Child-sized Soundproof Box £49.95 at B+Q

Definitely a day of drivelling and snivelling, not just because both parents have colds and the weather was dismal all day, but also because Woo-boy next door started his daily woo at ten to six in the morning. One wonders whether he will ever learn a second word.
Today Grandad told us that Winchester cathedral is going to have a huge scaffold put on it by giant crane so they can fix the roof.
That wouldn't normally be of much interest but we are all due to climb the tower next week so that'll give us an alternative route down again. Or it might just spoil the view.
Today 3 of my friends got certificates in assembly but I didn't. Why am I being ignored?
Today I bring you the 12 Gauge Shotgun keyring by Alator Giftware, nothing to do with Woo-boy at all, honest. There's a range of guns in the Fort Nelson Giftshop and I wanted the AK47 or 9mm pistol but the shotgun looks cool as well.
In Scouts we played '50 Shades of Identify the Foodstuff' using our own neckerchiefs as blindfolds. We all got spaghetti and various fruits but I got onion wrong and called it a radish, a tragedy for the current holder of the West Sussex 3-Day Radish Eventing title. Nobody got date or fig, although I did guess prune so at least vaguely similar. Jof said we should have had tin of water chestnuts.
Afterwards we played Human Battleships by lying down on the floor either side of the upturned trestle tables and throwing a ball over the barrier to sink the opponent's personnel. I did a dolly-lob and got James right in the face.

Frogsby

Up at an almost sensible time and snuck in to see Jof with a giant box of luxury chocolates I'd had secreted under my bed. I'm the only one left with a mother, both of them have lost theirs so I was nice and didn't bounce on the bed hardly at all.
I'd used up my Minecraft time pretty soon and was pestering Jof to do something with me when she really wanted a day off so Bud said I'll take you to the Pyramids for a bit, give the old girl some peace and she decided to come with us anyway on strict condition that we weren't nasty to her.
We found some floats and one was a giant green frog with 1 leg missing so we stood either side of the waterfall fence and threw it at each other which was when we invented Frogsby, a game of Frisbee with a legly challenged frog.

We also did a lot of the Sidewinder red waterslide, often going the wrong way and always coming out upside down. We didn't get any wave alerts at all, but we did do lots of handstands and duck dives and I flew through the air with the greatest of ease but not very gracefully.

King of Cannons

Welcome to Saturday! Jof went to work but you can't have everything.
I had the Ultimate Breakfast which is a banana, and peanut butter on toast and jam on even more toast. Now you may be saying well I'm sure I've had a better breakfast than that, and maybe you have. But I could eat that in front of the computer and get an hour of Minecraft Youtube videos in even before the day had started, and all it cost was some jam on the computer mouse.
Then we drove down to my first appointment of the day. The Kings Theatre does a youth group and my teacher told me to check it out. This time it was at the Salvation Army Citadel on Albert Road but the nice lady said it isn't always there.
So it was me, 3 other boys and about 12 girls, one of whom was Honey from my old school and one of whom should have been Poppy but she was on a Sabbatical. The room is basically a church hall with the plastic chairs stacked up to one side, doors off to the place where the grannies make tea and those special interlocking rectangular wooden blocks on the floor.
There was also a lot of jesus-related artwork on the walls with soldiers of Christ doing the good deeds and being generally thankful for how truly delightful god is, and stuff.
I particularly liked the cutting and sticking mural of how nasty life is in Afghanistan, more on that later. It tells me that the sivel war involves rape, and there is a drawing of a Balitan (related to the Taliban) fighter with trademark beard and AK47 shooting a christian.
Anyway, they have lots of gung-ho helpers aged about 18 and we did the Buzzing Bee song which is quite like the Rubber Chicken song of the other Theatre School and we played Guess What I Am With Letters and I was a snake and I slithered to prove it.
Anyway it was really fun and very Happy. Very Happy, Clappy, Singy and Dancy. Plus I discovered that out of the 10 lessons in the last term, they had occupied the Kings Theatre Stage for .. 1.
They gave us a script to learn and guess what, I was a Munchkin again, srsly, am I getting typecast already. In meedle of no time, the session was up and Bud collected me and we drove through the unreasonable traffic to Fort Nelson.
Now, I've been there before, I investigated it when I was about 4, then took the JoniBobs, then took Ben, so it's not new. But it's still all rather good with the Iraqi supergun and some 15th century artillery nightmares and the original Barking Dog.
So I got all 4 squashed pennies from the turning-wheel machine and bought a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun in the shop because it reminds me of Terminator 2 (don't worry, it's just a keyring, although a good one. My other real guns are in the basement...)
They also have a new (ok, it's 100 years old) 18 inch railway gun on actual railway tracks, Holy Firkin Poldarks, it's so big it makes you want to say bad words.
But I had tuna sweetcorn jacket potato in the restaurant and we watched the 25-pounder Howitzer being shot by a guest shooter who paid £40 for the privilege. This is the gun they wouldn't let me shoot, just because I'm 9. I mean, all the guy had to do was pull the lanyard. But let's not dwell on lost battles, Poldarks to all of them.
In the end it was too cold to go round again although we did do a tour of the tunnels and we got back home right into football traffic. The roads were full of Police horses with hi-vis jackets and meat wagons and walking cops and police bikes and a helicopter, which usually only happens with a visiting team with whom we argue.
Once we'd finally found a parking space we asked a Policeperson who we were playing: Luton. Do we argue with them, we asked. Yes, said the nice Rozzer, in fact some of them had a spirited discussion with fisticuffs right in front of us so it was easy to see who were the winners and nab them totally.
At home Bud said he'd deliberately bought the Naked Gun trilogy and Ghostbusters so I could watch some funny movies instead of Predator and stuff so I thought about it, considered my options and chose Rambo 3, set mostly in war-torn Afghanistan, apart from where he's a Buddhist monk, easy to get those guys mixed up.
In which ... Rambo cauterises his own wound by pouring gunpowder in it and setting it off, and then plays chicken driving a Soviet tank against a nasty Colonel on a helicopter gunship. But what more could a 9 year-old need. We laughed so much I had to have more chocolate.
At a quarter to 11 I was still writing my new screenplay. It involves a muscular army-person who has to survive ...

Left Red-Faced

Today was Children In Need Red Nose Day, or this time, Paint Your Head Red For Fun Day. I stuck with the silly glasses and an official nose because I detest face paint or coloured hair. Plus I had this strange idea that the prize would be something lame like a rubber.
(As long as I never find out that inch-thick mascara and foundation is a basic requirement for going on stage, I'll be fine.)
Liberty Bodice won the class prize (a pencil) with her red hair and noses stuck all over her hairband, Ben and I only got one vote.
In swimming the Year 6 guys in my group were actually arguing about how advanced they are in Maths. So we do Level 7, one said. Well we do volumes, one said. But we do algebra, said another. Well, I have a set theory that in all probability they'll get the logarithmic delta blues about calculus, just a Poincaré conjecture.
So anyway, we found a rather impressive structure in the middle of town, ready to play Tetris with the building blocks of future student accommodation, right next to the railway so they can get the sleep they need.
This crane is yellow and has more ladders than my best dreams.

None of that Lip, you

Another weird day at school. They have invented a thing called a 'Suggestion Box' where you can anonymously scribble rude words on bits of folded paper and leave them for the teachers to find later.
I had an idea about having more nurses on duty because at the end of break-time, there's always a big queue of damaged kids looking for plaster casts, stitches, sympathy and morphine. In fact today I was just playing 'Menagerie' with Sam - we were dog-human hybrids with bazookas and then we switched to sheep in combat and when I was a cow they milked my bladders don't even talk to me about being a pig eating mud but then I was a man in a dog's body and shot Sam with pork chop launchers.
But then I banged my lip on one of the wooden poles that wasn't there a minute ago, honest.
I went to the office to staunch the flow of lifeblood and I met one of the twins being sick and the adult took some people to the Year 6 rooms upstairs leaving us alone with our haemorrhages and ebolas and embolisms. This is why I suggested a little cottage hospital with hot and cold running nurses on permanent standby, or at least one of those airport travelators to the A+E ward.
But my lip stopped dripping by itself and I went to maths where I was the only one who could do a reflex angle using a protractor, all because of those magic triangles that Grandad got me to draw and measure.
Later we did go to the park but it was cold and we didn't know anyone so it was warmer in the World Of Minecraft. Terry Pratchett died today. First Nimoy, now him, anyone else?? I am half way through my 4th Pratchett book, lucky he's done a few more.
My fatal head injury has healed, but it's given me eyebrows.

The Wrong Referee

I was first out of school again but the most obvious thing about me was a black eye. OK, so it's red, and just the kind of red you get if you get accidentally elbowed in the eye socket by Oakley yesterday but keep fiddling with it all today. So I said I got hit in the eye again but I couldn't remember who the assailant was.
I took Ben home and the conversation was all about football jokes. I said Yo-yo Toure keeps bouncing back and he told all sorts of jokes but I didn't understand any because I don't do football.
Robert phoned and we met him in the park and he brought a Johnny this time and we played mega-football with Owen and Brandon and because of my innate abilities, I played Referee so I could shout non-stop and not get hurt. We had a half-time scoff which was mostly Jaffa cakes and more footy and Castle Defend and Attack which was very loud indeed. A load of Tweenagers also became loud at their own Attack-Chase game and the park reverberated to our hootling and screaming.

We invented Bridge-Slide in which we take turns to be the bridge and the rest slide down beneath and I got binged in the willocks a few times because I'm shorter and one of us had a finger-sized hole in the trousers and it was all naughty and funny but I think we'll all still be able to have children one day. But then Robert got a woodchip in the eye and Owen kicked down the barricades for no reason and we all decided to leave and Ben called him Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds which is quite inventive.
BensMum was there even before we got home so we couldn't play Lego, might do that next time. Or not.

I had an Origami Shop but it Folded

A day without tidal waves, meteorite strikes or plagues of beetles so I said that we were late to school because Jof was talking to a cat, a highly plausible ruse but not based in factual reality, although I tried to make it happen by dawdling.
I was only allowed 50 minutes of Minecraft and I had a good Gymnastics where I could almost do the head-spring without help.
The mice are getting cleverer. One can now ping the trap without getting squished and then run off with the bit of chocolate brownie. Perhaps if we use the special brownie recipe it'll just sit there examining its fingers and talking about when music was better and we'll be able to catch it.
Jof sewed on one of my Scout badges. She didn't like it. In fact, none of us want to do it and we've all been waiting for the others. I think it should happen by magic, Bud says take it to one of those dress menders, should only cost a tenner, at least Jof did one.

Donny Matrix: having a Whip-round

School was different today because we didn't do any science at all - but did 3 1/2 hours of RE. Perhaps the teachers went to the Genesis Creationist Dinosaur Museum as well and have changed the school syllabus. I drew a muscle-bound Poseidon being squeezed by a much bigger Zeus.
The Year 3s had a paint fight and were allowed to spludge each other in the faces with paint. Why can't we do that?
At home I am banned from Minecraft for a day, for being ... difficult, and full of attitude to the exclusion of all else. Therefore I had lots of free time and fewer things to fill it with. I elected to draw a Snake-God, unrelated to Stargate.
His name is Oddglesland-as-alas and he lives on Pluto and he defends his Castle-burrow with Snake dispensers and Snake-egg-throwers. He has a six-pack, although generally when I draw a god, they have nine-packs.
In Scouts we took in the collection of Sainsburys' school vouchers. Last time we had a voucher whip-round, they were able to buy some outside play equipment.
And then they said could Bud be the new Quartermaster, which is in charge of the special Scouts warehouse where they keep all the pillories and Iron Maidens etc they use on the camping trips.
We are working towards our Fitness Challenge Badge so did resting heart rates and they couldn't find my pulse and said I was a living dead, but secretly I know I'm a cybernetic organism. We did some exercises like walking with a beanbag on your head and jumping over ropes and then re-took the pulse rates and averaged them out over the groups and my group won!

Those Green Urban Spaces

I was first up which is fine by me because I can play Minecraft quietly when I think nobody is looking.
Most of the day was wasted with sofas and battles about Minecraft and TV but she did drag me out to the park to kick a ball about a bit, it was over-run with tweenagers and mud.
Film night was Trading Places, full of jokes I didn't understand but I did like the gorillas and dressing up as Inge from Sveeden.

GENESIS. Act 1, Scene 1

Powered by egg and fruit, we all cycled to the Groundlings Theatre which is an old building in a forgotten corner of Pompey right near the dockyard.
It's full of history because it started as a Beneficial School in the 18th century and has since been refurbished into a theatre and the PuddleDaddies visit it regularly for the Beer Festivals.
The tryout session was with a bloke who used to be in the Navy and he said he'd shot a pirate and saved someone's life in the Pacific and he made us play 'Rubber Chicken' which is a warm-up exercise and we had to give 3 facts, one of which was a lie and we had to guess the lie.
There were only 3 girls and me. We did some singing, and learned about mime. We had to play 'What's in the bathroom cabinet' where you pretend to open some doors, get an object out and the others had to guess what it was. Well, of course, we just stood there holding this imaginary object while the others said "Toothbrush? Hand cream?" ad infinitum so we tried again with actual movements and sound effects and we all still guessed toothbrushes, because we are not very clever.
In the downstairs bit the room is far narrower than the building. We found out why. Of 5 glass display cases, the 5th is a secret door which opens up to reveal the costumes store which is huge. They have 11,500 bits of costume, all for hire.

A girl was sitting there mending so she helped us find and wear a costume: I was an army officer and the rest were princesses etc, because they were all girls.
We strode around and acted out our characters and did a play on the Wizard of Oz and I was a Munchkin, and all I had to do was hide under a table when the Wicked Witch came in.
We explored the stage area which was being used for props painting and the ceiling is like Hogwarts because it's painted with clouds and we went in the sound and lights control booth and played with the spotlights and sound effects and Bud went in the loft while nobody was looking.
After 2 hours the lesson was over but I can tell you there was lots of real actual stagecraft in it.
Then we had a carvery lunch in the Ship and Castle which is a big long pub right outside the Dockyard gates and Jof knew the manager but she knows everybody.
Right on the Hard is the old National and Provincial Bank building, Jof even banked there a long long time ago. But now it is a Dinosaur museum and it had a sign outside saying admission free, and we like that kind of thing.
Upon entering you immediately see Boris the Dinosaur, 20 feet long and the brochure says "Children are fascinated by him". This is true. I was absolutely captivated by just how bad the model is, and you can press a button and hear him roar, or at least his tummy gurgles painfully.
There wasn't much there. Several dioramas behind glass hide down little corridors by the old interview rooms and up the stairs are some cabinets with some really quite good fossils and polished gemstones etc for sale, if you want fossilised fish or tree trunks or bismuth crystals then this is the place to go, not kidding, the geodes are great.
But if you actually read the little blurbs for every exhibit, they're mostly quotes from books by religious nutters and the facts and figures are totally made up and the chart about DNA from Lampreys comes to the wrong conclusion and everywhere is says that evolution was a fable made up by naughty scientists that were all on drugs and that god did it all.
Spread throughout are logic errors where they've started with their own special conclusions and tried to find, make up or generally fabricate evidence to support them. The staff were very quiet because the CSM (Creation Science Movement) doctrine suggests that if you go out evangelizing, people run a mile (no, really?) so they just sit there quietly hoping you'll be as stupid as they are.
I liked the display next to the old bank vault door where it says that sedimentary rocks were laid down overnight. There's a gravestone for Evolution with RIP on it, but no proof of why, but when you believe in magic, you don't need one.
The plastic dinos in the shop were quite good apart from the squidgy ones which make your skin crawl. The fossils for sale are very tempting, might go back for some, put the Fun back into Fundamentalist.
But overall, it's like trying to persuade adults that Santa and the Tooth Fairy are real, and showing a pile of coins and teeth, or a picture of a footprint in the snow as absolute proof.
It's not an argument that'll stop any time soon, because both sides can't believe that their opponents don't understand how wrong they are.
You've gotta laugh at these hilarious people, but because they're funded by hardcore American Class A religious nutters, they can afford a substantial building in a prime location. I wonder how many real people they actually convert, their visitor's book speaks only of existing believers being happy that there's another place where they can brainwash crap into their kid's heads.
Anyway, I had an ice cream and a bonus copper pencil sharpener in the shape of Concorde from the newsagent and we cycled home with lots of bags that Jof had bought while I was acting.
Grandad had been singing in a church in Bosham so he popped in for supper and Jof did roast chicken and I had 4th helpings and got full after seconds of fruit/cream/trifle mix. I read through scene 4 of the school play for him and he played the xylophone on our brass shell cases.