The Blog of the Frog

The world is good! I just spent the morning talking to my duck which gave new found hope and lots of other good stuff! I’ve deleted almost 25,000 – yes, TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND! – spam comments and I have new hope for TDP (which, as the duck pointed out, is TaDPole. I should rename it TDPL, then you just drop the vowels…

So really just an update to say I’m alive (barely – health no good) and full of the joys of spring! I’ll have a better update soon, but now I need to get offline. Ciao!

It’s taking all my energy to do the things I’m doing at the moment, let alone write about them afterwards. Much as I love writing I’m going to have to take a break, I just don’t have anything spare to use for writing. I’m not happy about it, but such is life 😉 I’m not managing terribly well at the moment. Before I go there’s time for a quick update though.

Somehow I managed to drag myself to Cannington on Wednesday. I reclined to full horizontal position whenever possible and just barked instructions at them 😆 Got through it, somehow.

On Friday evening mum and I went to Selworthy for the quiz night. We were in a team with Joy and Rachael, their mum, Sue and a couple in their early 20s called Simon and Sophie.
There were six categories plus 2 bonus rounds, the bonus rounds were famous peoples eyes (name the person – I got Michael Jackson…) and inventions (match the inventor to the invention).
The normal rounds were General Knowledge, Sport, TV Ads (played music and had to say what it was advertising), History/Geography, Famous People and Music – Old and New.
The music was a bit of a joke really because their \”new\” transpired to be nothing within the last decade 😉 and most of it seemed to be quite obscure. I’m not too bad on older music (I prefer 70s/80s to most modern) but half of it I’d never heard of and the rest I knew the song but I wouldn’t be able to tell you which artist it was by or what it was called.
We did really well on General Knowledge and History/Geography – even I knew quite a few of the Hist/Geog and both of those I never really liked and thus always thought I was quite weak on. Especially as the last school history I did was in Year 5 (so I was just 10 by the end – my birthday is June and I would have finished Year 5 in July) and the last proper geography was the same time, except I did a bit of very patchy geog in Year 7 too. Anyway, that’s off topic…

We did really badly in the other rounds and in the end finished about 30 points behind the next team! All good fun though 😆 We broke at 8:30pm for fish and chips. The winners got a big tin of chocolates which they then opened in front of everyone!

I’m gonna suggest a Science/Nature category for next year, I think…

Hello dear readers! Yes, tis me 😉 It’s been a little while but I do have a good excuse..er..reason this time 😆 I don’t wish to dwell on it so I shall just say I’ve been very poorly and I’m only just starting to recover now.

Thus nothing to tell you about either!

I really hate allergies…my throat feels all sore and horrible, maybe even slightly swollen. Hurts to eat, hurts to swallow, hurts all the time anyway 😉 Add to that all the sneezing, snuffling..etc and you have one happy froggy! Ah well..I might be free from it soon. I forgot my medication this morning which doesn’t help, though I haven’t been symptom free for months.
I don’t feel in a particularly coherent mood tonight so I think I’ll go now…

I didn’t bother to write anything yesterday because all it would have said was I’ll fill you in tomorrow (today).

So, yesterday! It was the twins’ (Joy and Rachael) 18th birthday party. It didn’t start till 7pm, I’ve never been to an evening thing before (too young then too ill – still too ill really but they really wanted me to go) and on Thursday night I was quite apprehensive cos I felt really awful and I was terrified of the same thing happening on Friday night! So I had lunch yesterday and went to bed shortly after 2pm, I couldn’t sleep but I stayed there till just before 5pm. Got up, watched some tv and then started to get ready.

The party started at 7pm and we arrived about ten past – by no means the last to arrive. I took painkillers before we went (don’t usually touch painkillers except for period pain but I’ll be damned if I was gonna let a headache ruin my evening :lol:) and took some more with me, along with various other tablets – I had a mini pharmacy with me!

As we arrived and walked up to the entrance Joy came running up and gave us both (mum & I) a big hug 😀 We went in and Matthew, who I first met at Six Acres and then he’s the boy that’s coming with Selworthy to Cannington, came up and gave me a hug too! That was my first of three that I got throughout the evening – I felt very honoured!

People were arriving all the time and the twins were kept busy collecting cards and presents which they kept coming up and showing us. One of the cards was one of those musical ones which plays happy birthday when you open it 😉 Then Phil and Di (assistant) arrived (at the same time which was quite odd as they weren’t together and they’d driven in from completely different parts) and we stood and chatted for a bit, various people from Selworthy came up to say hello in between. It can only have been a few minutes after that before (teacher) Di arrived (and made straight for the bar!). After that we decided it would be a good idea to sit down, so we did.

Then both of the twins grandfathers made speeches and whilst they were doing that the buffet was being set up. The queue went on forever and every time it got shorter it got longer again! If you see what I mean. The disco had been going on since the beginning but it wasn’t till about half eight that it really started to come alive. It was such good fun to watch, Phil got pulled on by one of the twins and then teacher Di grabbed hold of Robert (the one from last years class, not this years) because he wasn’t dancing and they went up. For a couple of songs they ended up with all the kids on the floor and a few adults. At one point they had a big circle just going in and out and at another a conga line.

Jack is incredible when he’s on the dance floor, hidden talents! Shane was incredible too, he was even in time with the music. The adults were on and off all night, no stamina! I was having a fab time \”dancing\” from my chair, though I got lots of very odd looks 😆 Gradually everyone started to go home and the dance floor cleared a bit so I decided it was probably safe to venture up. Mum, Joy, Phil and I made a circle and it was sort of arm waving and swaying 😉 My arms were aching and then we got to the twist – well that about finished them off! We had one or two more songs and by this time it was about 11:15pm and Phil decided it was time for him to go – it would take him at least 30 mins to drive home. After that Queen came on so we stayed for one more song and then decided it was about time for us to go too.

We both got another hug from Joy and then we went over and said bye to Sue (their mum). She gave me a big hug too and she was so delighted that we’d come and said the girls were really pleased.

Then mum drove home and I got into bed just before midnight – that was my day! I’ve never had quite such a good greeting from Vale, I think she was convinced I’d abandoned her..

We were running late, as usual! However we’d only gone about 3 miles when we came upon the Selworthy minibus, so we ended up behind them for the rest of the way and thus arrived at the same time!
Holly (Bob’s dog) was there and she remembered me, eventually 😀 After drink and biscuit everyone walked up to the dog grooming place cos Bob wanted us to bath Dotty (barrel of a dalmatian cross – she has the spots but nothing else!). It was remarkably dry considering all the water flying about…

After lunch Bob told us we were going down to the garden, and as of the end of last term you have to wear overalls and wellington boots to go into the garden. Some of the new ones that had never been to Cannington before hadn’t brought boots and not all of them had overalls either. From memory I think just over half of them had and just under half didn’t. That’d be about 4…

At Cannington they have a big box of wellies and a big box of overalls for people that don’t have them. So I had two of the boys that didn’t have either, so they were looking in this of wellington boots box and we could NOT find a left & a right boot of the same size! There seemed to be about 200 lefts and hardly any rights.

Eventually we found two pairs of boots the same size and one left and one right for each pair (helps..). However, before boots could go on overalls had to…
The overalls were easier to locate and they both went off to put them on. However one of them managed to end up with his left leg in the right leg hole and his right leg in a sleeve…goodness knows how! and somehow he managed to pull the sleeve right over his leg and it was extremely tight (remember they’re wearing clothes under these overalls too) so then we had to get this thing off to put it on right! It was very entertaining (I was laughing so hard by this point ;)) but I think you had to be there really. The other boy was ok, just needed a bit of help to get his other arm in the sleeve. By this time it was almost quarter to two and they finish at two, so all that for 15 minutes work! Luckily getting them off was easier than getting them on.
Reminds me of last year, there were two boys that were quite severe and every time without fail they’d get their left boot on their right foot and right boot on their left foot. Now you’d think there’s a 50/50 chance and they’d get them on the right feet some of the time. But no, without fail they’d get them on the wrong feet…they didn’t once get them on right!

There was one slightly terrifying moment when we arrived back at the classroom and thought we’d lost one of them, he doesn’t have much speech and has a habit of wandering off. Quick panic and search of the garden but luckily he turned out to be in the classroom in the corner.