Merry Christmas!

Happy festive cheery turkey day and I hope you get fat and presents. I mean, I hope you get presents and eat nice food (mince pies. Yum.) Here is my special Christmas card I made especially for you. That's a total lie, I don't know who you are. You could be a creepy internet stalker and I wouldn't know. Oh well, you can have the Christmas card anyway.

Airport Security

I'm afraid this post has been sitting around for ages, almost finished but lacking a suitable ending. I'm going to give it a shot, but prepare yourself for a shameful anticlimax.

Here's something that annoys me. You're all excited about going on holiday, you've woken up at 4am and have been dragging your suitcase through the dark for hours, you've queued at the check-in and then, finally, you reach customs (you queue for a long time there too) and they're like, "OK, please will you empty out your bag for us? And while you're at it, could you undress as well?"
The one that really perplexes me, though, is shoes. Why on earth do they need you to take off your shoes? I mean, is it some incredibly clever way of identifying a terrorist - - or are they just trying to smoke them out ("I can't handle the smell any more!")?

So, whilst you and the other passengers flounder in a fog of shoe-stink with your trousers round your ankles and the air conditioning cutting through the one layer of clothing you were allowed to keep on, they ask you if you've got any sharp objects.
"No," you say.
They pull something out of your bag. "I'm sorry, miss, I can't let you have that pencil sharpener. That's a dangerous item."

Maybe I'm missing something here, but what on earth am I going to use a pencil sharpener for, other than sharpening pencils?

Maybe all of this would be worth it if it actually kept the terrorists out, but it really doesn't, because if you wanted to blow up a plane it's going to be a much better idea to stick a pipe bomb in your main baggage than, er, hijack the plane with a pencil sharpener. Or play Miley Cyrus so loudly on your iPod that the pilot will do anything if you'll only MAKE IT STOP. In October someone managed to smuggle a bomb into Yemen, and I bet they had to measure out their 100ml of toothpaste, just the same as everyone else.

So I'm going to leave you with two things (because that's what the guy at the public speaking workshop said to do):

1. Don't go to Yemen. Even if there isn't a bomb on your flight it'll probably be really boring.

2. Play along, because chances are the elaborate customs routine is just a way to keep you entertained, while they wait for your plane to arrive four hours late.

The Tale of Patrick the Radioactive Duck: Part 1

Once upon a time there was a duck named Patrick. Patrick was not a happy duck. His mummy had been eaten with hoisin sauce and his daddy had left before he was born. His lake had lots and lots of yucky nuclear waste in it.


Patrick was not a happy duck. He was a very sad duck.

"I must go and seek my fortune," said Patrick, "Somewhere they do not eat hoisin sauce."

On Tuesday, Patrick packed his things, which was nothing, and set out into the big wide world. He climbed out of the yucky squelchy lake, over the horrid smelly bins, and under the electric fence. Patrick's wings were stuck to his sides with nuclear waste so poor Patrick couldn't fly.

Just as he was waddling past the 'WARNING! TOXIC WASTE" signs, Patrick came across an unfriendly face.

"Hello," said the creature, who was big and really hairy, "My name is Eustace. I am a fox. May I be your friend?"

Before the hoisin sauce, Patrick's mummy had always taught him to be a polite little duckling, so he replied, "Why hello, Eustace, what a delight to make your acquaintance. I would be honoured to be friends with you, as I have never had a fox as a friend before. Come to think of it," he added, "I have never had a friend of any sort before."
"How strange," saud Eustace, who had very large yellow teeth, "You seem such an agreeable chap."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Haircut

This is something those with a smaller mental capacity may struggle with. You may be aware that in previous posts, my highly realistic self portraits looked something like this:

or even this

I no longer look like that, as (gasp) I have had a haircut. Doubtless this will make me extremely difficult to recognise in any further flawlessly lifelike drawings I make, so I will give you some guidance.


I look exactly the same as before but with shorter hair.

Australian neighbours

These are pictures I've been meaning to post for a while now, and I thought they seemed particularly appropriate considering the volume of the party next door at the moment.



I hate my neighbours.

The funny thing is, you'd think they'd try to be a little bit quieter after the deadly revenge I took last time.


All right, the water pistol's broken now. But that doesn't rule out the garden hose...

Schnufflehead

This is the most amazing board game you will ever play. It's a mixture of chess, ludo, pick up sticks and pure brilliance. And I am going to teach it to you. Prepare yourselves for an unbelievably long post.

The game is played with chess pieces on a ludo board. Some of them are named slightly differently:



The aim of the game is to capture all the bases on the ludo board (you can't capture someone's last base until you have the other three, so you have to have ALL FOUR). You start off with the pieces set up like this:



All of the other pieces start off in the Netherworld.

You capture a base by putting one castle on each of the 'start' squares (the ones with the castles on them on the special schnufflehead board - these can basically be any square as long as they're in roughly the same place). However, if an enemy prawn is on one of the surrounding squares (there can only be three surrounding squares. On this board the ones with the swords on them are the only ones that count) this forces the castle and the prawn to do battle.

You can do battle in a number of ways. It's actually quite flexible, so you can be creative with it. So far, the methods we have are: play pick up sticks with four sticks, and whoever gets the black stick first wins; and roll one die each and see who gets higher.



Whichever piece loses the battle goes to the Netherworld. On losing one of your pieces, it is necessary that you sing a soppy song to them to illustrate your grief.



If you have more than one prawn next to the start square, you keep going until one of the castles or all of the prawns have gone to the Netherworld, in which case the base is won. Pieces in the Netherworld can be summoned back to any of your bases by skipping a turn.

You can use draughts pieces or tiddlywinks or something similar to represent the bombs. You start with one bomb in the centre of the board, and can place one in a square of your choice whenever you capture a base. When a bomb goes off, all the pieces in the adjacent squares (including diagonals) are sent to the Netherworld.

If your King is defeated in battle, he does not go to the Netherworld. He DIES. If he doesn't have any heirs, you lose the game. However, if he is married and has children, one of his heirs becomes King instead. All your prawns and your Queen go to the Netherworld, but any other heirs he has come back as prawns. Remember to treat your Queen with sympathy if this happens, because she and the King have a very passionate relationship.




On your turn, you roll two dice. You move the number shown on the dice; you can distribute it between different pieces if you want (you can move diagonally and jump over pieces, but you can't go on the same square as another piece except castles on the start square).

Kings, Queens, Bishops and heirs (use ludo pieces or something similar) have to travel on horses. This means that only two of them can be travelling at the same time. The only reasons you need to move them to another base are if the base they're in base is captured, or because you can only have one baby in each base.

If the answer is even, you are allowed to initiate a battle between two pieces next to each other. If the answer is odd, you get to roll the *special die*.


The silly dance to win the Queen is a crucial part of the game. You have to be honest in your judgment of this; a dance that isn't silly enough just wouldn't impress the Queen in a real-life situation. Being an accomplished silly choraeographer myself, I'll share this piece with you as an example:



You need a bishop in the same base as you to marry the Queen and christen your heirs. Heirs don't count if they're not christened and you can't have children until you're married.

The only square through which you can access your base is the one immediately next to it (the coloured one on the special schnufflehead board).

Those are all the rules! If you want the special schnufflehead board, or if you don't have ludo, the board is here.

If you're weird/poor/cool enough not to have a chess set, here are all the schnufflehead pieces including bombs and heirs.

A short comment on life and the universe

School trip

It seems almost rude to be neglecting my blog now, so soon after starting it, but neglecting it I am, as I am going on an outward-bound activity school trip for five days tomorrow. As you may be able to tell from the previous post, anything remotely connected to moving my body fills me with terror, so... I'm telling myself it'll be fun. After all, in times like these, what do we have left but hope?

The thing which worries me most is that for a large proportion of the time we're going to be extremely wet from jumping into lakes and things.


The other difficulty is packing, which, for someone as disorganised as me, is a challenge. I am, however, only disorganised in certain respects, and packing has been a brilliant opportunity for me to discover the full potential of my rapidly developing OCD.

Me: I need some plastic bags to put my shoes in.
Mother: OK, here's a Tesco bag.
Me: Can I have a Tesco bag for the other pair of shoes so they'll match?

Sports day terror

As it nears the end of the school year, the event which begins to occupy everyone's mind is sports day. As ours is an enormous school, sports day tends to be a very competitive event.


But how, you may be thinking, can this possibly worry the least sporty person on the planet? It's true I never usually worry about sports events. The thing is, the one and only thing I can do in PE is sprint. My stamina is so awful that I can't do it for more than 100 metres... so I'm doing the girls' 100 metres for my form.


Now, I'm a worrier anyway. But agreeing to take part in the sort of activity I am usually so obviously awful at sends me into complete overdrive. In the past couple of weeks I have been amusing myself by coming up with lists of things which could go wrong...

Hamster throwing

Hamster throwing: an activity invented for the purpose of excusing myself from extra maths (which turned out to be unneccessary as I didn't have to do the maths anyway), which developed into something far, far more important than that. My friend and I plan on entering the world championship. Wish me luck!

As all my greatest works are, the mark scheme for the championship was conceived during one of my excruciatingly boring science lessons. The poem, strangely enough, was not.

I'm a hamster thrower; I
Chuck them at walls and watch them die.
It pleases me, I don't know why,
To see them soaring through the sky
To hear their squeals and wailing cries
As to the wall they swiftly fly.


I'd like to think that maybe this post will inspire others also to take up this most worthy of pastimes.

Post #1

This is exciting. My first ever post - who knows where this blog will go from here? This could be the dawn of an era. Or it could just be something I do for a couple of days and give up on.

So here's a comic strip. There are going to be a lot of comic strips. This is the first ever comic strip and I can promise you it's a very lovely one.