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.                 

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)……….

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.

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 Space Ferret, The Paddle Steamer and the Pirates of the Caribbean . . . . HAR HAR HAR

So what exciting events happened today I hear you type, well I sort of did things that I have done before really, starting with a bit of Zombie defence maintenance, it is after all important to be vigilant or they will sneak in; and before you can say Boris Karloff they are stabbing at your head with a knife and fork demanding dinner. OK yes quite a lot of them prefer spoons because lets face it the right hand, left hand, mouth coordination of a Zombie is famously RUBBISH.

After this I had a small bonfire to try and get rid of a pile of bits still lingering about from when the men with chainsaws removed the trees that were starting to get tangled up in the power lines that run over the corner of the garden. It was not really the best bonfire I have had but such is the way of bonfires, but at least all the stuff that was on it burnt even if there is still rather a large pile of more bits to burn in the future.

I then decided that after the events of yesterday where the man in the moon was eaten by a space gecko I needed to make escape plans in case the beast turns up here. So I tested the Steam Powered Steam Paddle Steamer in the pond. It was raining a bit at the time so an excellent test of the conditions I will have to face when being pursued by a space gecko, and it also gave me the opportunity to do a quick re-enactment of  Pirates of the Caribbean again . . . . .HAR HAR HAR

Shiver me timbers

Sail the Main Brace.

Lash them to the seagull and make em talk about planks? ….. (sorry Walk the Plank)

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

Roast the parrot on the gibbered

More power Scotty there be a storm brewin HAR HAR

We'll have no Rhett Butler’s on this here paddle steamer, feed him to the sharks

It be gold HAR HAR

Run for your lives it’s a Space Ferret (sorry Gecko) HAR HAR HAR

Battle stations Dive Dive Dive . . . . . . . .NO hang on that’s not right

AH mum has said IDIOT.

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

   

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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).

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More Evidence of Aliens (good stuff this time)

I know what you all thinking . . . . . You are all thinking what a lovely day so it is just not possible that Rob Z Tobor and the slightly eclectic group of misfits plus the odd ferret that represent his class in the grand cyber academy; his place of education, could accidently run into Aliens. Well you see even on a lovely day like today there are some things you just cant assume, and one of them is that while on the annual compulsory orienteering race that the geography teacher insists we all do on particularly sunny days (while he sits in the sun at the finish) Freddie and his ferrets will not stumble over alien remains, so they did… WELL COOL. We carried the alien remains back to the school although it was harder than we thought as Mr Jones kept trying to steal them and said it was unfair as he was the one who had spent years in the woods running about in the nude trying to communicate with strange beings.

At school the headmaster said the remains smelt and would not allow them into the school, I think it might have been Freddie’s Ferrets that smelt a bit, it has been a very hot day and they were eating curry and beans last night (a ferret favourite so I am told).  Anyway I have photographed the evidence so that you can see this is all bona fide evidence of alien activity on Earth, and I have even drawn the missing bits to give you an idea of what it may have looked like.

 In other news back home we have discovered a mysterious path that leads to another path which then leads to another path with then leads back to the first mysterious path. These secret paths were hidden by the three bishops who I chopped up the other day.

And there was also a curved digital message in the field next door from the aliens when I returned home, a clincher of their existence if ever there was one. The message according to Mr Jones said :-

Please return the remains of our comrade Stron G Armkneel (sounds Scandinavian to me), the first alien to step foot on Earth and who sadly was unable to return to our planet. And foolishly  went native breeding with ape like creatures, despite being warned it was a bad move and it would all end in tears two million years later……………..

Anyway I am not sure how to tell them Freddie’s Ferrets sort of ate the remains as they were a bit peckish after the annual compulsory orienteering race, I think we can safely blame the geography teacher, it was all his fault.      

Elvis, Zombies and a Ferret in a shopping centre (Part 2)

It was 3 degrees C again today, I mention this now because it has been this temperature for almost a year now (OK I know, but it feels like it has), right back to today, and it has happened again today, it has been quiet. The school survey at the shopping centre was far more successful than last time when there was a bit of a stampede when some of the school pupils, I think sort of got confused with Zombies and Freddie’s ferrets went walkabout. I can hear newish readers of my diary thinking when did that happen and to tell the truth I can’t remember it was a long time ago. If you are watching the block buster movie made by that nice Steven Spielberg and it has not happened yet then rest assured I will have complained loads that he has cut out another good bit, just because the film was 15 hours long.  I know that seems like a long time but that Lords of the Rings trilogy is long and nothing actually happens in that, where as loads happens in my film . . . .  the film of me, I mean (films).

Anyway there we were in the shopping centre today going down in the lift (me Freddie and his Ferret) when someone hits the alarm, and it was not me Freddie or his ferret, but everyone on the lift looked at me that is not fair. Then when we get out a woman with a pram, who was in the lift and who pressed the alarm runs off shouting LOOK OUT ITS HIM AGAIN., I don’t know who she was referring too because me and Freddie saw no one except a load of shoppers. And then when we approached the shoppers to do our survey they kept hiding in the toilets or running into Pound Land   and similar places where Freddie and I will not venture into anymore as they are frequented by strangely mad gangs of little old ladies who Freddie thinks are the Zombies Grannies. I agree with that; after all Zombies must have grannies too, well most of them, I know the Steam Powered Zombies that dad makes don’t have grannies unless you include dad and he objects to being called Granny even by a Zombie.

The result of this was after several hours Freddie and I had only surveyed one person, I say person it was Freddie’s ferret and it said it was too busy really to do a survey, so sort of ate most of the answer sheet, and then signed it Elvis Presley so when the teacher queried it Freddie had to explain it was not really Elvis but a ferret and we got a zero percent mark.

DAMN I was hoping to write something about science today and now look what happened, but it just goes to show you should never put Elvis Presley and a ferret in a shopping centre at the same time. Mum has just said IDIOT, not sure if she means me Elvis or the ferret. 

Apparently 15% of all shoppers hate escalators and 2% think seagulls should not be allowed in shoe shops . . . . . . . and one hundred percent of both might be Elvis.  

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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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The pirates ships of Treasure Island, Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub and a ferret

Today has been wet dark and cold, it appears that the UK is slowly vanishing under water with terrible floods and the like, I had to explain to several teachers that my homework was ruined when I had to leap into a puddle to save a distressed seagull who was confused and thought he was somewhere in the middle of the North Sea. To tell the truth it is very easy to make that sort of mistake at present as there is a lot of water about and it is still raining very heavily even as I type.

Anyway with all the rain and cold and dark everyone was sulking and sailing paper boats up and down the school corridors. Treasure Island makes very good pirate ships although it needs to be one of the very very rare first editions signed by Blind Pugh from the crew who if I remember correctly were Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub., luckily the school library had a first edition of Treasure Island  . . . . . . . Har Har Har Har Hardy Har so my pirate ships were able to attack the fleet of the Russian navy made from War and Piece. It was a modern edition of War and piece so the paper was rubbish. Although Esmeralda’s U boats made from Under Milkwood were rather difficult to destroy but luckily Freddie’s ferret thought they were fish and ate them, leaving the pirates ships to blockade the doorway to the headmaster’s office. However the headmaster refused to pay the ransom and made me mop the deck (sorry I mean mop the desk).

 Oooooo yes the Ghost Writer hid today saying it was too wet for IT.

And myself and my djembe colleague have been playing The Song of the Sun God in an attempt to stop the rain, so with luck in the morning it will not be raining and the sun will come out.  

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