Dame Honoria Glossop has Given me Some Homework

Dame Honoria Glossop has given me some homework and since I do not want to do my actual spellings homework, I am doing this.

How many books do I have?
The Parents have at least 4 million books and most of those are stacked up on the stairs leaving only a tiny weeny gap to walk through. And, Mum goes mad if you dislodge her piles.
I actually have nearly 50 books and they are all on actual book shelves.


What was the last book you bought?
My quite nasty cousins, Skye and Jaspar, bought me a very bad baby-child book of inventions for my birthday (just gone). They did it on purpose and I even had to say thankyou which was evil. My proper present came fromGrandpa Jack and is about proper inventions made in the Victorian times.

Last book I read
I was force-read, 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' by The Parents but maybe that does not count. Neither does, 'Maths - Excercises for Book 4' or 'Look Around! Geography Goes Wild' or 'What the Romans Really Did for Us' because these are all school books. The last book I actually chose to read was, 'Biggles Learns to Fly' and this was utterly fantastic.



Special Books

The Parents read 'Mog' to me when I was a deadly annoying baby-child. I had to listen to Mog again and again and again until The Parents got so fed up they bought me an actual cat. We still have her and her name is, Serena which is a bit different to Mog.

'Moonfleet' has it all; smuggling, adventure, evil ghosts and action. I really liked it but Dad did not because he had to do at least 5 different funny voices in an old-fashioned english language.
It took a record six weeks for him to read. Actually I know Dad really likes it because he told me Grandpa Jack read it to him when he was a boy. So there we are.

Buzz Aldrin is very special for too many reasons to actually mention but here are a few. I will also go into space when I am a bit older.

I now have to let some other people have a go. So, Nicky and Horton and Alan might want to try.

How Many Sticks Can You See?

How many sticks can you see?

Here are some more stick pics. They are sitting in the fishtank lid while I muck them out. They did not try to escape or even attack. And they have all their legs which is good.

A Shy Stick

I have managed to photograph my sticks. On the whole they do not seem to mind having their pictures taken; in fact they do not seem to mind anything very much. The first picture shows the back end of a stick and actually he is being quite shy.

ALL of them poo at an amazing rate and if I did not change the paper every week they would probably begin to mind that.

They also grow quickly. I will have to change the fishtank they are in very soon because it is actually meant for one small goldfish and not five 6cm long sticks. If I do not give them climbing room they will become stressed and their legs start dropping off like nobodys business.

I Expect His Aura is Having a Crisis

My smallest evil cousin, Skye insisted on only going round the fairytale art exhibition at the Sroud Museum. This was a tragedy, since it meant I did not get to see Edward Beard Budding and his lawnmower for any great length of time. I could not sneak off and gawp at what I wanted to gawp at because Mad Aunt Caroline insisited that we all fill out a museum worksheet (they were called funsheets but they were not fun) and discuss our findings with her and Mum. I do not know how my oldest evil cousin, Jaspar, managed to escape but he did. More of him, later.

Anyway, so we are at the Museum and I only catch little glimpses of the great EBB but there is ice-cream on offer at the end of the Museum ordeal. To speed things up a bit, I write down, 'I do not care' to questions like,
'How is red cloth dyed red?'
'What is your favourite fairy?'
and 'no' to commands like,
'Draw yourself as a servant in the eighteenth century'
'Dress yourself as an elf and then find a fellow elf to play with.'

MAC and Mum purse their lips like cats' bottoms when they examine my worksheet.
'You weren't really trying were you?' says Mum, sitting down in the tiny cafe and rubbing her now biggish stomach.
'Nope,' I say. 'I am on my holiday.'
Mum looks at MAC in a, 'see what I have to deal with' sort of way.
MAC plasters a smile on her face and says, 'I expect his aura is having a crisis.'
I notice that, Evil Cousin Skye has drawn stupid lines all over her paper. 'What about her aura?' I ask, pointing an accusing finger at Skye's worksheet. 'She's just scribbled all over hers!'
MAC looks as though she is about to faint and Skye actually gasps and says, 'these are my lines of wonderment!' she says it as though it is totally and utterly obvious to anyone what they are.
'Eh?' I ask in a reasonable way.
MAC fans herself with a paper napkin and Skye tuts. 'I take my pencil and I trace where my inner baby guides me.'
Even Mum looks boggled.
I laugh, long and loud. 'That is the funniest thing I have heard since we got into the Museum,' I sputter in a witty way.
MAC sweeps her orange sari around her. She pats Mum on the knee and looks at me. 'We may have to try some rebirthing for your son. It could be the only way to restore his balance.'
'I do not think I will bother with the ice-cream,' I say, 'see you back at the house.'
And I run.

A Holiday in Stroud

Tomorrow, I am going to Stroud for a 'holiday' with Mad Aunt Caroline and my evil cousins. The photo shows what people in Stroud look like for most of the time. It will be a sad day and I think there will be a lot of shouting and sulking and I will not be too happy either. I am back just in time for school. Hooray!!! (I do not think). The one good thing about Stroud is Edward Beard Budding. I will expect to go to the local museum to take a look at his fantastic invention and his brilliant sideburns.

Dead Sheep 2

I have decided to re-rename Scotland. I have actually called it, The Land of the Midge but now it must be called the Land of the Sheep. They are everywhere, roads, gardens, bridges, nuzzling their way into shops and front doors. And they are not very fluffy and white. All the sheep I saw looked as though they had been fighting with a bad-tempered shearer and also their bottoms were always green or brown or both. The picture shows you the correct end of a sheep to look at.
Anyway, that is not to mention the ones that were dead. These were probably the ones who thought:
a. they did not want a bad hair cut
b. or to end up as something unspeakable at the local pub (The Jac-o-Bite) and so trotted off.
We found a drowned one, a half eaten one and one on a beach. All dead. I have done a little photo montage of the beach dead sheep and if you do not want to look at that you can always look at the views of Skye also inside each photo.

Dead Sheep

A Trick or Two

I have a good trick for you before I go on holiday. I call it, Knock Yourself Out. Dexter showed me this.
Let us say you have a back door and let us also say that the top half of your back door is see-through. This bit is necessary so that the person you are playing the trick on can actually see the trick. You hear someone at the see-through back door. Is it someone you want to speak to? No. It is old Mr Thompson who is not overly fond of you because of your youthful lack of backbone and dreadful manners. So, you approach the see-through back door with a charming smile and just as you go to open the door you kick it with your foot whilst also appearing to knock your head on the glass. Brilliant! You reel back and collapse on the floor and therefore do not have to speak to old Mr Thompson! After a while he will shuffle off muttering about feeble youth and manners or somesuch.

Warning: Some people might want to ring for an ambulance. If you hear screaming or shouting - jump up, brush yourself down and laugh. It all depends. I am very happy to hear about more great tricks like this one. I think I will put them all together in an informative pamphlet.

Meanwhile I am off to the land of the midge and horrible food for a so-called holiday.

Playing Tag

I have been tagged by two people which is quite tricky because I now have to go off and tag 13 others and I do not know that many people. Tag is usually a game that I leave to the baby-children in the infants but since this does not involve me running around and hitting and shouting (actually it sounds like fun now), I suppose I will do it.

A.This 1st one is a Moaning Meme
I have been tagged by Scarlett at Wanderlustscarlett. Here goes:
5 people who will be really annoyed you tagged them.
- Angry Graham will be be really annoyed
- Jude at will be mildly irritated as will
- Anita who is on holiday
- My godmother, Claire may not speak to me again (hee hee)
- Alan who will probably ignore it

4 things to go into Room 101 and be removed from the face of the earth
- organic vegetables (I feel sick just thinking about them)
- the school bus (ingrained vomit and windows rusted shut)
- my unspeakable cousins, Jaspar and Skye
- Mrs Trundle's high powered laser whistle (with Mrs Trundle attached if possible)

3 things that people do that make you want to shake them violently
- baby-children clinging onto your legs (it's the only way to get rid of them)
-Dexter walking so close behind me, he trips up if I actually stop
- people calling themselves Alan

2 things that you find yourself moaning about
- stick insects not eating properly
- not having enough money to buy sweets- ever

1 thing the above answers tell you about yourself
- I am a saint
There are rules to follow:
-Link to the original meme at freelance cynic
-Be honest
-No insults
-Post rules

B. The 2nd tag is from Dame Honoria Glossop and it is 8 random facts about myself. Here goes:
- I actually like brussels sprouts as long as they are not organic
- I do not have a beard but they seem to run in the family
- I believe stick insects are the greatest pets in the universe
- My actual real name is Wilfred Henry Augustine Marshall but I prefer Buzz
- I have three lawnmowers in my collection now, including a Hayter 19"
- For the first three years of my underpant wearing life, I refused to wear them
- My hair is unnaturally curly
- I am an alien (not really)

There are rules:
-link to the tagger
-write 8 random facts about yourself
-taggee to post rules and 8 facts
-tag 8 other people

I tag:
Angry Graham - he is going to explode
Joe at Undead Flowers
Horton
Sue
Saleeha
Jack
Colleen
Meloney

I am Force-Read Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows

I must interrupt my exciting time at the medical museum because of two things. The first is the force-reading of the new Harry Potter book and the second is a game of tag.

The Parents have read to me since I was a broad bean but I do not remember any of those books because, no matter what anyone tells you, you cannot understand a great many words when you are a broad bean. I think this fact was a little disappointing to The Parents and so they tried to make up for it by forcing as many words as possible into my ears whenever they could. There was never a time when I could not remember Mum or Dad without a book in their hands next to my bed. So far, so good. BUT, when I was three, it was not always, 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' or 'We're Going on a Bearhunt', oh no, this was when they started on Harry Potter; for example, 'The Philosopher's Stone' took six months for my father to read to me and I still do not really know what happened in it but I do know HP won. Mum read 'The Chamber of Secrets' and because I was a little older, she also bought three little educational games that she and Dad would demonstrate, alot. By the time we got to 'The Goblet of Fire' I was expected to perform a full bodied patronus and sum up the plot. After the reading of 'The Order of the Phoenix', the Parents secretly joined Mugglenet on my behalf so that I could 'keep up with the action'. I did try reading, 'The Half-Blood Prince ' by myself ( I can read) but The Parents insisted we all read it together because, 'the death of Dumbledore might be too much for us, I mean you to bear.' I coped.
The action figures and lego model of Hogwarts were completed for me when I was seven and are now sitting in The Parents' bedroom- for safekeeping. The Hogwarts Express, which Dad keeps in the cellar with his teeth collection, now has a really good station and real water pond (with merpeople) which Dad says he is building for when I am old enough. Mum's matchstick Hogwarts castle is nearly complete. Whenever anybody asks them what I would like for my birthday or christmas, they nearly always say in an offhand sort of way, 'oh anything to do with inventing or space or if you're really stuck maybe a wand, 12 and a half inches, dragonheartstring and blackthorn, slightly whippy.'
Anyway, I am not far off 10 and they are expecting another broad bean and in a desperate bid to make themselves popular with me again; they have just ended a weekend of force-reading of HP7, with voices and home-made costumes and everything. It has been a long battle but now it is over.
Good-bye Harry Potter, I will miss you but I think The Parents will miss you more - the things they do for love.

On the Way to the School Trip

This time we are going to a medical museum. This is quite handy because at least three people are sick on the school bus. Oliver-James is the first to go (of course) followed by The Weed (Joshua Harcourt) and then because she is sandwiched in front of the weed and behind OJ - Miranda!!! Ha-ha-ha (cold laughter, she is still unforgiven after the Looking After The Sticks episode). It is all terrible really because the bus STINKS of the new sick combined with the left over sick from all the other school trips and I cannot bring myself to finish off Dexter's pack-up like I want to.

He has :
3 x packets of crisps all salt and vineagar
2 x slabs of chocolate cake
2 x packets of lunchables
3 x packets of polos (to stop sickness)
2 x bottles of lemonade
1 x manky apple

I have:
1 x wholemeal roll with cheese and grated carrot spilling out of it
1 x homemade carrot cake
1 x carrot
water with added carrot (joke)

Anyway, the really good thing about this School Trip is NO TRUNDLE. After last year when she was snubbed by Helen Sharman at the Science Museum, she went into a massive sulk and said that she would be too busy doing other things to go anywhere where children were involved or the school bus was involved (see picture) and definitely not both together.
So this year it is Mr Bagnall. Mr Bagnall believes that all children have an inner core of wonderfulness and that sometimes you have to dig quite deep to find the inner core but it is always there. His first name is Earnest which is worse than Alan but quite a lot better than Wilfred. As it turns out, my actual name at the museum is James Wilson and I am a servant and I catch diptheria - so quite a good day. More later.

A Badly Drawn Broad Bean

There are now five stick insects and two of them are sickly yellow in colour and bigger than the other black ones who have legs like feeble spiders. They are all 5cm in length. None of them do much - not when I observe them anyway. I have a sneaking suspicion that the moment my back is turned they turn on the disco lights and leap about to unsuitable music. Also, they do not eat. I keep putting in ivy leaves and bramble leaves but they just stare at the food and do not lift even one leg towards them. If I only start to get the tin opener out of the drawer, Serena my cat, savages my body. But not the sticks. I must take a photo so I have actual evidence of them eating.
Mum and Dad brought home a photo the other day. They went to the hospital to have it taken. It was black and white and looked like a badly drawn broad bean. They have put it in a frame and have informed me that it is a baby. Ugh. Then they gave me a copy for my bedroom. My bedroom is welcome to it, I say. If they are trying to get me to like it they are going about it in a funny way.

Mad Aunt Caroline has been phoning me for little 'chats' which is v v disturbing.
'You know your dear parents are unhappy that you are unhappy, Wilfred,' she says and her voice drips with Concern.
I stay quiet. I do not want to talk to her but I know The Parents are hiding behind the kitchen door, waiting. I wonder if the sticks are even now having a party and nibbling snacks.
'You must try and be kinder to them, Wilfred. Stress is not good for the baby, you know.'
I grunt a bit. I have to make some sort of noise. Stress is not good for the sticks either, I think. Maybe that is why they are spurning my leaves.
'Talk to me, Wilfred - tell me what troubles you,' she coos.
I must go and look after the sticks. It turns out that their legs drop off in times of stress. 'Can you tell me how babies are made?' I ask her. It is like a dam bursting.
'Of course! Darling! Just listen and I'll tell you everything...' and she is off.
And so am I.

Fascinating Invention no.14 - The Indoor Flushing Toilet

At school we call them the 'toilets' (see left). Grandpa jack has a 'lavvie'; at home we have a 'loo' and the metal space capsule with the automatic swishing door, in the middle of our market square is a 'W.C.' There are lots of different names for it but they are all the same thing - the indoor flushing toilet.
The boys' toilets at school are always flooding. This is because certain people do not stick to putting the normal stuff into them but like to experiment with stuff like, smuggled out school dinner or Oliver-James' P.E. socks (they are massive) or four million paper towels. Of course, the flush cannot cope and the water floods out causing the caretaker to break out the lifeboats and Mrs Trundle to break out her high-powered assassin's rifle. I think the caretaker should be happy he does not have to deal with clearing out 248 chamber pots or the stinking tanks from outhouses but for some reason he does not seem to appreciate the history lesson.In about 1596 Sir John Harington may have invented the first flushing toilet for Queen Elizabeth 1. He was her godson and while everybody else thought it was a stupid smelly idea, the Queen was supposed to have had a go on one. Nobody can be certain because he did not leave a toilet to put in a museum and they did not catch on; maybe the queen just got annoyed because when it went wrong there were no plumbers around to unblock blockages because Sir John had failed to invent plumbers at the same time. Whatever happened it was not until 1775 that Alexander Cummings got an English patent for putting a water trap under a bowl (see diagram). GENIUS! But this 'wash out' toilet stayed outside the house until the Victorian times when everything changed. The new 'wash down' toilet came with a jet flush. Woo -hoo. There were lots of companies making toilets then and they were all decorated like flowerpots to make you think that going to the toilet was actually quite a fragrant and royal thing to do. In fact this was the time when ordinary people who had been having a poo for centuries, realised that the Queen actually went to the toilet as well. Queen Victoria asked Thomas Crapper's company to install actual toilets in her palace which as well as shocking a great many ordinary people also made Crapper a household name. The toilet has never looked back. My cousin, Jaspar still likes to pee in the back garden which does not please Mum but is one of the things about him that actually does not bother me.

A Distraction from the Big Thing

To distract myself from the Big Thing I am working on the invention of the flushing toilet.
In the meantime here is a picture of The Parents who are now alien creatures to me and live on the distant Planet Parent. From now on I will only answer to the name of Buzz as in Buzz Aldrin - let us see how much they like that.
I now have three hatched stick insects. They are 2cm in length and surprisingly chirpy. Babies are nothing to them.

It Is All My Cousins' Fault

So Ok, I will tell you but first I have to let you know that it is all my cousins' fault. See the trouble was, they came round, which was quite weird as well as being a complete disaster because I am told to entertain Skye and Jaspar while the adults go and discuss Something Important. This is a terrible thing because:

a. The adults go and drink coffee and eat very expensive biscuits
b. Skye and Jaspar are fiends in human form
c. I need to look after my stick insects
I am not at all keen to combine b and c. but I would much rather put a and b together and see how they like it.

I cannot do that, so I decide to do the next best thing and that is to take the fiends in human form to be entertained in The Parents bedroom. I show them the wardrobe and the ensweet bathroom but they are not particularly entertained. I then very politely offer them the use of The Parents' bed for bouncing purposes and Jaspar starts to snigger.

'Bet they made it here!' he says and he starts making stupid 'ooh' and 'aah' noises.
'It takes a fraction of a second to do it,' says Skye.
She has adopted the lotus position and her brother begins bouncing and she is flying up whenever her brother comes down.
'What?' I ask.
'He-bounce-doesn't-bounce-know,' says Jaspar.
'bounce-we've-bounce-known-bounce-for two-bounce-whole months,' says Skye.
'Shut up,' I say, a bit disturbed. 'You do not know anything!'
'Au contraire,' says Skye, and she flies off the bed, completing a complicated double turnover in the air. Sadly, she lands on her tiny pink princess feet. 'WE KNOW EVERYTHING.'
'Up to and including how babies are made,' says Jaspar, beating the feathers out of the pillow.
I am relieved. I have known how babies are made since before I was born. The Parents made sure of that.
'I know that,' I say and allow a smug smile to pass my lips.
'Then you'll know how your Mum and Dad made a baby,' says Skye. 'A new one. Newer than you.'
I think I might have screamed and wiped the smug smile off my own face but I cannot remember much apart from feathers flying.

Nobody Asked Me

So this BIG thing is just about as big an explosion as you can imagine happening to me. And it really is not fair because nobody asked me.

Something BIG has Occurred

Something BIG has occurred. Eek.

Fascinating Invention No.13 - Bakelite, The Fantastic Plastic!

The Science Museum (where else?) has a fantastic plastic exhibition . Bakelite is the first plastic and was invented by Leo Baekeland in 1907, so, 100 years ago.

There was a time before plastic and it was a time made of wood and stone and glass. Of couse, The Parents still disapprove of plastic but you cannot have a phone made out of stone (too heavy) or electricity cables covered in wood (too burny) or glass Spiderman lunch boxes (too smashy).
Leo Baekeland made masses of money with some other fantastic invention and moved to a place called, Snug Rock where he spent years thinking about insulators. You may think this sounds very boring and it probably was but somebody needed to think about it because the beetles were getting tired.
For centuries, Laccifer lacca beetles beetled away making a varnish called Shellac - course, they were just the insect slaves of some people who ordered them about and made the money and probably did not give the beetles anything. But by 1904 it got worse; the beetles had to work overtime because everyone needed a coating for the all new and exciting electrity cables. The beetles just could not keep up and would probably have started a union or organised a strike or gone off work with stress if the first manufactured plastic had not been invented.

To do this, Baekeland used a machine called a 'bakeliser'. This was like a giant pressure cooker which could muck about with chemical gunk and make it into a mouldable substance. So plastic was invented and no more Shellac was needed.
The beetles could retire.