of hammers going rarg and badoosh, something I'm good at.
One of the promised bonuses for making this final journey was a revisit to the "Holly Blue" carvery. Nanna took me there once and Jof drove us there for the Nanna Memorial Last Supper. I chose the table right in the corner past all the exposed beams, turn left at the picture of Eastbourne Pier c1905, and we all had the carvery with drinks, total price £17.
Nanna was a northern monkey (Lancashire) so was never satisfied until everything had been eaten so we had seconds of vegetables and then eyed up the desserts cabinet. I had the chocolate indulgence sundae, Bud said he'd share a choc cheesecake with Jof so that nobody had diet issues and we left Jof to order it all. Then she came back with a cheesecake AND a giant chocolate Gateau so we told her off. Only I finished my pudding - the others failed. We sat around going Ogod I'm an obese monstrosity with our tummies going groinkle.
Decades ago, JofsDad was confusing the bar staff in a pub in Old Portsmouth which enabled the blatant theft of a sundae spoon which we still have. In honour of the late Nanna, we permanently deprived the poor old carvery of one more sundae spoon. Outside, the thunder crashed in approval. Just think, if I continue this family tradition, by the time I'm a Grand-Dad, I could have a month of sundae spoons!

Impossible Without at Least 1 Live Chicken and a Rabbi

Today the teacher had made 100 chocolates for us and we honoured her dedication by consuming the lot.
Good old Billy Wind was out in gale force again and I scooted home against all odds, Phil Collins not included.
Now Jof had another of her days-off again so had done all sorts of chores and sorting things out: I earned some pocket money by running around the house delivering gloves and summer clothes to their destinations various.
But by far the most important thing that she had done was sort out my Halloween costume.
In the dim and distant, the people celebrating the one night of the year when the spirits of the dead roam abroad (maybe as far as mainland Spain) wore masks and pillowcases and make-up to avoid being recognised by said ghosties.
 It was thought that they could do you no harm if they didn't know who you were, which is about as much good as the current cures for Ebola like cabbage water and singing backwards.
But in our enlightened times, we dress up as pirates and demand sweets from local residents with veiled threats of past-their-sell-by-date eggs.
In 100 years, will the kids dress up as Islamic terrorists or rap artists? No, they will dress up as humans, because by then the Zombie Apocalypse will have happened and everybody will be a brain-slurper. So to anticipate future dress codes, here I am as my favourite character. See if you can guess who I am!
After another few layers on the Lego Tower Of Doom we had family Red Dwarf night.

Is this the product of a Marriage twixt Man and Gerbil?

Well, the swirly thing alert on the weather forecast did not augur well for Park Wednesday. So when we brought Ben home from school we Legoed a bit and then stood in the drizzle deciding whether to go out at all. Fortunately we are of sturdy stock and gave it the benefit of the doubt, and were proved right, because it stopped and didn't come back.
First we visited a giant stump from where they'd cut down a tree that was damaged in last winter's storms. Not sure why, but all the sawdust was really whiffy.
We got the bonus of a Poppy and an Erin, with LittleMax as well and got down to football while Pops and Erin had a cartwheel competition. Erin did get stuck in to the footy match a bit but Pops kicks like a girl so they withdrew their services while the autumn wind threw up vortices of flying leaves.
We were just trying to build 2 balanced teams (Ben against everyone else) when the JBs arrived and we all pitched in. When the ball went out of play and an adult returned it, I got very hot and bothered and screamed at the impudent scallywags with far less bad language than I could have used, but I had promised not to talk like Arnie.
Sadly the Bob'n'Ben Bootathon happened again and Ben wouldn't say sorry for being kicked and Bob wouldn't let it go and when I burst into tears for the second time Bud called time on us and removed us from the mix, to enable the others to at least make a go of it.
We continued our epic Lego session good as gold, you wouldn't have known anything had been amiss. BensMum says no footballs in future, for no good seems to come of it.
Later we all watched Red Dwarf episode 2, looks like this is going to be a nightly family-time event as I demanded to watch more.

Gazpacho Soup Day

Well that was an unexpected start to the day at half past 2 in the morning, when the mythical gods various (they're all mythical) fought each other in a noisy display of cloud-to-earth lightning bolts and thunderous self-applause.
On the way to school we found a trail of pennies. I'm not sure whether someone had laid the trail to capture a coin-hunter, but nobody captured me and I got 14 pennies all off the same pavement. Afterwards we visited Aladdins' Cave which is a charity shop in aid of distressed cats and picked up a couple of picture frames from their heavily loaded basement for my Red Dwarf pictures.
And after gymnastics (still no badge) we watched episode 1 ("The End") of Red Dwarf. I don't understand all of it yet but I will.

Everybody's dead, Dave

Well, Autumn totally arrived today, the Weather Guessers keep saying it's overdue. There was lots of rain and lots of wind, in that felicitous combination that detaches all the leaves from the local arboretum and shoves them wetly into your face.
After school we got home carefully through the slippery drifts of fallen leaves (fallen women available from Thursday) and brought many into the house with us.
For only £215 we got the car back which is a relief as we won't have to laugh our way down the street at 26 miles an hour in Nanna's car any more.
Continuing the Lego tower and railway build, we got a call from Jof to pick her up from work and take a colleague to the hovercraft. But outside at that exact moment was Ben, expecting to play Lego. So we took him with us, as you do, and I went to Jof's shop window and banged on it and she said no, actually, we're not ready to leave yet and it was change of plan, leg it and we had to drive home again anyway, couldn't run a fizz-up in a Coke factory, these women.
So we got 25 minutes Legoing and then scooted through the park to Scouts. Now, there's nowt so riskily unstable as 2 boys racing scooters at top speed on a smooth surface covered in wet leaves, but then some random dog ran up with us barking like mad and had a nosh at my ankles. It'd just moved on to nibbling on Ben when Buds' foot accidentally connected with the manic mutts' head and we were safe again.
In Scouts we played benchball and James threw the ball so hard it knocked out a ceiling tile and the ball was lost above the suspended ceiling.

DEFCON 3: Nerdageddon!

At last! The Terminator exhibition I've been looking forward to for so long.
So once I'd had a fortifying fried breakfast we left the house. That's when we remembered that the car was still at the garage and we had to use Nanna's car. With trepidation we approached it and marvelled at its doors that you have to open with an actual key and stuff.
It was noisy and blarty and slow and rubbish, but not as noisy as us, as we guffawed our way across town. Once we were on the motorway we tried to break its all-time speed record. Under normal driving conditions, it will noisily blart along at about 70, but on the mainland you actually get hills and we planned an assisted descent and got it up to 85! But this is only possible going downhill and once we were going up the next hill, it was back into the inside lane and trundling blartily along at good old 63.
Amazingly, we made it to Totton. This rather sad I'm sorry delightful conurbation is just past the Redbridge roundabout and in no time we'd identified the Totton Conservative Club which was the venue. Parking clumsily down a side street, we gave thanks for safe deliverance and moseyed on over to the event proper.
For only £9 we got a green wristband each and discovered that the festival had grown and spread into 3 venues, the Conservative club, some kind of respite home/lounge for old people, and the civic offices (no public toilets). But these places were only yards apart so it didn't matter.
Each one of them added up to roughly the same idea as the film festival we'd been to last year, indeed, if you read the description you wouldn't know which was which.
1.  The room is dark and worryingly malodorous.
2.  The room is full of stalls selling Lego, posters, figurines and tat at more than the average price.
3.  Actors that you have heard of, and actors you haven't will sign photos of themselves for money and you get to have a picture with them.
4.  Random Daleks, Stormtroopers, Yodas, droids, girlies in high heels and breasty suits, Vaders, Ghostbusters, Jedis and Spidermen called Steve wander throughout the event and will strangle you for photos.
5.  Various large vehicles, coats that were once used in a film, Tardises and wigs are on display and you can have photos near them.
But it's all rather fun and we pootled around lashing out money on diverse Star Wars-related Lego and suchlike. What I like best is that every item purchased just goes into Buds' bag so you lose track of how much you've got and spent, and I get away with buying more.

At some point we knew we had to eat so went to the Totton Fish Bar where we had chicken McMorsels and chips which we ate in a pedestrian precinct, for we know how to live in style. The Ghostbusters had Costa coffee, maybe busting makes them feel good.
We got a couple of brightly coloured Lego Daleks and saw the Terminator display and you could buy Arnold Schwarzenegger's autographed picture for £140 if you wanted to, or Vitali Klitschko's autographed boxing glove for £60 and loads of other stuff like Star Trek mugs, Tardis piggy banks and Incredible Hulk models.
Remote-controlled droids various wander around beeping and I met a really big golden Dalek who invited me to dance, said he wouldn't exterminate me at all.
Last year we got Richard Kiel's picture so were determined to get more. Mr Dave Prowse was there and would sign a picture of Darth Vader for £40, and possibly give some tips and hints on the Green Cross Code. But that was a little too much so we found Holly (Hattie Hayridge), Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) and Rimmer (Chris Barrie) and got all of them. Now that's what I call a success.
Then the whole lot of Cosplayers lined up in front of the 35 foot Staypuft man and we got a picture with a Predator, some stormtroopers, Mr Vader (again), Yoda with pet Wookie and a bounty hunter. Why is it that the female costumiers always draw their ladies with big heels and breasts and exposed midriffs? I may never know.
Then we got back into the rubbishmobile and blarted our way to Grandads' place. He lives in an Elizabethan mansion nowadays, and it has a security gate with intercom thing. Now what you do, is you press the call button and somebody crackles through the little speaker and you say visitor for Finkleman or similar and they open the gate with their magic button.

But it didn't happen this time and the gate intercom thing actually went to answerphone. I'm not kidding, we sat outside the driveway and the freakin' gatepost invited us to leave a message. Once we'd stopped laughing, I hopped the fence and jumped around on the other side to try and set off the sensor but I wasn't heavy enough so I had to go inside and summon a member of staff to open the gate. That's when Grandad walked past and we all laughed about it. He pointed out that I have a little pot belly, but I couldn't help but notice his paunch is getting bigger too, maybe he didn't have a Week Of Healthy Living course at his school in 1930s South Africa. We left a message on the gatepost intercom system anyway.
He gave me a Gibraltarian £1 coin and a small snake, as you do. We uprooted a dead tree for him and then blarted our way home where Jof was still cooking.
Hurrah for everything.

The Cannonball Run

Jof went to work again so I got up when I felt like it. We walked through the rain to the barbers where I was left £10 to decide my own haircut, I find Grade 1 the best. I got a lolly as well, bargain.
I wanted to play Lego and I suppose we did, but it took so long to clear up the mess left by successive sessions with Harry and Ben that I only got to add one layer to the tower before lunch.
Then we loitered for ages waiting for the garage to phone and say the car was ready. During this time we had Film Afternoon and the one at the top of the list was 'Cannonball Run'.
It's both funny and dreadful at the same time. Due to my training in films I can now understand the joke "They weren't Fathers, they were Mothers" and the sound was just a little bit divorced from the action but I loved the Hells Angels fight and could follow the storyline but everything is so gloriously Seventies with vast open spaces and hairstyles, empty roads with no Walmarts, gently suggestive remarks and lots and lots of famous faces I don't recognise.
The garage never rang, so we didn't get the car back. Thus while I was willingly abducted by Ben for hours and hours and supper, Bud had to get a driving lesson in Nanna's car so we could go to the Terminator exhibition tomorrow. Ben and I Legoed, mostly, it was ace.