Fascinating Invention No.12 - The Super-powered exo-skeleton

If you cannot get hold of a jet pack, then get an exoskeleton because they are pretty good as well. Let me explain. If you take a close squint at the picture of the forklift-truck/fire-extinguisher outfit, you will realise that this is not an actual robot but a person with machinery attached to him or in this case a her because this is a picture of Sigourney Weaver from the film 'Aliens', when Dad says she is, 'not looking her best'. OBVIOUSLY I have not seen this fantastic looking film and have stored it up as one of the forbidden films to be watched round Dexter's house; but I can only think that if I was a girl (shudder) and I was fighting an alien monster (cool) I would not be very worried about if I had the right lipstick on. The point is that the exoskeleton she is wearing means she is able to lift a small car like a bag of sugar and that must be quite handy when it comes to destroying something bigger than you.

The Americans have been working on real exoskeletons (ES). They also want to use them to destroy things, probably aliens if they can find them. The first proper one was developed in 1965 by General Electric and was called 'Goliath'. This one was not very good because they could only get one arm to move at all. So if you wanted to be able to wave, for example a flag, for days on end, then Goliath would have been up for it. If both legs started moving at once, though it lead to "violent and uncontrollable motion" - bit like Dad when he is trying to dance (shudder). They also made the 'Millenium Jet' which is like a one person air-car and you can wear jeans to have a go in this.

Good things about ES: Enough power to lift a small elephant.
Can run as fast as a cheetah on an off day.
Bad things about ES: Enough power to squish the person strapped inside the ES
Not enough power to go for longer than one minute in the air-car. This means NO trips to Tesco and definitely NO room for shopping bags anyway.

Looks cool though.

They Can Only Mean Trouble

Aunt Caroline-call-me-Caz is a strain. I wish she looked like a proper aunt, like Queen Victoria but she does not. She is the little sister of my mum and completely the opposite to her. Mum is medium sized and has brown hair she likes to keep out of her face; Call-me-Caz is HUGE and has yellow hair with pink ends and it flies around her face in wispy waves. Mum says she has a big personality- whatever that means - I think she is just really annoying. For example, everything changes in the house when she comes to visit:
a. the smell - her perfume is called 'Mountain Air' and whiffs like toilet cleaner mixed with pepper
b. the noise - she is always giving advice all over the place in a voice set permanently at unearthly screech
c. the horror -my cousins, Skye and Jaspar are most likely in the near area destroying something
But the really worrying thing is that she only comes for a reason. Really, the only good thing about her is her van (see above).

'It's my aunt and cousins,' I explain to Dexter. 'They can only mean trouble.'
Dexter pulls a face. 'What, more trouble than ruining the Christmas market or discovering aliens or pressing the button at the Science Museum. That was a lot of trouble.'
'Yes,' I nod. 'More trouble than even that.'
He throws his bike to the ground and it tips over a large flower pot full of pansies made specially for Mum and Dad by Mrs Next-Door.
'What sort of trouble then?' He bends down and sort of brushes the pansies into a neat pile.
'Dunno.'
Skye's white-blond hair pokes out of the front door. Her blue eyes widen. 'You've murdered all those Viola x wittrockiana!'
Dexter brushes his hands. 'Eh? Wasn't me...'
She starts to wail. 'Mummmmmeeeee, Wilfred has killed the beautiful fleurs!'
She runs back into the house and her screams of anguish start off Mrs Next-Doors yap-dog. His little yappy head bobs up and down over the fence between our two gardens. Any moment now and Mrs Next-Door will be out with her big nose, clapping eyes on the pansies and there will be even more trouble - I have to stop the yapping.
So, I run to the fence and grab the yap-dog mid leap and it is so surprised that it stops yapping and starts wriggling like a big hairy sausage under my armpit. I had not really thought what I would do with the yap-dog once I had caught it.
I turn to Dexter. 'You see!'
There is no sign of him or his bike. Yes well. But my cousin, Jaspar is standing there watching me and laughing.
'What have you got that for?' he asks, pointing at my doggy armpit decoration.
I can hardly hear him above the crying and thundering footsteps coming from inside the house. Even as I hesitate, I also catch a glimpse of Mrs-Next-Door's curtain twitching.
The yap-dog starts again.
'In 'ere, quick!' says Jaspar holding the upturned flowerpot.
I do not stop to think but bundle the yappy hairy animal beneath the pot and sit on it.
'Is this what you are teaching my nephew, John? Is it? is it really?' Call-me-Caz has a bangled arm held up to her mouth in horror at my criminal dog-sitting. My parents are struggling to see round her sail sized dress. Skye is weeping over the wilting pansies and Mrs Next-Door is pointing a withered finger in my direction. I need hardly add that Jaspar is still laughing.
This is going to be a long day.

Fascinating Invention No. 11 - The Jet Pack

I am fantastically excited by the jet-pack! The idea started in the 1920s with a comic strip hero called Buck Rogers but his jet pack was more of a jet belt so he could jump about a bit and wave in an exciting way. By the time you get to James Bond and 'Thunderball' jet packs were worn on the back and involved a suit and tie. They used jets of gas to make the hero swoosh about.


Real jet packs were also really thought about during the second world war. The Germans eveloped the Himmelsturmer (Skystormer) This was so German soldiers could cross minefields, barbed wire and raging rivers. It was probably a great deal more interesting than going round things or using a bridge.
The American army got very excited about the whole thing and in 1969 Bell Aerosystems developed the actual jump belt. A pilot called Robert Courter flew about 100 metres in a circle as high as 7 metres at 45 miles per hour which is excellent but also a bit useless. The jet pack was a good idea but too mad and too difficult to spend a load of money on.




Problems with the jet pack:
-flight time is very short
-it is quite dangerous to actually strap jet propellant near to your body
-if the jet propellant did something nasty like explode the hero pilot would not be high enough to use a parachute and would land on the ground very fast, resulting in strawberry jam
-very difficult to fly anywhere other than up, maybe firefighters could use them for high tech cat rescuing.

So, apart from rescuing cats, you can use the jet pack like they do at Rocket Man, where you can hire somebody to leap in the air to make people buy stuff. The other place to really use it is in space. In space less thrust is needed because there is no gravity. NASA has emergency rocket packs which mean that if an astronaut falls out of his module or some evil space villain throws him out or maybe he has to carefully manouvre himself about in space in order to foil a plot to blow up the earth, then he can use his rocket pack or Manned Maneuvering Unit.


This is all very well but of course, the only true rocket man is Buzz Aldrin

The Ground Will Make Your Pancreas Ache

The pancreas was discovered by Herophilus (335-280 BC), a Greek surgeon but he did not bother to call it anything. A few hundred years later, Ruphos, another Greek anatomist, gave the pancreas its name. 'Pancreas' comes from the Greek pan, "all", and kreas, "flesh" which sounds as disgusting as it looks, like something bad from Dr Who.


Because I think it is Dexter bashing at the front door, I open it. Aunt Caroline (102) is sort of floating on the doorstep and The Unspeakable Cousins are pulling up Mum's daffodils. I think I scream but I cannot be sure because I am suddenly enveloped in purple dress and perfume and bosom.
I can just about hear my cousin Jaspar (9) say, 'I'm hungry!' and then everything starts to go black.
When I come round, I am lying in the garden and my other cousin Skye (4) is looking down on me. She has her bad fairy outfit on and a sparkly tiara jammed into her fluffy white hair. She pokes me with a silver wand.
'Get up,' she orders, 'the ground will make your pancreas ache.'
I cannot think of anything to say to this, apart from, "what is a pancreas?" but I do not say this because she is just a baby-child and should not know what a pancreas is before me and anyway she has gone into the house. I think very carefully about running away but I think for too long. Dad appears in the doorway and hisses. 'What are you doing lying about? Your cousins are here!' As though I was just dozing on the pancreas-ache-making ground and must have missed them. He hauls me to my feet and looks about him as though more aunts and cousins are going to spring out of bushes at any second. He is nervous - he'll start blaming me for stuff any moment. I can see Dexter weaving down the road on his new new bike. I want to warn him about the danger but all my trainee spymaker training is lost in the pain of Dad's Vulcan death grip.
His beard bristles. 'Why didn't you warn me they were coming? I'm in the middle of some teeth sorting and I've still got to mount Baden-Powell's molar...she'll want me to look at their teeth again...'
'I did not know they were coming until they were here,' I explain but it is no good.
He is ranting now about children and teeth and I just hope that Dexter has the sense to run away. At the doorway to hell, I hear the thumps and screeches that tell me Jaspar has found our cat, Serbena; daffodils lie strewn along the hallway; Aunt Caroline's laugh is billowing through the house.
Dad's grip tightens. 'Why did you pick all those daffodils, Wilfred?'
'We'll stay until the moon rises high in the sky, darling!' I hear Aunt Caroline say in her sing-song mystical sort of voice.
Dad's face is purple.
'Hello - what's up?' Dexter appears with his Bad Boyz cycle helmet on. It makes him look like a fat alien.
'And why is he here as well?' Dad shrieks. He points his finger at me. 'I blame you for this, Wilfred.' He stomps off into the kitchen.
Dexter shrugs. 'Problem?' he asks.
'You could say that,' I reply.
I think I can feel my pancreas beginning to ache.

Here is my Holiday Report

Here is my holiday report:
We went to London, mostly to get away from my Aunt Caroline and The Unspeakable Cousins. My Aunt is madder than a wet cat and that is pretty mad. We are still traumatised from the last visit (more later). For now here is the best bit.

We went to the wondrous Science Museum and I am now stuffed full of important spying knowledge. I still have my plastic security card and it has a magnetic strip and everything. So, now it is true that I am officially a trainee Spymaker agent; even though it says I only have temporary security clearance and my supercomputer rating is untested (not true, I actually scored 82% on my data retrieval from the supercomputer which is a lot better than Dad who scored a rubbish 23% and Mum who was having a coffee in the cafe, so gets -0%). My official spy number is 007, no not really, that was a joke, it is 2237. I am therefore only 2230 plastic security cards away from having a licence to kill people.
Cool.
My trainee Spymaker agent card says "Carry this Agent ID with you at all times. Never let it out of your sight". This is all very well but I do not have a pocket in my pyjamas and even if I did, I'm not sure I would be able to use it because then my ID card would be out of my sight and who knows what might happen.



Anyway, this is how becoming a spy works:
a. recruitment - practice getting embarrassing information about people at home and school e.g. go through the drawers in Mrs Trundle's office to find exotic hodliday brochures which she will try and pass off as 'edcuational exchange visits'. Then pass this info on to anybody willing to pay for it, e.g Mrs Trundle. That is a good start OR you can check out the MI5 and MI6 websites (which is a bit more boring)
b.training -are you cunning and resourceful? Can you spot a liar? Can you rumage around in rubbish and find non-smelly important stuff. If so, you are either dead right for a spy or you are my cat, Serena (that's not right, she likes smelly).
c.technology - this makes a spy's life easier. Frankly it makes anyone's life easier. Who needs school when you can absorb information through a chip under your skin designed to let you suck up important but boring lessons like, 'The Romans at Homes' or 'The Water Cycle - let's learn!'. Or you could use a micro air vehicle, an insect spy (I knew that one) or leave intelligent water just lying around ready to absorb your enemy's fingerprints or get your face scanned in a facial recognition system so that no door (except ordinary ones with locks and keys) is closed to you. My favourite is the super-powered spy leg and I have to tell you about this in more detail later, so do not run away (ha ha).
d. mission - it's up to you really but here are mine. e.g. find out what Mrs Next-Door is up to with all that concrete; find a way of keeping Aunt Caroline from ever visiting again; solve forever the mysteries of alien crop circles (wait, I think I have done that).

Anyway, the holiday was too short and now it is back to the prison of school and it is vegetable medley tonight.

Fascinating Eggy Facts for Easter

The largest egg in the world is an ostrich egg and this can measure up to 20cm in length and 15cm round. It probably has the strongest shell in the world and if 4 of me and 2 of Dexter could stand on it (bit tricky) it would not even crack. Also, the ostrich egg would take the longest to boil at about 40 minutes to make it a dippy soldier egg (soft-boiled)and not one of those disappointing bouncy-yolk eggs (hard-boiled).

On the subject of eating eggs, the most bouncy-yolk eggs eaten in one go is 14 in 58 seconds and the most dippy soldier eggs eaten in one go is 32 in 78 seconds.

The most eggs laid by one bird is 361 in 364 days. The was a Black Orpington called Princess Te Kawan. Crazy name, crazy chicken.


Fascinating Eggy Tradition

Grandpa Jack is a great one for 'jarping' and he taught me. This is a bit like playing conkers but using eggs. So you get your dippy-soldier eggs on Easter morning and you say to your neighbour at the breakfast table,
'I say, Happy Easter and all that and how about a bit of jarping?'
And hopefully your neighbour is a bit none the wiser and says,
'Of course, you go first,' because he does not know how to do it. So you can have first bash at his egg which is important because the winner is the one who pulverises the other egg into tiny eggy pieces. My record is 5 eggs in 10 seconds. Eggtastic.

Jarping can get pretty messy.

Funny Eggy Jokes

Q. What kind of egg lives by the sea?
A. An egg shell.
(Dexter told me that one, it is not brilliant but it does involve an egg)

Q. What did the eggs do when the traffic lights turned green?
A. Egg-celerate.

Q. How do monsters like their eggs?
A. Terri-fried.

Q. How did the egg get up the mountain?
A. It scrambled up.

Q. Who wrote Great Eggspectations?
A. Charles Chickens.




And last but not least my Fascinating Eggy Invention

Simon Rhymes, thought up the idea for the Bulb Egg Maker while studying project design at Bournemouth University. He experimented with more than 600 eggs and now says he can now produce a perfect boiled egg in six minutes.

He uses high-powered halogen bulbs to cook the egg before slicing the top off and dipping his toast soldiers in.

Maybe you could just stick an egg under a light bulb for half an hour and it will cook but then it would not look like it was going to be transported across time and space in that fantastic glowing egg chamber.

I want one.

HAPPY EASTER!

Fascinating Inventions No.10 - The Remote Control

Wallace and Gromit and the Patent Office are doing an invention competition for primary schools. I will be taking all the information into Mrs Trundle, the head-teacher and part-time assassin, tomorrow. Apparantly someone has already thought of a tiny ladder to let spiders climb out of the bath. Hmm, I say the drain is good enough for them. Grandpa Jack invented the horse-flap which is a bit like the cat-flap but bigger. He is mad on horses. The winning invention will be turned into a model for Aardman studios - Cool!

Talking of brilliant inventions, here's one - the TV remote control. Robert Adler was the fantastic inventor of the TV remote control. The Parents would probably say that this invention was one of the crimes against humanity because:
a. it makes watching the TV easier and so you watch even more of it than is good for you; in fact you watch it until you develope strange shaped eyes and all your brains are sucked out
b. it makes you lazier and fatter and unfit until one day you cannot move from the sofa to do anything, even when you lose the remote control through no fault of your own and have to endure hours of watching stuff you are not keen on, like The News and Gardening is Really Interesting or Schools Programme - Granny TimeTraveller reports from the Battle of Hastings

Anyway, Robert Adler would have said a and b were just silly because,
"It seems reasonable and rational to control the TV from where you normally sit and watch television."
Precisely. IF you have a choice of more than 4 channels that is - guess how many we have in our house. Imagine the huge strain involved in forever getting up and down to change the channels when (if you live in Dexter's house) you have 4 million channels to choose from. Nightmare.

In 1950 Zenith came up with the first TV remote called 'Lazy Bones'. It managed to change channels OK but was still attached to the TV by a cord. This was a bit mad because people kept tripping over it and breaking bits of themselves and their sitting rooms. So in 1955, Adler came up with the 'Flashmatic'. This had nothing attached to it and used photocells to flash at the TV. The problem was that when the sun came out it sort of stopped the light commands working. People complained that you could not watch TV in the daytime without having to get up with their legs and switch over by bending their bodies. So daytime TV did not really take off until a bit later after Robert Adler came up with the 'Space Command' remote, 'nothing between You and the Set but space!!!'
That is not to say that he spent his whole actual life inventing just the one gadget. Oh no. He worked for an American company called Zenith and actually made 180 new patents, mostly to do with TV, even though he did not even like the TV. He would have got on well with The Parents.
"I hardly ever turn the TV on," he said. His wife said he was "more of a reader."
I think that this could be because he just kept losing the remote control in the s p a c e between himself and the TV set. So it is left to me to invent the next greatest gadget -
'The Remote Control Detectormatic'

Phase 3 of The Grand Plan for Dreadful Revenge

A duel would be one way of sorting out me and Miranda but actually I think she might be quite fast and I do not want to risk losing any more bits than I have to.



So, we have cunningly lured Miranda back into her own mega-rainforest jungle bedroom. She stands, feet apart, hands on hips and narrows her eyes. I keep my worry that she has seen through my Grand Plan for Dreadful Revenge under control with some on-the-spot-running.
'My bedroom is the biggest in the house,' boasts Miranda and I can see she wants us to go, 'ooo' and 'aaah'.
I decide to play along. 'Not bad,' I say, doing an extra- athletic jump.
Dexter looks at me.
'You see, I have my Princess Bed,' she points to a giant pink blancmange thing beneath the window smothered with matching pink blancmange curtains. 'Everybody wants one.'
'Quite good,' I am lavishing praise now and practically leaping.
'It is DISGUSTING,' Dexter points out. 'Can we just see the sticks before I'm sick.'
Luckily, she is too carried away to listen. I budge Dexter and give him the secret sign about our mission but I am leaping too much and we both fall down next to the mini-fridge.
'And then of course there are all my photos that I took going round the world.'
Then she waits. Dexter and me get up and look at one another all shifty eyes. Finally Dexter asks.
'What photos?'
She sighs and points to the wall and we suddenly see that what I thought was dingy, blurry random wall paper is actually a wall of truely awful photos.
'Very...very,' one wrong word and I sense we will have to leave before our mission is complete.
'Nice,' supplies Dexter. 'Very nice.'
'Yes, I have been everywhere and I did take all of them.' She smirks.
Here is our chance. I wink and say. 'Take a closer look, Dexter - maybe you can find your Dad's semi-detached villa in Spain...' I try and sidle to the stick cages.
'Oh right,' says Dexter. 'I really want a fizzy orange from your mini-fridge, Miranda - then you can tell me all about your photos.'
She is so desperate to show off she cannot see the totally blatant bribery involved here. He takes the can and pulls the ring. SQUOOOOSH! Shot!
'It's all over my Princess Bed!' she squeals and runs out.
'Brilliant, Dexter!' I tell him.
He shrugs. 'It was an accident.'
'No, I mean it really is brilliant!'
I run to the cage of sticks in the shady corner of the room and peer in at the sticks clambering very slowly up the branches. I carefully carefully take out my old ice-cream carton and reach in and yank the sticks off the branches. That's the great thing about sticks, they do not complain at all and for all I know they quite like being sticknapped.
I glance at Dexter. 'Give me the supplies!' I snap.
He fumbles around inside his coat and pulls out the family pack of twiglets. I place the twiglets carefully on the branches.
'There!' I say.
'What?' asks Miranda, returning with a dripping cloth the size of our tablecloth.
'Miranda,' I say, 'we've had enough of your stick insect jokes! So watch this!
'What are you doing?' she says and there is panic in her voice as I raise the lid. 'Ciao, sticks, nice knowing ya!' And I sweep a load of twiglet sticks out of the cage and into my mouth.
She drops the cloth and screams - alot.
'Your turn, Dexter.'
'Yum yum,' says Dexter and he rummages around and picks up some more and crunches down hard.
'YOU MURDERERS!!!' she screeches, and tears out of the door, 'CHAS! CHAS! THEY'RE EATING THE STICKS!!!!'
'I think I actually ate one,' says Dexter pulling a face.
We put the sticks Dexter has not actually eaten back in the cage and decide it is time to find the back door.
Mission accomplished, I think. HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-Ha and HA

Phase 2 - The Grand Plan for Dreadful Revenge

Some sensible people might know that it is National Science and Engineering week, all week. They are doing quite interesting experiments and asking us to vote for their favourite. Mine is of course - 'THIS IS ROCKET SCIENCE!'


So, I have to go home first and collect the necessaries for the completion of Phase 2 of the Grand Plan for Dreadful Revenge - evil cackle. Dexter trails behind as we go into the kitchen.
'Is your Mum around?' he asks, looking around as though she might spring out from behind the fridge and force him to eat some of her vegetable medley.
I shrug. 'Somewhere. Why?'
'Nothing,' he says. 'Just wondered.'
I concentrate on emptying the cupboard in order to get at the top secret revenge stash. Serena, the cat, meanders over and miaows like this, "meeeoooow!"
'That means she wants something to eat,' I tell Dexter, 'you had better feed her before she turns nasty.' I point at the catfood cupboard. 'There is cat food somewhere about.'
Dexter rootles around while I put the secret stash into my two zippy inside coat pockets. By the time we have both finished there is a fair amount of stuff we do not need spread about the floor and Serena is tucking into a plate of baked beans and organic plum tomatos.
'Let's go!' I say.
Dexter's eyes are huge and he is gibbering.
'WHAT IS ALL THIS MESS?' Mum is standing in the doorway, looking like a scary creature form the crypt. 'I JUST CAN'T STAND IT!'
Then she bursts into tears.
Very, VERY odd. I look sideways at Dexter to confirm the oddness of Mum but of course, he has scarpered.

'So, did you like your stick babies, Wilf?' asks Miranda over the fishfingers. She is smirking. 'Did they behave themselves?'
I glance at Dexter. This has been a tough assignment so far. Getting the target to take the bait in the playground; avoiding torture by The Trundle and then dealing with the Oddness of Mum. I am going to play her like Bond plays blackjack -coolly.
'I did not realise they would be so small, like cress seeds,' I say, flicking my food in a suave sort of way. I lean forward and stab a fishfinger. 'You know,' I say, 'The Parents nearly ate them.' Miranda pulls a face. 'Tiny baby sticks gone in one mouthful.' She frowns. I can see she is disturbed.'You could have made my parents kill them - like this.' I swallow the fishfinger whole which is quite impressive. Then I choke and sick some of it back up. Chas, Miranda's Dad comes in with his stupid beard, just at that moment.
After Chas has told me that being sick is actually the way some animals feed and actually he is thinking of writing a paper on it and maybe he could start with me (ha-ha, not funny), and then finally goes; I give Dexter the secret sign (I can't tell you what it is obviously).
He ignores me until I smoothly get up and jog his elbow, giving him a LOOK at the same time.
'Oh right,' says Dexter. 'Can I see your sticks? Looking at Wilf's cress seeds is a bit boring. They don't do much.'
So we go upstairs to Mirnanda's mini-Amazon-rainforest-bedroom and this is where Phase 3 kicks in and things start to get a little bit interesting.

HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA and HA.

Fascinating Inventions No. 9 – Night vision goggles

If soldiers had to fight in the nightime, things got difficult because they could not see much. So, maybe someone would light a fire or switch on a torch and OOOPS! Bit of a giveaway. Night-vision goggles developed out of second world war technology and became the brilliantly useful bits of kit they are today
- Look! I can see my yacht!
- Look! There's an owl!
- Look! Watch out for that wild cat!

Course, somewhere in Dexter's bedroom is a pair of night-vision goggles. The trouble is, he cannot find them because of all the other high-tech toys he has lying around. If he could find them, he would have no trouble getting to the loo at night or spying on his tankful of exotic fish in the dark or even reading a book without the light on because night vision goggles take all the hassle out of darkness. The way they work is like this:
They boost up the light already around and collect it to focus on an image intensifier. This is amazing because then inside this intensifier the light particles get over-excited and bump into a sort of green TV screen and then give you an image.
BUT I hear you shout. What happens when I go caving or need to have a quick spy round a derelict warehouse where there is no light at all? The answer is get an infra-red illuminator as this will generate enough light to give you an image. During world war two when infrared sight was a baby, the army made an infrared sniper scope BUT it needed an infrared searchlight that was so big it had to be carried on a flatbed truck. Luckily things have got a lot smaller since then.

I have my doubts about using night-vision goggles during the day (see picture) because

a. It makes you look a bit mad e.g. like you might just have run away from having your eyes tested/you could just have had major brain surgery and should still actually be in hospital/ somebody is testing the latest scaffolding technique on your face. None of the above looks cool.
AND then there is
b. if you are doing a bit of spying it sort of gives the game away

On the plus side you do get to look like a human-robot-cyborg, so maybe it is not all bad.

Anyway, the greatest place in the universe is having a science of spying exhibtion until September. I am definitely off to get some tips.

The Grand Plan for Dreadful Revenge

During the second world war there was a lot of worry about Britain being invaded by German spies. Someone came up with a grand plan to identify the German secret agents. This was to make them believe that British secret agents always painted one foot blue (which of course they did not). So all anyone had to do to trap a German spy was to casually try and get their socks off. It did not catch on.

My plan is much simpler than the blue-foot plan which would have taken alot of time and effort and paint.
Here is phase one of my Grand Plan for Dreadful Revenge.
TARGET: Miranda.
OBJECTIVE: With the application of cool cunning get her to agree to a meeting.

'Have you seen James Bond?' I ask Dexter as we step out of the jet-black Aston Martin going undercover as a bus.
'Where?' asks Dexter, looking around the playground.
'No! I mean the film, James Bond! The spy one.'
He shrugs. 'Yeah. Got it at home; it's all right - not enough action.'
I goggle for a bit and then turn my eagle-eyed attention to the target. Miranda. Double crosser, double agent. She is mooching around near Mrs Trundle's office. I can see Mrs Trundle is even now on the phone, probably agreeing to more work in her role as part-time government assassin. The Bug Club girls gaggle round Miranda. They make me uncomfortable with their talk of wasp spiders and pink stuff.
'You know what to do then,' I tell Dexter. I put one hand in my dinner jacket (school coat) pocket and we stroll in a casual sort of way in their direction. 'Just play it cool.'
I smile to myself. She will not suspect a thing.
'Oi!' shouts Dexter at Miranda and he waves his arms about as though he is drowning. 'I WANT TO SEE YOUR STICK INSECTS!'
Oh smooth.
I slip out of Bond mode and punch him. 'Phase one!'
He punches me back, quite hard.
I notice Miranda and the Bug Club sniggering at us. I push him. He pushes me back.
'STOP FIGHTING!' Mrs Trundle, the headteacher and part-time assassin, has spotted our delinquent behaviour. She has somehow apparated out of her office and clean into the playground and is bearing down on us like a guided missile.
'That was your fault! How are we supposed to get her to agree to a meeting now!' I tell Dexter. 'You've blown Phase One!'
'Do you want to come over after school then?' bellows Miranda. 'You can see some BIG stick insects!' They are outright laughing now.
At a distance of one metre, The Trundle has her killer whistle up to her thin lips. This could be the end.
Dexter nudges me. 'Phase one complete.'
I want to reply but I am thrown off my feet by the force of The Trundle's explosive whistling.