4 – 10 December 2017
Monday
On Monday this week, I did some of my Hoffman piano course and some of my maths website, MathsWhizz. Then Mummy and I went to the library to pick up some books while Tilly went to the retirement home to volunteer; apparently, they had a mini jumble sale! After lunch, we all went to our swimming lessons. It was very, very quiet – just me, Tilly, and Josh, but I liked it that way because it meant we could get more swimming done! We had a backstroke day, and one of the hardest things I’d ever done in swimming was when Sarah (our instructor) got us to hold a plastic-coated brick and swim backstroke with our arms holding on to this brick, our elbows just at the surface of the water! It was so incredibly hard! Everyone’s legs sank and by the end of the lane people were dragging their bricks along behind them in the water to restore energy! When we got home, our friends Grace, Eve and Anne came round, and we made up our own play! It’s got quite a tragic storyline; basically me, Mathilda, from Germany, meets Eve, Maria, from Spain, at a ball for people from all around the world, and when the building sets on fire, Maria dives in to save Annie, my very short mother! One day, after my very-short-mother has been rescued, Maria and Mathilda are walking along the traintrack when a bridge falls down (this is where it gets all The Railway Children-y) and Mathilda dives in front of the train to stop it from crashing because Maria’s father is on it. Maria pushes Mathilda out of the way and gets run over by the train; (this is where it gets all Cleopatra-y) and Mathilda gets a snake to bite her because she is so grieved.
After a delicious dinner of jacket potatoes and baked beans, Grace, Eve, and Annie went home and Tilly and I walked up to Guides. there I made a Christmas decoration, which was a sort of pinecone made of Christmas-y, holly-patterned fabric instead of wood, fastened with tiny gold pins. Personally, I think it’s really quite pretty!
Tuesday
The next day was Tuesday. We did some work in the morning, and in the afternoon Tilly and I got the long, furry things from the hoods of our coats and named them (Thing and It) before playing a strange game where we made their kennel out of cushions. I have a reasonable amount of floor space in my bedroom and this kennel took up the whole of it; there was a network of tiny rooms and large pantries, all draped over with the enormous blanket I bought for a ceiling. Then we turned on the radio and listened and sang along with MIKA while we took down the Fluffies’ den and made our own until William got back from school.
When he did, he helped us tidy everything and away (and apparently was delighted to turn off MIKA, for he doesn’t share our love of it) and then we played on the Wii! We hadn’t played it for about three of four years, so we were all very exicted! We used the Wii Fit disc, so the games were stuff like jogging and going on obstacle courses and doing kung fu and stuff. It’s funny because you make a Mii that looks like you, name it, and that’s your Mii, so whenever you play a game you play on your profile; the funny part is that when you do kung fu or snowball fighting or something, the other Miis in your Mii family will be fighting back or playing along or whatever! So while William’s completing the last course of the obstacle course, maybe Nanny, Tilly’s friend Lana and me are waiting for him at the end! Or when I’m throwing snowballs at everyone, Mummy and my other self (when I was little, I liked all the different hairstyles so I have many copies of me) are fighting back. It’s hilarious and very fun!
Wednesday
On Wednesday, Tilly was out volunteering at the nursery, so, once more, it was a Mummy-and-Vinia day. We read some of our story together, the sequel to ‘Peter Pan’, ‘Peter Pan in Scarlet’, and I read my own Harry Potter book. It’s getting a lot more exciting now, but Rowling seems to think that writing is an exercise and the longer you can get your sentence the better. Almost all of her sentences are something like, ‘Ginny was hailed half-way down the Gryffindor table by a group of other fourth-years and was left to sit with them; meanwhile, Neville, Harry, Ron and Hermione sat down next to Seamus and Dean, and immediately began to throw salutations and greetings at them (Neville went on to show them his boil-coated, grey cactus and all the tricks it could do; Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown, who were seating opposite a couple of seats away, stopped talking when Harry looked at them and he felt that they had been chatting about him a second before).’ like that. A lot of unnecessary words, but the plot is very good and I think that’s what keeps me interested!
Thursday
On Thursday this week, we did some work in the morning, and I wrote my story and read my book. While Mummy was making lunch, Tild and I watched an episode of ‘Horrible Histories’. After our lunch, we went for a walk to the library, where I practiced my piano on theirs (I’m doing an online piano course, but really I only have a keyboard at home, so I like to practice on the piano at the library!). When we got back, we watched a documentary called ‘CELL’, hosted by Adam Rutherford, which was interesting as far as documentaries go, but we would rather be watching Ghostbusters!
Friday
On Friday, we went to drama in the morning. Tild came round to ours briefly so we could drive her there. It was a sort of random-scenes-out-of-Act-2 day, as well as a Christmas jumper day; last week Chanel, our leader, told everyone that if they could, come in a Christmas jumper, and pretty much everyone did! We also went through two of our group songs, Seasons of Love and Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (both of which I absolutely hate, but the dances are quite fun). Then we went to IKEA for lunch 😉
As soon as drama had finished, we had lunch in IKEA on our way to our filmmaking club, because it was the mini show reveal! Everything was edited, sound tracks added, special effects fitted in, cast’s recordings done, and it was perfect, just how we had expected it to be! Basically we went round to Cameron’s house where we do it usually, and they had snacks and treats all out on the table and our performance, ‘Don’t Kill Derek’, ready on the television. We watched it and it was absolutely hilarious; I was the narrator, along with the evil one who wanted to kill the main caterpillar-character Derek, yet I was the only one who was actually filmed myself. Everyone else did the voicing – Tilly was Derek, and did a very good job of, ‘Minoop! Nimi! Nimiminoop! Namanamanoonah!’ which was Derek’s little language 😉 I think it was brilliant and Cameron’s entered it into the IntoFilm competition, and I can feel it’s going to win!
Saturday
On Saturday, the next day, we had our second drama in the morning! Next week we’re doing a mini demo for the parents, so we had to polish off our acts for then. In drama, we’re doing a few scenes out of a ‘Rapunzel’ pantomime, where in each scene a few of the people in our group get to act. In my scene, I’m the villain, Gothel, and Elizabeth is the fairy, Fairy Nuff. In dance, we’re doing a 60s dance from the musical ‘Hairspray’, which isn’t from the 60s but has a 60s dance which is very catchy and fun! In singing, we’re singing two songs, both Christmas ones; one that Jay’s dad wrote, called ‘Christmas Time’, and one called ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’, but I don’t know who it’s by. ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’, I have to say, is not very good and I fear that it might be Justin Bieber. I do not like Justin Bieber. In ‘Christmas Time’, there are solos, and I was very sad to have auditioned for the solos and not got one. Instead they were given to William, all very well and good, he could sing it and he seemed to want to; to Lydia, all good, she could sing and really wanted to too; to Sophie, yep, fine, she could sing and was good at it; and to a few other girls and Jay himself (of course our singing teacher couldn’t not give him a solo because his dad had written the song), all of which were not very good (politely speaking) and which I think could have been replaced by me or some of the others (not to be pretentious, but anyone could say they weren’t very good and although I’m not a singing sensation, the others and I were much better). Sophie, Morgan, Ella and I were doing the harmonies on ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’, which is really fun but very hard!
When we got back from drama, Nanny came round and we did a lot of Latin and some playing! During Latin, I mastered declining nouns like ‘puella’, meaning ‘girl’, and can write sentences in the vocative and genitive case. Soon I’m going to write another story in Latin!
Sunday
On the next day, Sunday, we woke up to find… snow! We were absolutely flabbergasted; one, because it hadn’t snowed in two years (and that was in May; so not including May, three) and two, because it was so early in December, where usually it doesn’t snow until January or even February! As soon as we woke up, we went to play in it, but it was falling snow at that time so five minutes later and we were freezing. We came back in with a trace of a snowman’s body in the garden that has been left from that point untouched 😉
We spent the rest of the day doing some work, which included an awful lot of Latin! We also planned my birthday (which is on Wednesday!!) and started watching The Simpsons. Surprisingly, although we’d heard of it, we’d never seen it before! According to most reviews, it only gets really hilarious during Season 2 and 3, but we’ve started from the beginning anyway to get to know the characters, and it has proved to be so funny anyway I don’t know how it could be funnier!
Also, Tilly has been playing Go! a lot with Andy, and drawing some amazing anime characters (her teenage obsession!) 😉 She’s a very talented artist 😀
