An A to Z Coronavirus observational guide. . . Y

Y

Youth and the Young

Well one of the things that seems to be the case with Covid-19 is that you are likely to deal with the Coronavirus much better physically if you are younger. This may seem fairly logic but viruses can be fickle things and there have been some where the young are more vulnerable. In this case it is probably for the best that they do cope better physically as younger folk tend to think of themselves as invincible which they are not.

The problem though is that although the young cope with Covid-19 better than the old they do not cope with social distancing and lockdown as well.  I mean when I was young I had the whole world out there at my fingertips.  OK I started an apprenticeship in Engineering when I left school and swotted a bit which ironically was something I did not do at school. But this was a life choice by me; someone in the same position now finds themselves confined to home with few options. Even going to school or college is not an option at present so being young in lockdown I suspect for many is extremely stressful mentally. For younger children, well a lot of them just dont understand whats happening or why they cant see their pals. . . . (I may include myself in that, because at some point we will have to abandon lockdown and take our chances) 

Well I noticed on the news tonight that there is concern for young children as several in recent days have been having severe symptoms that may be linked to Covid-19 which has resulted in them being in hospital and in a fairly poorly way. This appears to be a new twist in the continuing story of this virus.  

Folk thought I was a bit odd in my youth.

Llandudno. The Zombie Seagulls and The George Hotel

I have returned (OK yesterday afternoon) from my expedition North by what some would say was the pretty route or as the more rational among us like to call it, the long way. So where did we venture in our search for the source of the large great thing that folk have not found the source of yet. Well Llandudno a place where explorers seldom go hunting for things, which logically makes it a prime target to explore, logic dictates that you are more likely to find new things in a place where no one has looked for them. And it is plainly very clear that it has been some time since man looked for new things in Llandudno. 

Our first new discovery was a new breed of seabird; it was a seagull, not just any seagull though but one with very specific eating habits. It hammered away on windows until it was given Ginger Nuts which then appeased the ravenous beast who flew off only to return the following day at the same time.  We have officially named the new breed of bird Seagullious Gingernutium Esmeralda after Esmeralda as it was a fearsome and scary beast that given half a chance would bite half your arm off, and it shouted a lot.  We assume that it might be worshiped by the local Llandudnoians as we did notice they sold three Zombie Gingerbread Men for a pound and had many images of Zombies in Shop Windows.

Our search for the source of the large great thing did not go well until the second evening when a huge ship was hauled through town on a big caterpillar tracked device accompanied by men in orange seafaring equipment. We would not have noticed had it not been for the fact that all the buildings shook and there was a loud low rumbling that sent little old ladies scampering in all directions for cover. There are many little old ladies in Llandudno.

Having concluded that this strange ritual must be connected to our search we set off the following morning in our final bid for glory after a hearty breakfast at base camp (the George Hotel . . . Well Posh) following in the tracks (in more ways than one) of the huge ship. As we did we noticed many little old ladies heading towards M&S and discretely followed as they looked like they could be heading towards the source of the thing we were seeking and interestingly none of the windows  of M&S were full of zombies or skeletons which was suspicious. As we followed this lost tribe of little old ladies up the escalator to the first floor they spoke in a strange tongue, some sort of strange Welsh language.

Following them through the 50% sale rails and towards the café we suddenly found ourselves in a clearing and at the elusive Source of the Aisle. We cheered and raised our flag, a skull and crossbones purchased in a local shop and made of genuine plastic. Our mission complete we returned to base camp and ate afternoon cream tea and watched Zombie Seagulls pecking at the heads of passing joggers on the promenade. It’s their own fault there are signs saying beware of the seagulls.

This is very funny indeed if you have not seen it.

Mans Last Great Adventure . . .

I am starting to prepare for my trip into the unknown a trip fraught with danger and wild beasts and things of which I am yet to think of. Preparations have already been made and we will be setting up our first camp in the freezer section of the huge out of town supermarket next to the frozen Peas. This will give us some protection from the prevailing winds that blow constantly from the large automated sliding doors.  I will be undertaking this journey with Esmeralda, Freddie and his Ferrets and we have managed to acquire bearers to carry the heavy equipment needed to complete our task. Our negotiations with the local tribe called The Checkouts failed terribly, but luckily Freddie found the leader of the reclusive Trolleymen who has agreed to carry our supplies for a modest fee. It seems the Trolleymen have some sort of strange device they use to carry stuff in called a trolley, which I suspect is the reason they are called the Trolleymen.

Anyway we will shortly be starting our trip (well sometime in the next few days) to find the source of the last great river that man has yet to explore.

Yes as our support vehicles park up in the car park of the great out of town supermarket in readiness there is nothing left to do but publicly announce our attempt to find the elusive Source Of The Aisle

Things are looking good for this MAN'S Last Great Adventure we have already had two memorable quotes from Freddie and Esmeralda

Dr Livingstone’s Fresh Organic Cornish Pasties I presume

And

I am going for a little walk I may get some thyme.

Should our expedition be successful there is already talk of an attempt on the North Face of the IKEA in the future.                 

Slugs, Explosions and a rather useful tip for the A to Z Challenge

As most of you know I am a pupil at the local Academy and due to an administrator’s error also a teacher. Now it has been rather a long time since I have told all of you of events with Freddie and his ferrets or Esmeralda or the school mascot, the School Goat, and with good reason. You see this is not the sort of school frequented by the likes of Harry Potter, it is not a school for wizards although Jimmy’s dad is apparently a wizard at accounts or so the high court judge told him. Jimmy is very proud, he said accounting gets a bad name and it is time someone recognized the skills involved. 

This however is all a distraction what I am saying is our school is a normal school we don’t have three headed dogs or huge blundering giants and the like wandering about; or explosions  . . . . . . . . OK yes we do have explosions but we are young keen and have access to the internet so science needs to be exciting and Maths, it is a little known fact but Maths is a key lesson in the making of explosions as it allows students to use a grappling hook to pinch some weed killer from the caretakers shed below the classroom.

Sorry distracted again . . . . . . Many of you will know that my main subject as a teacher is Zombie Defence Classes but as we approach spring it is a difficult subject to teach as the minds of Zombies turn to love, yes it is apparently the breeding season. As the young innocent slightly eccentric child of cyberspace I have no plans to teach the breeding habits of Zombies to anyone so I thought I KNOW I will do what they do in other schools use Frogs. I was sadly unable to find any Frogs so I have substituted Frogs for Slugs. And with the help of Freddie and Esmeralda managed to fill a huge tank with over 10,000 slugs . . Well it appears the lid of the tank was a little insecure and the slugs are breeding in the school at a rather alarming rate. The good news the breeding cycle of the Zombie and slug is plain for everyone to see; The bad news is I had to stay in after school and clean all the slime . . . . . . . . . .YUCK . . . . . . .

The up side to all this is I feel the very nice Steven Spielberg will be far more amenable to a film full of breeding Slugs and Zombies than one full of annoying British Wizards who just grow up and whinge a lot and anyway that has been well and truly done to death now.  

I will end this diary entry on the blog with a poem as a useful hint of how to do the A to Z when you can’t think of a single word for certain letters. . . . .

A

Arrim, aroo, addus, aboo.

And filly the aardvark in the arcline agoo

While aplit and acca are appy abzeeeee

And fettle the arra

And smile at the Zombie

B

Barrim baroo baddus baboo

And filly the aardvark in the barcline bagoo

While baplit and bacca are bappy babzeeeeee

And fettle the barra

And smile at the Zombie

C

So clever

So clever

So clever are weeeeeeeee

But you can’t claim you’re an Aardvark

To a hungry Zombieeeeeeee

It will eat you and ruin a good poem

THE END

HAH HA HAH AH HAH AH HAH AH H AH H H HA HAH Ha ha ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Forty Aliens and a Funeral . . . . .

I know what you are all thinking, you are thinking OK then what happened to all those Toad People from the Planet Todimimiun 3, and it is a fair point, but little do you know just what a close call it was. Firstly the huge Aurora Borealis as predicted on Stargazing Live by Professor Brian Cox and his sidekick  Dara O Briain did not happen, so the main battle fleet fled. Then as we fought the few (about forty) fool hardy Toad People who attempted to invade in the early hours of the morning in the school canteen, with pointy sticks and Freddie’s Ferrets, Esmeralda threw a huge cauldron of tapioca pudding over their leader. Well it appears I am not the only one who thinks tapioca pudding looks like frogs spawn. And it was all too much for the alien Toad People who ran off screaming that we (that’s us humans) were a deranged barbaric life form that shows no respect to decent hard working amphibians bent on colonising the universe in order to improve the lot of slimy critters that live under rocks…..

They have threatened to attempt to invade again soon . . . . . Maybe not today . . . . . Maybe not tomorrow; but about the same time next year, so keep a look out for Stargazing Live on the BBC it is a dead certainty that the events are connected. . . . . I know their cunning plan.

  The other good news in all this is tapioca pudding is off the menu for a few weeks now . .

Early this morning the Ghost Writer ran off with our car again as his is still not working, although he has been told that all the parts have been ordered. He had an emergency call from his place of work where a rather strange IT problem had occurred. They said if they did not know any better they would be convinced that the main supervisors PC was full of toad slime and bits of frog; although as they said such a thing was madness. So the Ghost Writer told them a tale of IP conflicts and default gateways, which always makes folk sort of glaze over and think of things like seagulls and garden gnomes.

Then this afternoon we all went off to a funeral of someone who was one hundred and one. That is quite old and you can’t be sad if someone of one hundred and one dies quietly at home. There were loads of folk at the church and the fact I never sing at funerals and weddings was not noticed, so no one will ever know . . . . . . . . . . . AH DAMN.

While there I also learnt of another local person who died and it now means that in that particular town almost all the strange and slightly eccentric folk that lived there from way back have died.  I am sure that the average number of eccentrics per 1000 head of population is decreasing, you really don’t get real eccentrics these days, they tend to be folk with money pretending to be eccentric; real eccentrics have a habit of keeping their heads down and just get on with being eccentric and modern society is not eccentric friendly (or amphibian friendly)……….

The Chemistry Class Halloween Experiment and the Storm Warning for Britain

Today in School the Chemistry teacher said we might do a jolly Halloween experiment seeing how it is not far off now. Anyway it did not go entirely to plan, although it was not entirely my fault the instructions were a bit confusing.

Put the blue powder in the green bottle into the green liquid in the yellow bowl before you add the yellow liquid in the blue bottle to the yellow bowl which now has a green liquid in it. Then add the yellow powder from the red bottle to the red bowl with the yellow liquid in it, this liquid will now turn black. Then mix the two bowls together by either putting the black liquid in the red bowl into the yellow bowl with the liquid that has now turned blue or the other way round. So you then end up with a red bowl with a brown liquid or a yellow bowl with a brown liquid; you then add the red crystals from the blue bottle and stand well clear because there will be a lot of red and blue smoke.

But the thing was myself, Esmeralda and Freddie were watching a spider and giggling and trying to work out if it was one of those man eating spiders that closed that school on the news the other day so we sort of got our colours a bit mixed up.

I will not go into details but I have drawn a picture with my new hairy claws and have been told I will be back to normal by Sunday . . . . . . DAMN I was hoping the effects would last to Halloween, anyway mum says she has no plans to fry worms and earwigs all weekend to keep me fed, has told me off for swimming in the pond chasing newts.

Oooooo yes while on the subject of news, I notice that the weather forecast for Sunday is well wild around here and a fair chunk of Britain, so time to batten down the hatches, I assume that means you need to tie your chickens to the ground, they hatch eggs and both chickens and eggs will blow away in what is said to be a possibly really scary storm…. TAKE TO THE HILLS  . . . No hang on hill may be a bad place to be, unless it floods as well. . . . Run in circles and flap a lot; circles, maybe that is what the aliens were warning us about yesterday.

Time to go and eat more worms YUM. 

Trusty Old Converse Trainers unwittingly saving Aliens and other stuff

I had my trusty old converse trainers on today in order to ensure safe passage through the day. However the headmaster reckoned as today was the last dry day for a while and I was wearing what he called a manky pair of old trainers I could cut the school playing fields. Well that was not fair I tried to explain that for a tiny period of time my old converse trainers were famous on the internet, well for about a week they were, but it was like water off a ducks back . . . . I am not sure about that old saying I spent ages chasing a duck once to get the water off its back and as far as I could tell it looked just like water.

Cutting the grass was hard work for both me and my footwear but it did come with its own rewards because while I was cutting the grass I saw a small but noisy aeroplane, well it sounded like a small plane but it was invisible and it circled overhead then headed off in a northerly direction.  I then saw two invisible Red Kites (the birds not the fabric device used by Professor Frankincense). When I say I saw these things I looked at where the noise came from but did not see them as they were invisible.

However after lunch where I had told Esmeralda, Freddie and his ferrets and the school Mascot (the goat) about the invisible things I took them off to show them to prove they were there and real, and I was surprised to find a crop circle or a grass circle. This means that the invisible small plane was in fact an alien spacecraft, probably one of the Venusian Battle cruises mentioned yesterday and it was having engine problems. And the Red Kites were in fact aliens from Venus (the planet not the tennis player) and they were saying thanks for sorting out a decent landing pad with nice short grass. 

We have been out to see Mr M again to make sure he is OK I was able to show that if you slide a walking stick up the side of someone's leg while they are wearing trousers and are a bit poorly, they are completely incapable of moving. Mr M is not eating all his food so I also balanced five oranges on the end of his walking stick; that was before I trapped him in bed with the leg trick. AH  . . . . . . DAMN I have a feeling I may have forgotten to remove the walking stick from the side of his leg before we left. I guess the nurses might notice.

The unseen problems of things you cant see.

I guess that some of you are wondering if I (Rob Z Tobor) am still a part-time teacher of Zombie Defence Classes  and the like, in the strange cyber-academy of cyberspace.

Yes

And you are wondering if Esmeralda is still there and whether she snapped my trusty pointy stick in half in a fit of rage.

Yes

And you might even be wondering if I fixed it with some handy electrical tape that was not really doing a lot.

Yes

And now you are wondering if the fact there was an electrical short circuit in the science blog resulting in an entire blackout in school meaning that teaching science was very difficult indeed resulting in everyone being sent home early

Yes

Have you noticed just how dependent on electricity we are, it is a bit of a worry really and also rather odd, because the entire Earth has become dependent on something we can’t see. Well that is not entirely true we do get to see lightning but the problem with lightning is it not the easiest stuff to use constructively. Dads lightning powered electric car was not a great success even if it did do one of the fastest zero to sixty miles an hour ever recorded, but it would have been even more impressive if dad had been in it at the time. As dad says the problem with lightning is it unpredictable and you can’t park the lightning powered electric car in the same place twice for reasons that are plainly clear to all who know the famous old saying. And dads assistant mechanic Scotty, after investigating the engine did make the point that the engine will nay take it Captain.

I have just been outside as I saw a message in cyberspace saying the moon was like really looking really cool; only over here it is hiding behind a huge cloud, possibly created by an overheated lightning powered electric car.

We also got to see Mr M today and his son Mr S, it appears Mr M is still trapped between hospital and no place to go…. He thinks the hospital might write to him in hospital to ask when he is able to leave hospital; although he is still not allowed home so it is all a bit of a game sorting out something suitable. As for as we can tell most of the suitable places have already been taken over by little old ladies with white hair who have a habit of stopping strangers in the street and shouting at them I remember when we never had electricity and now you see it everywhere. I once tried to explain to a group of little old ladies you can’t see electricity but they hit me with umbrellas and then demanded electrical tape to fix them. 

A picture tells a thousand words

I have drawn a quick picture which I think basically explains itself, you know the old saying. .. . . A picture tells a thousand words . . . . So I don’t really think I need to say much more about today except to add that Esmeralda will certainly take more care near ferrets, and George will be fine once he gets his hand out of the thermos flask.  Yes he could break it, but that might kill the stick insects inside and that is the last thing we need after today’s events.

Of course those of you reading the cheap paperback diary of Rob Z Tobor bought at Kings Cross station will not get to see my drawing, so I will just say it involves an angry swan and a plate of ice cream.   

Romantic fiction and its place in the modern school system..

I have been asked to rally the troops so to speak, as the headmaster says we are due and inspection by NASA or is it GCHQ or the RSPCA, well who ever does school inspections to assess how we are doing since we became an academy. There is talk of manipulation of figures and cooking the books by the government. This is not good, have you ever tried to eat a cooked book or even read it, it is extremely difficult particularly if boiled and someone tells you it is semolina pudding with pink icing. It is amazing just how much semolina the works of Barbara Cartland will produce, on the bright side though the school Library has no longer got a romantic fiction section.

Anyway back to the point, it appears that the Headmaster has also manipulated his statistics and has slightly lied about the number of pupils attending the school. So in order to rectify this we are going to make papier-mâché pupils to help with the pupil numbers. And just by luck the school semolina was rather unpopular seeing how it is a paper based pudding so we have estimated we can make at least 50 new pupils with it.

So we spent much of the day in the art class making robots, sorry I mean pupils out of  papier-mâché, well that was the plan; but it did not entirely go to plan. Esmeralda does not like the present school bus driver and has made a replacement one to replace him. I tried to explain it can’t drive but she reckons it will do a better job than the present one. It is not entirely his fault since pointy sticks became part of the school uniform some pupils say he might be a Zombie and are rather enthusiastic with their pointy sticks.

Freddie has spent the day making papier-mâché ferrets and we at least do have 25 new school ferrets although the headmaster says they don’t really count. Well that’s not true they can count to twenty three and a half without assistance (that’s the real ferrets not the papier-mâché ferrets).

I as a member of The Monty Cardboard Robot Club felt duty bound to do my duty and make a robot, so I did and although the headmaster said it was quite a good robot it was not going to convince the inspectors it was a pupil even if it did threaten to destroy them with its death ray and pointy stick.

Tomorrow we plan to work on plan B well I say we I mean the headmaster, he says our help was well intentioned but rubbish, personally I think it was the choice of book; romantic fiction has never really made good school pupils………. 

The Slightly Eccentric Diary of Rob Z Tobor . . . . .VOLUME FOUR . . . . And Pointy Sticks

My desk lamp has just exploded so I am typing in the gloom, and as many of you know, although to be fair kindly don’t say anything about it, my typing is rubbish…. So typing in the dark is going to be tough…

I have slightly more time today so today is the first day of The Slightly Eccentric Diary of Rob Z Tobor   . . . . .VOLUME FOUR . . . . . . A bit late, but yes it has officially started today.

Now of course I normally start my diary with my return to school, but I have been back a week now and much has happened. You see I’m no fool I am doing what that Harry Potter did make sure something happens at school, otherwise the nice Mr Spielberg will fall asleep and then that will be the end of the movie deal…… OK right yes . . . .  Esmeralda has become Head Girl after persuading the governors with a pointy stick that it was an excellent idea, as no one is going to argue with her.  For some reason Esmeralda with a pointy stick seems to be far scarier than I am, in fact she is far scarier even without the pointy stick.

In order to avoid the mistake of last year where I was made head boy my name was removed entirely from the list of pupils this year, however it was accidently added to the list of teachers, so this year I am a budding student teacher specializing in Obscure Irrational Theories about the Universe (OIT as it is known) and Zombie Self Defence classes. I say Zombie Self Defence classes this does not mean I am teaching Zombies despite what the headmaster says, but I am teaching pupils to defend themselves against such beasts. As it happens I have a diploma in Zombiology after writing my thesis. . . . The Urban Zombie in the Modern Superstore.  The Head Master who everyone thought would shout about my part time teaching post was in fact quite pleased but only because I do not get paid because I am still technically a pupil . . . . . . DAMN.

Anyway I have managed to get the pointy stick officially added to the official school uniform now,  well I say I, as it happens Esmeralda persuaded the governors after a short meeting where she demonstrated the pointy sticks qualities……

Ooooooo  yes I bought some magic beans today, waved at a refrigerator and gave the Ghost Writer and Mrs Ghost Writer directions on the best and quickest way to get around a large building with many corridors with many people in them who are mainly lost, they apparently are still using my early map with the small errors. It appears that the Ghost Writer said I’m an IDIOT after they arrived in the boiler room late this afternoon. . . . .  

Anyway welcome to Volume Four (The Return of the Pointy Stick).

Rotation biased management in the working environment and the life story of a chicken

I have spent the day doing practical things such as drilling holes with a drill screwing screws in with a screw driver and sawing stuff to the right size, when I say the right size I really mean it is righter than it was before I attacked it with a saw but it is not exactly accurate. You see accurate is an abstract concept, as different things need a different degree of accuracy and I in general try to stick with things where I can go OOOOOOooooo that’s about right, after a wave of a finger and making a few Guesstimates with a pencil. Do you know that in nearly half a millions words of writing my diary that is the first time I have used the word Guesstimate (OK twice now).

While doing all this stuff with Esmeralda and Freddie and his ferret and various other pupils from our posh (well the facade at the front is posh) Academy (school to us normal chaps),   I noticed that most folk are right handed and a small percentage such as myself left handed, but I also noticed something else a result of using power tools with long cables, there is another factor it appears we are also either clockwise biased or anticlockwise biased. If two clockwise biased people use the same power tool the power cable will get all twisted up which is dead annoying but if an anticlockwise person works with a clockwise person the cable will not get twisted because there is no overall rotation of the tool or the cable. So the perfect working relationship for doing DIY would be left and a right handed people, who are also clockwise and anticlockwise biased. I think this discovery is highly important to the workplace; and my observation of rotation biased management in the working environment should win me a Nobel Prize for sure, well it better or someone will not be happy.

One small thing has come to mind over the 500,000 words or so I have so far written in my diary, I am not including comments and my responses to comments that would be just scary, is I have used loads of different words.  You see yet another one used tonight (Guesstimate) and I have used loads over time, much more than that William Shakespeare chap who surprisingly used fewer than most people suspect,  and he made a few up. I believe it is said he used 31 and a half words in total and wrote a total of just under 900,000  in total, so I have used loads more words than he did and done it all in just one diary…..   

If anyone is wondering why the picture is of the chicken tonight he has also written his whole life story in 31 and a half words……. When asked how he felt about his publication he said . . . . . . . He was just a self of his former shell . . . . . . HAH HAHAHHAH HAHAHH Hah hah ah hahah hahah ah hahah ha hah ahhaha hah ha hah ah ahhah hahah ha hah ah hah ha hah ahahah a  

Tunnock Tea Cakes, a Unicycle, the Weather and the contradictions of BBC Radio 4

The day had its contradictions and it is entirely the man at the BBC’s fault on that Today programme on Radio 4 that is on in the morning, you see I was listening to the radio having a nice cup of tea and trying to get my head into a state on normality. It takes time for me to get to a state of normal in the morning, I am not one of these folk who wake up all chirpy and bouncy and get up singing and smiling, in fact I would say I have still not reached that point by the evening when I go to bed, I blame it on a day that needs to be longer. Right . . . . . . . . . back to this contradiction; as the voices from the radio penetrated my head I suddenly heard talk of the weather and that some scientists are saying that we can expect to have wet summers for at least the next ten years or maybe longer. Well that sort of woke me up, are they really serious, ten years of wet British summers, apparently it is something to do with a warming North Atlantic and the jet stream or the like and there was talk of some localized anomaly in Shropshire that so far has defied normal scientific principles.  Some scientist said for all the world he would swear someone had a weather machine but they all laughed at such a foolish idea.

The contradiction arises from the fact today was hot very very hot and dry probably the hottest day we have had in the nearly two years we have lived at this location. It is very off putting, I have been brought up to believe the BBC and the men/women of Radio Four (formally the home service) they are like the rock of world affairs the steady voice of reason and an unbiased voice among the thousands of other radio stations pumping out propaganda or rubbish or both. Anyway after listening to that I got up  . . . . . . . . DAMN I have written this much and all I have done is listen to the radio and got up…….. How did that happen? I think I need to fast forward to the end of the day

So there you go after the arms fell off the aliens body Esmeralda escaped and Mr Jones was super gluing the alien back together as evidence. Freddie and his ferrets were able to return the roller skates to their rightful owner and the council will be filling the large hole in sometime in the morning, luckily we all got out and did a runner before they turned up to assess the damage. As for the Goat he is limping slightly but it is his own fault, he was told that drinking petrol is fraught with dangers and just because a man on a unicycle can do it does not mean a goat has too, although I was impressed by the goats ability to ride the unicycle, its just a shame he did not work out how to stop it.

Oooo yes I got to eat five hundred  Tunnocks Tea Cakes in one go  . . . . . . . .WELL COOL although I feel a little sick . . . . . . . .. Mum says IDIOT

   

.

Particle Physics and Poetry

I don’t mind a day of Particle Physics at school it is an easy way to pass the time as we scratch are heads and point at particles of various types, although Freddie reckons that ferrets can see antimatter, which is why they are such good hunters. Anyway there we were pottering about doing stuff with the atomic accelerator and a few particles that Esmeralda had found under a floorboard she had managed to remove in the interests of scientific research when the teacher decided to have a little change of subject to test our abilities in diverse rational functioning, something apparently we might have to do in the future at some point. So we had to write well known poetry from memory. Luckily we were working in groups so me, Freddie and Esmeralda worked together and I did a bit of a rush drawing for a poem that Esmeralda knew, well she said she knew but I think her and Freddie got a bit confused.

The Owlicat and the caterpillar went to sea

In a beautiful pea green boat

But the Owlicat squashed his mate

With the foot of a runcible goat.

And off in the distance far away

Where the Owlicat will get to soon

A little dog laughed because he saw

A cow jump over the Moon.

The End

The teacher said it was the worst poem he had ever read and was the work of IDIOTS but luckily our particle Physics might get us a Nobel Prize, Well it would have if Esmeralda had not set fire to our experiment in revenge for the teacher insulting her poetry. And Unfortunately Freddie says the ferrets are unlikely to help us again to recreate our particle experiment as they did not get any recognition for their part of the particle experiment involving antimatter.

Ooooo yes Miss I gave the Ghost Writer a present full of sea monsters today, he is very pleased but is unsure about what to feed the sea monsters, I will have to Google that or ask the chaps at GCHQ who are monitoring my diary………. (Any ideas Charles and Quentin).

.

Pizza Slice, The Dark Creature of the Undergrowth, Aliens and Elsewhere

I have not achieved a great deal today, it has been that sort of day I looked at a little job involving some tongue and groove panelling but did not have the things I needed, so sort of waved the various bits about shook my head a lot pointed and said OOOOO sorry madam it needs a new thermitechnic screw adjuster like all good plumbers and then said I would be back two weeks next Thursday. However mum said I was not a plumber I was an IDIOT and sent me out to do things elsewhere, but I knew where here was and I knew where there was but I could not find elsewhere. Despite asking everyone I ran into (I say ran into I was walking and did not make any physical contact) such as the Banshees and the Lemmings of Petrograd, who were playing leap frog ( Lemmings, leap frog . . . . .HAH HAHAHHAHAHH HAH ha hah ah hah ah ahahhah ha ha ha) a few Zombies, a few Cows, a Raven, The Dark Creature of the Undergrowth, Mr Jones, Esmeralda and Freddie who have formed a new group called ‘Watching Alien Invasion Tactics’ or WAIT for short. Apparently Mr Jones often chases aliens through the woods shouting WAIT  . . . . . . take me to your leader.

Hang on what was I saying  . . . . . . AH YES elsewhere; when I asked everyone I was looking for elsewhere they would generally scratch their heads ask if I meant here and when I said no they would suggest over there but I was not looking for there I was looking for elsewhere. I spent a lot of time doing that until I worked out I had been here there and everywhere, although not elsewhere. You can see how a chaps day can vanish like sand through the fingers of a little old ladies hand when perusing such a task, strangely it is the sort of task us chaps will do for hours and women tend not too even for five minutes, although I don’t know why?

In other news I noticed on the news that a man who I believe was a captain of Star Trek although not Captain Kirk (the real captain) was going on about never eating a pizza slice before even though he is now seventy, although he has eaten pizza. Now call me an IDIOT but me and the Ghost Writer who is well old, are well confused what is a pizza slice if it is not a pizza, If either of use go out a restaurant and order a pizza we want the whole thing not a bit of it.  As I say the poor old Ghost Writer (note the word OLD) and I don’t understand what they were talking about.

Oooo I was a bit rushed for a picture tonight so I photographed my dinner (I know it is a bit healthy looking) and it is not pizza. 

Cyberblogamus the Micro God of Blogs

The Weather today is cold, sometimes a bit sunny with some hail and rain. So not a great day really as it feels I have time warped back to February. I am in the process of creating and establishing a series of Micro Gods in the school grounds to get feedback as to the viability of making my fortune as the Mr Big of Micro Gods. My attempted meeting with the powers that be in Lego started badly when they saw me went AAAAuugggHHHH a lot and threw bricks at me (luckily they were Lego bricks) . It ended badly as well, as the chairman’s desk which I swear was a bit wobbly before I touched it fell apart and then the chairman’s arm fell off, I always thought Meccano was much better using nuts and bolts, lets face it Frankenstein’s Monster was held together with bolts and his arm never fell off. Just image if  Frankenstein’s Monster had been made with Lego, poor old Professor Frankenstein would have been a laughing stock.

Sorry a slight distraction, I have made the school mascot, the goat the Micro God of unsociable animals, Freddie the Micro God of Ferrets and Esmeralda the Micro God of part Steam Powered scary girls with chainsaw attachments. They all seem very pleased but the goat is demanding a shrine and offerings, in particular chocolate chip cookies and ice cream plus fresh vegetables from the out of town supermarket, maybe living Micro Gods is not such a good move.

We are off out tonight to a talk in Monty town hall about artists from the area and to see one of the founders of the 56 Group; a group of artists formed in 1956 and who are now starting to be collected nationally. We are hoping Mr M E will have a signed copy of his book for us tonight so that will be WELL COOL.  We have a couple of his pictures in the house and have known him for quite a long time now, he is getting rather frail these days but then he is one of the founder members of the 56 Group, so mathematically that makes a lot of sense.

And I have drawn Cyberblogamus the Micro God of Blogs in order to bring good luck and fortune to my blog, although someone said that very nice Steven Spielberg is not keen on snakes . . . . . . . .  DAMN . . . . . . Maybe I should make it look more horse like.   

Important unknown facts about rain and a faulty weather machine

It has returned to winter again and it is not the weather machine at fault either because it has a fault and is not working. It seems that the rotten weather is entirely natural today in fact dad insists that today is normal and that unless he fixes the weather machine and turns it on again then this weather will last for at least another few weeks or maybe longer. Well that is extremely bad news. I don’t mind the wet so much but when it is wet and cold it is very hard to remain motivated, and bouncy. 

It appears even Esmeralda and the school goat have started to be effected by the weather now as they tried to use the steam powered catapult to enter the local botanical greenhouse gardens through the open skylight. Bearing in mind that the sky lights are temperature controlled, so on a day like today were well and truly closed.

They are both OK though because as everyone knows Esmeralda is bionic so most of her is mechanical and fairly robust and those bits of her that are real are also fairly robust. And the goat of course is a goat and as we all know goats are fairly indestructible beasts, well certainly in cyberspace they are.

Apparently if you laid every rain drop that fell in a year end to end they would stretch round the Earth  1293 times and weight more that the entire weight of every bath in the world which if laid end to end  would take a long time to fill up unless you could get the rain to only fall in baths but the water would be very cold on days like today so no one would use baths and have showers instead, which is a bit like standing in the rain only warmer (no one likes a cold shower).

The Maths teacher has worked out that the surface area of all the rain in the air at any one time in the world is at least five times the surface area of the earth. Although he has had to assume the earth has a perfectly flat surface with no bump, hills or grains of sand or waves at sea and the like. If you take into account every surface at a molecular level then the surface of the Earth is greater than that of the universe, assuming the universe is smooth.

I might go now and hide from the rain in the bath, if I lie end to end in the bath my feet stick out the top but no rain can fall on me.

The goat, the caterpillar and the ferret

I think we have reached a crossroads in the weather (I hope so anyway) because although today is not great, it is damp and grey it is not icy cold so Yaaaaaaaay.  It also appears that a temporary solution to the deep dark cold muddy hole is also working OK so although more work is to be done there is no longer any stress involved and I am allowed to go to bed with supper at normal times, so Yaaaaaaaaaay (again). We are also all off to BigBills Greasy Fur Ball Café tonight for a meal . . . Yaaaaaaaaaay (some more); I might even make enquires as to whether the fish and chips is available as it is the best fish and chips in the world. The last fish and chips I had out was not the best fish and chips in the world, you see this is a problem if you eat out in a place that does the best fish and chips in the world it is then tricky if you go somewhere else, which is why we go to Big Bills Greasy Fur Ball Café and seldom go to other places.

The art teacher has decided that he will allow us (myself, Freddie and Esmeralda) to paint the ceiling of the art department, he said that it is because the school governors are too tight to get professionals in, and so to annoy them he decided that if we paint it they are bound to get someone in to sort it out super fast then.  I decided to continue my theme from observing clouds and so I painted a huge three headed caterpillar with tusks eating ginger cake in an igloo it was surrounded by hundreds of ferrets that Freddie painted; and Esmeralda in what can only be described as a stroke of genius, painted the school goat on the centre of the art department skylight in window glass paint, so the goat will now be heading towards the out of town supermarket forever in the word of art or until the skylight gets exploded again.

As it happens there is another rather cunning advantage in Esmeralda’s art as Ron the supermarket manager’s son will panic every time he has art and phone his dad to warn him of the imminent arrival of the goat making him leap into action with his new anti-goat gun and defence netting in a false alert. This should increase the chance of the goat getting through the new defence system after all Ron likes art and has art lessons 5 or 6 times a week, that is a lot of false alarms. Particularly when you are an out of town supermarket manager also trying to stop a roller skating dog stealing frozen legs of lamb as it weaves in and out of the gangs of little old ladies looking for bargains and shouting at innocent shoppers trying to keep their heads down and buy food.    

Yes sorry Miss Lily more ferrets. . . . . . . . HAHAHH AHH ah hah ha hahhah ha hah ahh haha haha hahahah  

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A Jackdaw riding a bicycle and singing about fish while balancing a frog on its head

What a lovely day it has been today, we need more days like this, blues skies and not a cloud to be seen anywhere, which proved slightly difficult in the art class at school. Because we were all outside creating conceptual art by describing what interesting things we could see in the clouds. Luckily the art teacher was able to borrow the science departments cloud machine for the day, I think I must have been having an off day because all I saw were the usual things that most people see when they look at clouds. There was the huge three headed caterpillar with tusks eating ginger cake in an igloo but I think everyone has seen one of those; then there was a Jackdaw riding a bicycle and singing about fish while balancing a frog on its head, and a man being chased by a cardboard box with five legs. I put all this down to the fact they were fake clouds, as real clouds are far more interesting.

Still I did better than Freddie and his ferret, they saw 300 ferrets juggling with marsh mallows then two ferrets riding on a horse backwards and several ferrets playing hamlet in a greengrocers shop during a sale. At one point everyone said they saw a goat doing pirouettes and hanging onto a load of abseiling equipment, but that was because it was the goat (the school mascot) who Esmeralda had decided to send to the out of town supermarket via the steam powered catapult. They have put bars on the skylight now so the goat can’t get in that way, so Esmeralda has given it a crash course on abseiling in through the air conditioning system, as it turned out crash course was rather apt as it appears that air conditioning and goats go not mix well, luckily however the goat is fine and arrived back with a stash of frozen peas, some stainless steel ducting and some parts from what looks like a heat exchanger and a fan.

The art teacher asked Esmeralda what she saw in the clouds and she said a seagull with a set of car keys, she even pointed to it as the science teacher ran past throwing rocks at it and shouting give me back my keys you ************* I don’t think that is what the art teacher had in mind…….

Ooooo yes I have also found the pipe in the big muddy damp cold and smelly hole that things are meant to soak away through but don’t. So all I need to do now according to dad is unblock it  . . . . . . . .AH DAMN          

        

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