blogstory - let's get jiggy with it, then.

Right chaps and chapettes. Here's how it's gonna go:

Each writer will be randomly assigned a chapter (I will really pull names out of a hat, cos I hate making decisions). Illustrators the same. If you are joining in, write me an email when you read this (to vitriolica@gmail.com) so that I have your email address and to let me know whether you are writing, illustrating or both (and if you would like to illustrate more than once, since there are fewer of us than there are of them!). If you still wanna join and missed the deadline...ach, deadline, scheadline.... , write to me anyway... we can still aspire to "suitable boy" or "war and peace" length!

I'm going to set up a fresh blog for the greatest novel ever written and I'll host and post the stuff you email to me.

As soon as I receive each finished chapter I will send it to the illustrator for that chapter and to the writer assigned to the next chapter. As soon as the illustration is ready, I'll post the two together.

Length and style of chapter or style of illustration are purely, simply and entirely up to you. I'll just suggest a tiny something as a start point for the whole thing ... it may be a word or a erm... a bearded nun!

We just all need to bear in mind that some poor sod has to carry on from where we leave off... except the poor sod who gets the last chapter.

Once we get started, let's keep the momentum going. So, two chapters a week would be super, otherwise we'll be here until 2012. If you find you're not going to be able to do your chapter or illo (as them/you aussies insist) within two or three days, just let me know and I'll move the next sucker up the list.

Right, any questions?

the LIST:
Me,
KEITH,
Guyana Gyal,
Clare,
Ana,
Aunty Marianne,
bonojerry,
Natalie,
Dr F,
cream,
Wendy,
Mr Whiskers,
Nancy,
Julie,
blogless Martin,
Dr Rob (Lord Wibble, himself),
Zoe,
Andre,
Lost,
Jim Benson,
Wally,
Karen,
bananarobin.

technorati tags: Art, illustration

the almost but not quite never ending story ... join by the end of today, Midnight GMT, Tuesday 29 November

and we can get it started tomorrow! huzzah! I'll stipulate a couple of guidelines, chuck a couple of rules out there and we're off. by the way, WE NEED MORE ILLUSTRATORS!





Join up in the comment box for this post and I'll get to it when I get home after a day of mural painting (I'm painting a jungle in a bathroom, in case you wanted to know. ha).


technorati tags: Art, illustration

Aud - the last and gripping episode... well maybe gripping isn't exactly the word... perhaps mildly interesting. Anyway, Audrey - The Final Episode.

"Vell, helloh, Oddrey" said the tiny man, a toffee turnip in his hand (a by-product of the fraudulent crystallized fruit business... highly addictive and dangerously mind altering), offering her his lap with his other hand.

"Golly!" said plucky Aud, "You do look familiar, but I just can't place you. And no thanks, awfully, I'd rather stand."

"I em Velsh's Polish half bruzzer, Velshinskyitch! You may think you stumbled upon us by luck, but ve knew you'd be here eventually, it vas just a metter of time. Ve are vanting you to join us in our toffee turnip branch of operations. You havink your connections in zoze British upper clesses off yours. My little bruzzer is owink me some sings."

Audrey realized at that moment that her beloved Welsh must have been coerced into surreptitiously coaxing her to the convent (knowing that Portuguese convent puddings were her soft spot and that if she got lost in Portugal she would always head where the eggy puddings were to be found).

"Lorks! I'm orf!" squawked plucky Aud and she nipped back up the stairs... with the tiny little Pole stomping up after her, though his tiny little legs (a result of too many toffee turnips) ensured that he wasn't going to catch up anytime soon.



She ran out into the quadrangle of the convent.

Only to be confronted by a terrible sight. Audrey gasped.



It was Welsh and WENDY, the bearded nun. The note in the nun's cell was intended for Wendy.

"Golly!" thought Aud, as a solitary tear trickled down her cheek. "Got that one wrong, then, didn't I?. How awfly embarrassing." she thought sadly.

Welsh sensed his mistress behind him as he made love (hey, we're talking the thirties here, not the rude late twentieth, early twenty first centuries!) to his bearded lady. He turned, apologized for his lack of propriety and offered his resignation.

Audrey declined his resignation. She realized as she saw him grinning at his hairy love that her feelings for him had changed, and she would be quite happy for him to be just Welsh the awfully good butler.

She gave him a month off, docked him two months salary for getting her into such a silly scrape. He tipped his head, thanked her and told her where he'd arranged for her car to be stored.






*sigh* I have NO idea what that was all about. but when a girl starts something, she jolly well has to finish it. Which gave me an idea the other day (although Keith is now claiming it as HIS idea, honestly, men). A story. Told a chapter at a time by bloggers, in the style of their choosing. What a laugh. D'ya wanna? D'ya wanna? huh? huh? D'ya wanna? let me know if you want in.


Collaborators (writing and/or illustrating) so far:
Me,
KEITH,
Guyana Gyal,
Clare,
Ana,
Aunty Marianne,
bonojerry,
Natalie,
Dr F,
cream,
Wendy,
Mr Whiskers,
Nancy,
Julie,
blogless Martin,
Dr Rob (Lord Wibble, himself),
Zoe,
Andre,
Lost.

When I have everyone in (by the end of Friday, though at this rate it might be the end of tuesday, or it's gonna be lord or the rings and war and peace all put together!), i'll put anyone who wants to write in a cyber-hat and assign a chapter number. Then I'll do the same for the illustrators (if you're illustrating you can write as well if you want to... cos I certainly will be!). Then we'll get this bloomin' thing started. And to have each chapter written in the style of each blogger's blog would be fantabulous. And even though this is going to be in English, if English isn't your mother tongue feel free to join in.

.


technorati tags: art, illustration

Aud - the next

The bearded nun (who was an ex-bearded lady from the circus) showed Audrey to a door in a dark corner of the nunnery. She looked deeply ashamed.

Our Aud, back in civvies (that Wendy, the bearded lady nun, had kept under the bed in case she ever decided to go back to the circus), quietly popped down the stairs behind the door.

Her heart skipped a beat as she smelled Welsh's rare cologne.

In a velveteen den of redness she found herself. She followed her nose to the back of a high backed sofa... hoping to find her darling Welsh (what MUST she be thinking?... really, a gal and her butler?), rounded the arm of the sofa and found the source of the rare cologne.







don't forget

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Aud - 69

She knew that they knew that she knew that they knew that it was she who they'd tied up in the barn up North and they knew that she knew that they knew that she knew that it was them dressed up as nuns. But they were busy hiding out and concocting new fiendish fraudulent food tricks and she was busy wondering what was up with old Welshie and thinking up ways that she could foil those fraudulent food tricks so they all maintained their nun-deception for the time being.

But, golly! Nunning was boring work, what with all that praying and gardening. So Aud thought it would be a blast to teach her fellow nuns a bit of "the charleston".

After two days of this, Aud was awfully fed up. She was feeling a little more rested after the long walk from the north, so now was time to get back on the move. The nuns didn't really see the point in the charleston anyway.

As she started to pack up the little essentials the nuns (the real ones) had collected for her - a little lipstick and mascara, all a gel needs - she noticed a tiny scrap of paper stuck behind the simple wooden crucifix with the carved plaster figure of jesus painted in gentle pastel tones and realistic blood colour on the wall of her cell.

She unwrapped it. Written on it were the words "I love you. W."

Aud felt a little giddy and had to sit down. But there was a knock at the door, and in walked a bearded nun.

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Audrey - sixty eight

Audrey knocked on the front door as she watched the silhouetted Welsh run into the dark morning.

"Golly!" she thought. "What IS he up to? I hope he's wearing his long johns."

Three rather familiar looking nuns opened the enormous nunnery door, ushering Audrey in out of the rain.

There was a faint smell of burning sugar and burnt cabbage that Aud couldn't quite place.

But she didn't care, thinking of a warm nun's habit to eat and a bowl of porridge to wear took her mind off most things... except of course Welsh.

And where WAS was the Tiger Moth?




don't forget

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Through the Keyhole

There are some very strange people in the blogosphere. One of these strange people isn't Ms Clare Boob Sudbery-Pencil. It is perfectly normal to want to be Lloyd Grossman for a day and want to describe other bloggers' mystery (and gracious... oh, what, this isn't Hello magazine?) homes. But who is David Frost to Clare's Lloyd Grossman? That's what I want to know!

If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about then you didn't live in Britain watching too much early evening telly for several wasted years of your life.

I'm having a getting away from the computer day today, before my eyes start putting in requests to be TFT flat screen and my head requires a cooling fan.

And Audrey's final chapters need stoking up in the back burners of my tiny mind.


don't forget

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The Adventures of Audrey. Chapter erm... anyone keeping count out there?

"Golly!" thought plucky Aud, as she trotted through the Portuguese landscape. "I forgot how much it can rain here... hope it occurs to old Welshie that I may need some dry clothes!"

She had been on the road for three days, dressed in nothing but her un-mentionables and a waxed cloth she had "borrowed" from a donkey in the hills. She was heading towards her old friends the nuns in Santa Maria da Nossa Senhora da Santa Maria e Tudo having left Sr. Guimarães e Silva in that barn in the Douro Valley.

Spending her days looking for morsels to eat (well, she reckoned, a gal can always lose a few pounds off the old rump!) she spent her nights making her way along the edges of roads and dirt tracks - in the darkness so not to be spotted by the "Turnip Bandits" that she had managed to shake off. She was only now realizing what big business this fake crystallized fruit ring must be.

On her fourth night on the road, she neared the Nunnery in the early hours. She was relieved to be near a hot meal and some dry clothes, even if they would be porridge and a nun's habit. As she walked towards the main door, she saw silhouetted against the dim and distant glow of Lisbon a familiar figure running out from a side door with a large bundle over it's shoulder... it was WELSH!

don't forget

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a request for an answer to a SERIOUS question

This is not a painting. It is a photographic representation of the quality of SOUND one hears in Pavilhão Atlântico, Parque das Nações, Lisboa, Portugal. i.e. crap.

The serious question is something my friends and I woz a-wondering the other night at the Disco Fever do at Pavilhão Atlântico (our supposedly state of the art arena type venue in fair Lisboa, to you non pts) while we were hoping to be swept back to our childhoods listening to the completely regenerated Boney M (unless they were cryogenically stored, including the ones amongst them that DIDN'T originally sing, in a kind of MilliVanilli kind of a way if you recall) and the semi-regenerated Village People (from where I sat, only the Native American with what resembled a pubic wig on his head and the NYPD cop were geriatric enough to be the originals, but if anyone knows better, please correct me) when all we could hear was echo in triplicate reverberating around the enormous empty woodlouse that is Pavilhão Altãntico so that even songs that i grew up singing along with I barely recognised (not even, NOT EVEN, RA RA RASPUTIN FOR GAWD'S SAKE!)

... the question being that if PA was built for the purpose of being a state of the art arena type venue, why the bloody hell is it impossible to get the acoustics right? It's been done plenty of times before in other buildings, why couldn't they bloody well get it right just eight years ago? (forgive me if this is a common complaint in the pages of the music meeja... i don't DO music meeja anymore... too old) and why can't they put it right now with acoustic padding (like the amusing upturned mushrooms in the equally shockingly badly acoustically designed Royal Albert Hall).

Right. Desabaf over.

And no, i didn't wear disco gear. Before you ask.


Don't worry, you haven't seen the last of Audrey.




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The Adventures of Audrey hotting up

Audrey was eleven-years-old when she broke her pelvis in a bad fall from a horse. It was a blessing in disguise, what with her dislocatable hips. She easily shuffled off the rope that the mysterious Portuguese bandidos had tied her up in while Sr. Guimarães e Silva could only look on in wonder. She didn't understand too much Portuguese, but she gathered that Sr. Guimarães e Silva had been playing these cheps ("chaps" in old style BBC, clipped, received pronunication... sorry, did I forget to mention, you're supposed to be reading this in your head in RP... I know that most of you already are) for monkeys and trying to sell a container full of crystallised turnips to them in the guise of crystallised "fruit" not realizing that they had sold the very same container in the first place - in fact it had been they who had crystallised the turnips.

Oh, silly Sr. Guimarães e Silva... trying to swindle his own kind AND disrespecting the national christmas cake covering. He was really in for some trouble now, with Audrey gone, stripped down to his underwear in this rat infested barn and the bandidos coming back at dawn to deal with him. He vowed never to deal in foodstuffs again... nor English ladies, he thought, as he recalled the swift punch to his kidney she had deftly delivered when he had tried to kiss her earlier on in the evening, the second before the bandidos found them.




don't forget

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The Adventures of Audrey cont'd.

After some surprising luck with the gulf stream and some freak weather events, Aud made her way north from the coast of Namibia in a one-man-corracle. Thankfully, Welsh the butler was on hand in the Tiger Moth as she veered a little off (OFF!!!! ;) course near the coast of Northern Portugal.



Welsh always suspected that madame was a little TOO susceptible to flattery, especially if that flattery involved a heavy moustache. His fears were confirmed when Aud enjoyed a sunset tipple along the banks of the Douro with Sr. Guimarães e Silva. He discovered later that Sr. Guimarães e Silva was a known petty criminal.

But by then it was too late.




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Audrey in Efrica

I think I may be on a roll here with Audrey and her spiffy little motor. I'm wondering where she keeps her suitcase and the butler.

Then again, I may well have just exhausted that one. Ah well, we'll see.




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a scooting about kind of day

I'm running about all day today, DOING stuff, fixing things, bank things, mending things, cleaning things, sorting things out, chucking things out, dressmaking .... but I get HUGELY bored doing those things, so I'm going to play with this drawing throughout the day (that I started while I waited for the kids to wake up) instead of the old boredom reliever, el cigaretto. THE best thing I ever did towards my own creativity was giving those bloody things up. Yeah, baby.

1


took the girls to school etc
photographed some rubbish
paid in cheques
bought some stuff in the supermarket
photographed a drowned mouse floating in the paddling pool
thought about clearing up
got bored


2



made lunch
ate lunch
cleared up lunch
cleaned 3" thick caked-on mud off three pairs of shoes
went through the girls' wardrobe for outgrown and summery stuff
got bored


3



right. done. I'll just have to eat chocolate for the next boredom fix as I get on with making this stonking dress I'm making (love making things, but do get terribly bored while doing it)




don't forget

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weirded out by tiny bits of film

i suspect it's just me, but do you find that film company idents are a bit creepy? (especially the silent paramount one, above).




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my dream home

It is a dark, stormy and icy day today, a real November day (for somewhere up north, at least). I drove through what has become my favourite valley and the dark light had re-coloured it all to deep and very sharp just-after-a-rain-storm tones of dark dark pine tree green and the amazing red of the red Arrábida soil (which is very similar to the red clay of Devon, my home county in Ingerlund). Just blooming gorgeous. If anyone ever hears of any land for sale in Parque Natural de Arrábida, with building permission for reasonably sized buildings, aggro-free-no-dealings with the council, and for not very much money, you will tell me, won't you? (yeah, I know, dream on).



don't forget

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something sweet

Well, yesterday WAS gross, wasn't it... and during my more frantic than you can believe morning this morning (involving two children, an other 'arf, one car, two computers, one 10 o'clock train, one 10 o'clock deadline, one missing set of six year old's ballet clothes, one riding hat and riding boots that weresn't needed in the end, one riding school (along with Brazilian Stable Lad to tell me there weren't classes today... right out of a Jilly cooper, I tell you!)..... bloody hell, how much does this sound like suburban English life?) I STILL tried to think of something to blog to counteract the utter horribleness of yesterday's nasty "corpse's nose" post.

And on my second trip to the nursery school (with the now FOUND set of ballet clothes) I was confronted by the perfect antidote to a corpse's nose: a corridor full of four- and five-year-olds, one of them mine, doing a great impression of a Degas painting, waiting for their ballet teacher to take them to their class.

Altoghether now.... "aaaaaaaaaaah!"

OI! or Éh PÁ!

WHERE ARE YOUR RUBBISH PHOTOS or "FOTOCRAPPERY" THEN?

ou, dans l'autre langue:

ENTÃO! ONDE ESTÃO AS VOSSAS FOTOS DE LIXO ou "FOTOLIXICE"?

(fotolixice é capaz ser a nova palavra para esta "artform" de lixo.... mas é capaz ser uma asneira sem eu saber... se é, não é a minha culpa, este e-migo a inventou ...gostei... fiquei com ela...bolas, talvez "e-migo" também seja palavrão... sei lá... muitas vezes já usei palavrões sem saber... ooo que divertido!)

rubbish

nat. geo. chan. OFF

Really, i must either retune my channel 19 which has National Geographic Channel (the Brazilian version) on it, or get a new telly WITH remote for my kitchen to avoid having to go past it whilst unprepared for super-extra-gross-out.

I was just flicking through to find something to have a little chill out to (with a packet of smarties and a cup of black tar, i mean, coffee), looking for something light and airy, a sitcom or something sillier, and found myself mesmerised by this shot of two flies in what could only have been a corpse's nose.

And I'm sparing you the maggot's nest filmed close-up in an earhole.

Too gross even for me to draw. or was it?

an open request to the council of wherever

GIVE US A LIGHTBULB, PLEASE, NOW!

Why? Because it is really difficult getting to know the other parents of the other children at the primary school when we have to meet outside the school in the pitch dark (yes, 6.15pm IS a ridiculous time for six year olds to leave school) and the street lighting is inadequate to begin with and the one street light that aids mutual recognition amongst the poor hard done by parents outside is BROKEN, so that we can't see each other OR the cementy puddles that we're standing in in the semi-building site that is the school carpark...

*breathe*

And after a fantastically successful first day of our new "lixo lixo!" campaign (see below, obv.)... (photos coming in and several blogs linking to us already) I feel a little optimistic... so maybe we might get us a new light bulb for outside the school (a new timetable would be even better) by being heard by someone in Setúbal Council (okay, so maybe that's optimism a step too far).

*exhale*

right, you lot.

Bom. hoje escrevo isto em pt e ing porque quero falar com a gente que vive em Portugalândia. Desculpa... não tenho editor Português em casa! Anticipa invenções!

ou

Today, I'm writing this in pt and eng because I want to speak to the people who live in Portugalândia. Forgive me...if you're portugese, i may well be inventing brand new words. I do that quite a lot.


Odeio lixo. Odeio o ainda mais quando deixa-se na berma ou no campo ou sítios de beleza natural... não só a cair dos caixotes de lixo municipais (que são bastante horríveis mas um mal necessário)... mas deixado a putrificar e polluir em montes de treta, a ruinar Portugal e a sua reputação. Sejamos honestos... há MUITO lixo neste sítio enorme de beleza natural.

Há uns dias, estava num vale lindo na Arrábida linda, a indicar à minha filha um falcão (o algo!) lindo. Quando baixei-me o braço, vi que também estava a indicar uma monte de lixo e sacos de plástico em baixo da árvore lindo em que ficava o pássaro.

Temos um mato pequeno atrás de nossa casa, utilizado diáriamente como caixote de lixo, depositório de preservativos e sanita de pedreiros. Gostava de levar as minhas filhas para lá a brincar mas é uma porcaria nojenta.

A escola da minha filha fica trezentos metros da nossa casa. O passeio entre a casa e a escola é um espectáculo de plástico velho, entulhos, até um sofá (este caminho sendo o assunto do primeiro post do novo blogue/projecto).

E fico deprimida. O que faço quando ficar deprimida? Penso de maneiras de não ficar deprimida.

Por isso, juntei com uns amigos a iniciar mais um mal necessário... um projecto de artes de comunidade. E pá, Não!.... SIM! Mas este será útil. Este vai ajudar livrar Portugal de lixo. (optimista, já sei, já sei). E TU, se vives em Portugalândia glorioso, vais participar. Sim, vais. Porquê? Porque SIM, eu é disse, e porque no fim do projecto (lixo lixo! 365 dias de lixo em Portugal) vamos mandar todo o nojo num prato dourado (ou até num envelope) para o pres. da repúb, seja Soares, Cavaco ou Seja Quem For. E para O Turismo Nacional de Portugal. E O Primeiro Ministro. A ás Câmaras Municipais e às Freguesias. E aos tipos de televisão e dos jornais. TU é que vais tirar fotografias de lixo nos sítios errados e enviá-las para lixolixobot arroba gmail ponto com

Pronto. Vamos tentar começar livrar (quantos verbos?) Portugalândia do maldito lixo? huh? Espalha a palavra (é possível espalhar uma palavra?) e-amigos, espalha a palavra (não te disse que inventava?) e o URL: http://lixo-lixo.blogspot.com

I hate rubbish. I hate it even more when it is it's dumped on the roadside or in the countryside and places of natural beauty... not just spilling out of municipal rubbish bins (which are foul enough, but a necessary evil, I suppose)... but left to fester and pollute in great piles of crap, ruining Portugal and its reputation. And, let's face it, there's an awful lot of rubbish in this great 'normous place of natural beauty.

The other day I was in a beautiful valley in beautiful Arrábida pointing out a beautiful bird of prey to my daughter. As I lowered my arm, I found I was also pointing at a huge pile of crap and plastic bags under the beautiful tree where the beautiful bird had alighted.

I have a small wood behind my house and it is used regularly as a rubbish dump, used condom deposit and toilet for builders. I'd love to take my little girls in there to play. But it's too disgusting.

My daughter's school is just three hundred metres from our house. And walking to school is a splendourama in old plastic and even an old sofa (and this walk is the subject for the first post in the blog/project).

And so, I http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifget depressed. What do I do when I'm depressed? I think of ways not to be depressed.

So, some friends and I have started another necessary evil... a community art project! Oh, god, not one of THEM! YES! But this one will have its uses. This one is going to help rid Portugal of rubbish. And you, if you live in glorious Portugalândia, are going participate. Yes, you are. Why? Cos I said so, and because at the end of it, we're going to present it on a golden platter to whoever is the prez. da república this time next year, be it Soares, Cavaco or Speedy Gonzales. And to the Portuguese Tourist Board. And to the Prime Minister. And to the City Councils and Parish Councils and to the Television types and the Newspaper types and the People. You are going to take photographs of rubbish in the wrong places and send them to lixolixobot at gmail dot com

So, let's give it a try on getting started and getting rid of the damned rubbish, huh? spread the word, dear e-friends, spread the word... and the URL: http://lixo-lixo.blogspot.com

breathless

this mummy business doesn't get any easier, does it?

(drawn while sitting by, watching my little one slowly getting better, after yet another trip to be seen by another different doctor in the private hospital (for although we finally (after six years) have a family GP/doctor, they won't give me an appointment to see him... dunno why, but it's like a brick wall not a reception) feeling the temperature steadily dropping and wondering how we're going to get through another winter in an unheatable house).

*sigh*

being wistful...

...is a bit naff really, but hey ho.

another smokey haddock

sometimes I think my life is just one big game of word association.

or, for that matter, any smoked fish...

and i'm not talking about boring old smoked salmon.

herrings (kippers), mackerel, haddock (how can I make smoked haddock chowder without the smoked haddock?), braden rost (HOT-smoked salmon)... oh the list goes on... and I WANT SOME! I MISS IT! TERRIBLY!

Perhaps slightly more coherent blather later. Perhaps not.

lorks-a-channel-surfing

Once in a while I sit myself down in front of MTV to see what the hell is going on and what I'm missing, rapidly becoming an old fuddyduddy as I am, in the "modern world".

And last evening I sat myself down in front of MTV for the first time in a long while... and my lasting impression was that it was ALL BOOTY (which is the Amerkan translation for BOTTY. (see? clever, huh? just one letter change, you've got a whole new word))... just lots and lots of very pretty girls with no clothes on, touching themselves up and wobbling their wobbly boobies and botties in the faces of rapping and singing young men/boys (presumably THAT'S the reason for the extremely baggy trousers... to hide over-excitedness)... and me.

They do have very pretty botties, but I don't like having anyone's botty wobbled in my face. Do you? NO, don't answer that!



I think I may have to start calling myself Auntie Vitriolica. I bought "Wuthering Heights" in audio form for my iPod yesterday. Maybe I should crochet a little lace jacket for it now.

p.s. if i could have a blog that looked like this i'd be a happy vit. w.o.w.

bah, bloody humbug, bugger off!

Listen, there's something you don't know about me.

I'm a childophobe.

I'm like the queen played by Anna Quayle in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" who's terrified of all the children in the kingdom, so has that horrifying child catcher on hand to catch them all and imprison them.

Except I don't have a child catcher.

So, instead, today has to be one of my scary mary days, hiding behind the sofa. Because it's All Saints' Day. Which means that it's a national holiday AND children do a similar thing to "trick or treating" (as well as having adopted bloody "trick or treating" for halloween so last night at 11.30pm I'm desperately trying to get my terrified little kids to sleep after some little bastards do their annual trick of stuffing a cocktail stick in my doorbell so that it rings and rings and rings) called "pão por Deus" (lit. bread for God, although it could also mean "Bread BY God"...like "Eternity by Calvin Klein" (how DID CALVIN ever become a cool name?))... which I believe (though I am sure to be corrected from the off... so look out for an erratum later!) was a custom in the villages which died out in the nineteen forties, only to be resurrected in the last few years by SOME zealous souls (teachers maybe?) keen on national folklore, unaware that it would inspire fear and loathing in many souls shut in their houses (er...me) afraid that they may get waterbombed by a bunch of ten year old thugs indulging in thuggery (though, thankfully, not twenty-year-old bugs indulging in....) because they don't have bucket loads of M&Ms to hand out (laced with arsenic) or those repulsive "bollycao" things that children are so fond of (with pins in) to hand out, and further promote a distinct lack of respect that modern children have for anything around here.

And now I have just found a note in my six-year-old thug's school book to say that she and her class will be doing a controlled ransacking of the village's old people and unemployed on Wednesday "to promote the continuity of our traditions and customs". *sigh* *double sigh*

Addendum. I am a childophobe. But I am not scared of my own children or children of my friends. Just to clarify. Before I get a torrent of emails saying how sad it is that a mother is scared of her own children and what is the world coming too when a woman can admit in an open blogosphere that her children are the work of the devil and all that and that maybe a child catcher (state funded, of course) might actually be a good idea... erm.