Mary ("Mrs Werewolf") writes: Well that was quite a weekend, I'm glad the kids are back at school today to give me some peace! On Friday Minnie went to her first Hedgehogs meeting. The "Hedgehogs Rampant" are the junior section of the Knights Hospitalier, an ancient order of soldiers skilled in the healing arts. They have a rich tradition which stretches back to the Crusades, of carving up their enemies and bandaging up their friends.
Their uniform is rather sweet. Over a tunic of knitted chain mail they have a sort of shirt with a cross on it. They have a sword and a first aid kit in their belts. The Knights (they are the over-eighteens) get a hobby horse to ride around on.
Minnie was very excited and spent much of the weekend stabbing her toys with a toy sword. I'm relieved to find out that the swords for the Hedgehogs are only made of rubber. They don't get to use real edged weapons until they are Squires at the age of eleven. On Saturday Jay (armed with his Nintendo Wii) and Stanley (armed with his laptop) came round and they and James (armed with the Werewolf's toolkit) disappeared into the workshop. I saw them only three times all day, when they emerged to order marmite sandwiches, ginger beer and slices of apple pie.
During the course of the day my armchair disappeared from the sitting room. I love my chair. It is my Seat of Power, my Throne from which I survey my kingdom. Sitting in it I can see what is going on in the garden and kitchen (although I usually end up seeing things I'd be happier not knowing about). I was annoyed enough to venture into the workshop to enquire about its whereabouts.
In the workshop I found a very odd contraption, part go-cart, part bicycle, part television and part computer game. And part, I noticed, Mum's armchair. "What are you doing with my favourite chair?" I thundered.
James had the decency to look guilty. Stanley didn't. "It's the driver's seat in our Space-Time Travel Module," he informed me breezily. "We need a massive chair in case of a hard landing. The ground level has changed over time so we can't be sure how high up we'll be when we arrive. We'll set off from up in the tree house for safety and plan for a drop of a few feet." "There's room for all three of us on that chair, so we can all go together," piped up Jay. "Two of us can sit on the driver's lap." "Not that we're gay!" added Stanley quickly.
"What are the Christmas fairy lights doing round it?" I asked, curiosity getting the better of me despite my best efforts to remain stern.
"Well, they don't actually do anything," confessed Stanley, "but they look really sick!" I consulted my mental dictionary of Teenager Slang and remembered that "sick" is good. "Mm. And the television is....?" I asked.
"Albert said we needed a particle stream that we could focus and target, and I thought of the insides of a TV," said Stanley with justifiable pride. "Ok....and the Wii?" "That provides all the controls you need to start, stop and steer the machine," piped up Jay. "It's amazing what you can do with a Nintendo Wii!" Blimey, yeah. I wonder if we should tell Nintendo what their computer games are capable of. I expect they already know and are hushing it up. There's scope for a whole new conspiracy theory here. "And the bicycle rear wheel and gears?" I asked, poking something mechanical and getting oil over my fingers.
"That works the trip counter, so you know how far you've gone. And it looks phat!" said Stanley, who appears to have become fluent in Teenager since I spoke to him last. Let me see...."phat" like "sick" means "jolly good". I'm getting the hang of this. "For Heaven's sake don't put that contraption up in the tree house and all jump on it!" I warned them. "I don't think the tree would stand it. You'd be better to just put your travel module up on a couple of crates here in the workshop. After all, all this was fields right up until the 70's. A few feet up in the air should be fine." I went back into the house. I replayed the conversation back in my head. Something was missing. Ah yes....I went back to the workshop.
"And you're paying for a new armchair for me, young man!" I shouted at James, waggling my finger at him sternly.
James tutted at me impatiently. "Well, you owe me five weeks' pocket money. Buy a new armchair out of that," he said. Ok, so the chair had only cost £3.50 from a Red Cross furniture shop eight years ago, but it's the principle of the thing that matters. "You're grounded for another week!" I fumed as I turned to leave. James was putting on a welding helmet so I don't think he heard me. Perhaps it was just as well. It's time I thought of a punishment that he doesn't actually enjoy.
