Something from my sketchbook

 Last weekend as the Isle of Wight festival began.

 

The day the wind blew and lots of people slept outside on the Saturday of the IOW festival.

Tuesday's Science Club.

Oooh, hello Flossie Bonce.

I've just been tinkering with my second spread of Flossie Bonce. Flossie and Evie are two fairies, helping out the big man FC on his busiest day of the year. Here is some of it... What do you think?

How I spent Saturday

From my sketchbook.

Diary Twaddle part 4

Saturday 

I spent the evening trying to figure out where my maths had gone wrong. My mobile phone just wasn't up to the job and I kept accidentally calling O2. In the end I gave up and spent a restless night snoozing in the chair. It was hard to tell when it was morning because guess what- it was still dark outside. How do aliens ever know when to get up?

Wally was watching something out of the window. I peered over his shoulder and was surprised to see the participants of the Tour de France; Mark Cavendish waved as he whizzed by.

And then something amazing happened. My hero Beardy Branson came to the rescue.

"Do you need a tow?" he asked.

I had never been so relieved to see a white haired millionnaire!

The tow rope shot out from the Dreamliner and docked with our hook and we were soon on our way home.

Back home, not much had changed. The slugs were still eating the plants and the birds were still letting them get away with it. We waved to Beardy as he jettisoned us off as he headed back toward his secret air base north of London on the M1.

Maisie was relieved to see Wally safe and sound as she'd had no one to harrass lately. And of course, glad to see me, because she had been unable to reach her special doggy biscuits with her short stubby arms.

 

I decided next time I had one of my fabulous ideas, I'd do a bit more planning. I couldn't bear to think what would have happened if Mr Beardy hadn't come to my rescue. I took out my Notebook of Exciting Things to Do and crossed off 'Astronaut'.

Now, what's next, I wondered to myself.

Twaddle and Nonsense: Things to do part 3.

After enjoying a second slice of cake and wondering which of us had been foolish enough to forget the custard, we noticed that all was not well.

Instead of falling back to Earth as I had imagined, we seemed to be slowing down. According to my copy of Astronautism from Scratch; How to Build An Escape to Space When We've Used Up the Earths Resources and are About to Become Extinct, I may have made a mathematical error. It seems our slingshot past Venus had been a bit vigorous and we had missed the Earths atmosphere by 15cm.

What did this mean? It meant we'd eventually run out of cake. We'd be fine for air for months because being in charge of making the rocket feel homely meant Wally had brought his favourite Spider Plant. He has quite a collection of them and his basket at home looks like the Garden of Eden crossed with a dog fur recycling centre.

But if we did have to stay on the rocket for longer than anticipated, we MIGHT run out of water. I looked at the fifteen thousand 4 litre bottles of water that stood in the corner and decided not to worry about it at the moment.

Maisie was very flustered. Back at home, she had been staring up at the sky since the rocket had taken off and had given herself a stiff neck. She was beginning to think something had gone wrong and there was only one thing to do.

Go and get in her basket and hide under the blanket.

To be continued....

Diary; More things to do before I get old.

Friday..


It was remarkably easy to take off. Our Wallace & Gromit style automatic match-striking device worked a treat as it lit the tank of lighter fluid. Wally was a bit worried about our house & garden shrinking as we shot off up into the atmosphere, but I was too busy to explain about things getting smaller as you move away from them. 

 

It took an awfully long time to get into ACTUAL space. I managed to make three cups of tea and Wally ate fifteen doggy biscuits. Space was pretty weird. They say that in space, no one can hear you scream, but has anyone tried singing Land of Hope and Glory?

Earth looked tiny a blue from so far up. We switch on Wally's iPhone and googled Commander Chris Hadfield 

so that we could look at his photos and compare them to what we could see. He had worked on the International Space Station as a photographer and pop star and recently returned home. If anyone knew which direction to go in, it'd be Cmdr Chris!

We looked at the Isle of Wight. 



Being in space wasn't like I'd imagined. Floating got a bit annoying after a while because playing Twister was IMPOSSIBLE!! and when we had a go at Cluedo, the murder weapons kept disappearing. We decided to do a flypast of Venus and then head back home.

We were surprised to see Beardy Branson testing out the new Dreamliner. It looked as though he was giving someone a lift home, but we couldn't be sure.

We saw Saturn from a distance.
It was very beautiful.

Then we aimed our rocket nose towards the Wighty and settled back with a nice cup of tea and a slice of chocky cake.

to be continued....

Diary; Things to do before I get old.

Thursday 30th May

It occurred to me as I was looking at the moon this evening, that there were still three things left on my list of Things To Do Before I Get Too Old.

1. Take up Pole Vaulting at Olympic level.

2. Go on a cruise with Cap'n Jack Sparrow and

3. Become an astronaut.

Obviously the first two are a bit unrealistic, but the third...

I asked the dogs whether they'd be up for an adventure.

"I actually think someone has to stay and oversee the well being of the dog biscuits," said Maisie in rather pinched tones. She had never been much of an explorer.

Wally had his usual 'up for anything' expression, so we decided to go tomorrow, Friday, being as it was shopping day and there'd be plenty of food to take with us.

Friday 31st May

We packed a large chocolate cake, a Quorn curry, some biscuits (human and dog) and a packet of frozen peas. If one of us bumped our head, they would come in useful: if we ran out of food, we could eat them. If we got bored, we could play a variation of Tiddlywinks.

This morning we hauled the rocket out of our shed and dusted it down. It had fallen out of the sky last summer and we hadn't yet found a use for it. Now was it's moment to shine, although not literally as it was quite mucky.

I climbed up into the cockpit and Wally peered out of the window.

"Stand back Maisie, you might get your earfluff singed," he wuffed.

To be continued....