Anyway, I Knew This Would Happen

Anyway, I knew it would happen. Mum told me to look out for a surprise at school. Before I could even speak to him, Dexter started fighting me. No surprise there - but he then tried to stuff a piece of paper down my throat while shouting out words we normally only whisper. When I had wiped all the spit of the paper, I found this ...


DOROTHY MARSHALL - Governor in Waiting!

Hello there. As a mother of one son in Year 5, I would love to be a governor at Napton Valance Primary School. I obviously have a very keen interest in the education of my child and would like to further his career by being involved in running the school.

I am involved in a great deal of charity work for the old folk and often cook up huge quantities of my special organic vegetable medley (thanks to Oliver-James' parents for their regular giant veg donations!), so that the old folk can eat something healthy every so often. The old folk I visit often have cats which they LOVE - in fact I often find the old folk feed my organic vegetable medley to their cats because they love them so much. Touched by this display of feline affection, I not only doubled the quantity of medley I gave out, I also established, 'The League of Cats' charity shop in town. You must visit!

So, I still have a little spare time - even after helping my husband sort out his Rare and Unusual Teeth Collection - to assist the head teacher in sorting things out. I'm good at that. Just ask Wilfred!

Warmest Wishes
Dorothy (me in fancy dress!)

P.S. Alot of the old folk live in bungalows built by Mr Dooley. They often have bad chests and damp related illnesses.

Facinating Invention - No. 8 The Game of Rugby

In the books I got for Christmas, one of the games you MUST play is rugby. Emily, at my school, is rugby-mad and she is the smallest year 5 I know; the ball is almost as big as she is. My godmother is also rugby-mad or probably just mad but she likes rugby ALOT. On the other hand, Dad, who is a dentist and big on teeth, gets mad at rugby because he reckons they do not look after their gnashers. Mum says she doen not understand rugby but quite likes the look of it.

Above is a picture of William Webb Ellis. He was supposed to have invented the game of rugby when he was a schoolboy at a school called Rugby (that is quite a co-incidence!) In 1823 he is said to have been so cheesed off with playing with just his feet that he picked up the ball and ran with it. Hmmm. What do we know about William Webb Ellis? Not much. What we do know is that the boys (definitley no girls then) used to play football at Rugby and they liked to make up their own rules as they went along which sounds excellent.







-Let's have 100 players on Team A and 4 players on Team B and see who wins!
-Let's have a pitch with no boundaries!
-Let's NOT have a referee!

So, I do not think that someone picking up the ball would have been a. unusual or b. against the rules -since there weren't any.
William Webb Ellis's name was probably picked out of a top hat. Anyway, what is true is that rugby was invented by boys (yeh!) and soon loads of schools and even adults started playing it.

This stone says that William Webb Ellis, "...with a fine disregard for the rules...
first took the ball in his arms and ran with it thus originating the distinctive
feature of the rugby game"

Thing is, nobody asked William about it.