Run For Your Lives

Itisham has a gerbil called, Lewis. He likes to put him in a green plastic ball and watch him charging all over the kitchen floor. He runs like mad in a straight line until he hits the broom/wall/cooker etc and then tumbles backwards to go the other way until he hits the broom/wall/cooker etc. Lewis reminds me of Dexter playing British Bulldog. He goes in a straight line until he hits a person/wall/the ground and then changes direction until he hits a person/wall/the ground. He is quite rubbish at playing this game because he gets over excited.

- he forgets where his home is
- he forgets who is on his team
- he forgets he is in school with teachers and dinner ladies all over the place

So, there he is forgetting everything. He has knocked over 5 baby children, got a whole load of girls to be on his team - most of them run round screaming, except for Alice Taylor who tries to be a nurse - and caught NOBODY, even though it is his turn to be bulldog.
THEN
Alice Taylor has me in an armlock. 'Just pretend you have a broken leg,' she orders, 'I'll mend you.'
'I've got you!' cries Dexter and he wraps his arms around me.
'Get off me, you idiot! It doesn't count when you're injured!'
'Yes it does!' yells Dexter, 'and you're my first catch! British bulldog, 1,2,3!'
'Shut up! It's stripey jumpers!'
'Oh, what a delightful game!' trills Mrs Trundle. She has appeared out of nowhere, her good eye twitches. 'Stripey Jumpers! I've never heard of that!'
Dexter jumps away from me and knocks into Polish Jacob.
'Yes,' says Polish Jacob, who knows nothing about British Bulldog and is even worse at it than Dexter, 'and you get to use the stick of power - here,' he says and thrusts a ginormous tree branch into her hands. I manage to stop myself slapping my hands to my head in utter despair. We are pushing her too far.
She trembles and I know she is trying not to use the stick of power on the nearest child.
'Back away slowly,' I hiss at Alice. 'She's going to lose it.'
'I can't stand it!' she roars. She runs at me with the stick. I scream a tiny bit and head for base.
'Don' do it! Mrs Trundle, resist - you know you can!' It is Mr Bagnall. His big moustache is wobbling as he shouts and runs to come between me and the Trundle. 'Don't give in to your violent urges!'
Too late. She is laughing and wielding the stick like a Gandalf.
Mr Bagnall blows his whistle. 'Get in,' he screams, 'run for your lives!'

British Bulldog

I cannot begin to talk about George and his stick-eating ways just at the moment - it is too painful.

So, here is what is happening at school. Mrs Trundle has come back from her course, 'A Way In - really communicating with your class' and is bothering everybody with excessive smiling and 'how are yous?' She seems to have given up the idea of a. being a part time assassin b. using school money to go on educating foreign trips c. being generally horrible.
It's all pretty disturbing.

I decide it is time to test this new niceness.
'Let's play British Bulldog,' I say to Dexter. We are mooching about in the playground, kicking the tiny stones we can scuff up from the tarmac.
'It's banned,' says Dexter.
I shrug.
'I see your point - maybe if we just have a couple of boys each,' says Dexter.
'Well, just don't tell everybody,' I say, 'you know what happened last time.'
He looks blank for a moment and then the light goes on. 'We got banned. I'll be Captain.'
'Me too,' I say, 'I did think of it.' I run off to find players, I want to get all the good ones before Dexter does.
I find Tyler and Itisham and Polish Jacob. Tyler does rugby and knows about charging about. We choose our home. It is the brown bit of grass underneath the office window. Dexter has the netball semi circle. Ha. We all come together in the middle. Polish Jacob, who is Polish and has no idea what is going on, agrees to be the bulldog.
'Just remember,' I whisper, 'no shouting, no really big hitting and don't say British Bulldog out loud.'
'But we still have to say "British Bulldog 1, 2, 3!" when we catch someone,' says Dexter.
'Call it 'Stripey Jumpers', says Tyler, who knows a thing or two about stripey jumpers.
'Agreed!' I say, 'Let's play!'
And that's when it starts going slightly wrong.

George's Black Hole

By Wednesday teatime we were all still alive and not sucked into a black hole where we are crushed into nothingness or forced to play parallel universe football. It is all a bit on the disappointing side really.
In actual fact our house is a bit like being in a parallel universe right now because my baby brother, George is on the move. He is like a black hole. He sucks us all into his horrible baby world and now we cannot escape and soon he will crush us into nothingness.

First off. He goes everywhere and we all have to follow him because of the terrible, terrible danger lurking at the edge of every cupboard door, table corner and under every cushion.

Look out! Run from the fluffy cushions!Aaaaaghhh!

Second off. It is The Rule that George is not allowed to put small things into his mouth because:
a. he will swallow it, be poisoned and die
b. he will try and swallow it, choke and die
c. he will not swallow it, stick it up his nose and die.
But nobody has told George The Rule because a very bad thing happened.

Mum plopped George into my room, without asking me. I know this because when I go into my room he is there, wobbling a bit as he stands up, hanging onto the stick insect table.
'Oi!' I say, 'what you doing?'
He does not answer and my insides go into a kind of freefall and I know something bad has occurred. Crunch. The it comes to me and suddenly my room is a million miles wide as I race across to save him.
Too late.
Sticky, my best stick insect is prodding out of George. His front legs are waving a bit like he is saying goodbye before he disappears into the black hole that is George's mouth.

Sticky, before the bad end.

This Is Not The Right Experiment For World Domination

Dexter called round and said we have to go and play football NOW because the end of the world is on Wednesday.

'You're talking gibberish rubbish again, Dexter,' I tell him.
I have decided to be extra clear about what I mean with Dexter - he is a bit thick at times. He kicks at his football and knocks over a pot plant.
'Well if you're not going to play then I'll have to ask Tyler because this is pretty much the last chance before we all get sucked into a black hole. Would've thought you'd heard about it, he says. 'My dad says they should close the school but I bet Mrs Trundle keeps it open and we'll all be doing a spelling test as we die.' He pulls an imaginary cord round his neck and lolls his tongue out.
'Yeah I know that,' I say, even though I did not because nobody can even hear the radio or TV withmy baby brother, George bellowing all the time; so I am spending more and more time with my earmuffs on talking to the sticks in my room. Even now, George is cranking himself up for a big yell upstairs. 'Yeah, should be good.'
'I wish we did science like that,' says Dexter, pushing the pieces of broken pot onto the gravel. 'A giant colliding thing would be ace.'
'A what?'
Dad pops his head up from the cellar stairs. He is polishing Lord Baden Powell's molar which he got for a present from Grandpa Jack.
'Large Hadron Collider,' he says to me, 'Thought you'd know about that.'
'I did,' I lie suavely or at least I soon will ...

So here it is:

THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER

is not small even though it is dealing with the most tiny piece of the universe - a part of an atom called a hadron. The LHC is 26 miles of underground between France and Switzerland and has taken 10 years to build by 20 different countries.
It looks like a world domination experiment done by someone called, Dr Mad. When one of Dr Mad's evil assistants presses the big red button all the hadrons will hurl themselves from both ends of the tunnel, colliding. This will make the teeniest explosion ever in the tiniest amount of time. Dr Mad thinks he will have unleashed human eating monsters from a parallel universe which only he can stop - for a price.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!

BUT in actual fact when he has stopped laughing he will find out what happened a trillionth of a second after the universe was created 13.7 billion years ago OR

We will all be sucked into a black hole. It could go either way.

The main things to know will be:

a. about new and interesting particles in the universe
b. dark matter - what it is and why it matters
c. this is not the right experiment for world dominationI better go and play football, to be on the safe side.