Christmas party time.

This year there was a change to the Christmas Party at Gamlingay; there was no buffet and no Santa! Instead we all watched a pantomime.

 I've never really like pantomimes and I still don't like them! It might not have been so bad if I'd had a chair to sit on but all of the "kids" had to sit on the floor which was OK at first. However, the pantomime seemed to go on forever and the floor was so uncomfortable, my legs were going into a cramp! I managed to join in with a couple of songs though.

There was no food, but lots of chocolate coins and mince pies. It wasn't the best party I've been to, but it was nice to see Tilly again.

In other news, we finally decorated our Ginger-Bread house!

Happy Birthday Me!

The joys of being a teenager have finally come! On the 18th, I became a teenager. It didn't feel much different from being twelve, but it was exciting nonetheless!
 





The day before my birthday, I went up to Newcastle with dad to see my brothers and the rest of my family. I saw my grandad first and dad had a chat with him about boring football for a couple of hours until it was time to meet up with my brothers.
Me, dad and my two brothers (Ian and Stephen) met up in a Thai restaurant in the gigantic Metro Centre for a late lunch. Me and dad weren't really looking forward to the meal as we aren't massive fans of Thai food. We were pleasantly surprised when we tried our food and realised how tasty it actually was! I had beautifully grilled pork with sticky rice. I wasn't a fan of the sticky rice, but the pork was fantastic!
After our meal, we had a walk around all of the shops. For a week and a day before Christmas, the shops were surprisingly empty. It seems most people do their shopping online now.

We spent the rest of the day at Eileen's AKA Stephen and Ian's mom's house. We all chatted for an hour or so before me and dad had to leave to go back home. After the 3 hour journey back home, I was absolutely shattered!




I didn't have any time to rest the day after my expedition to Newcastle, though, as it was my birthday! I had a veryyy busy day opening presents and lying around enjoying them all!

 I got some brilliant smelling bath bombs, a miniature stationary set, a beautiful bracelet, some band and YouTuber merchandise, lots of chocolates and Pokémon Sun! I've always loved Pokémon games and Pokémon Sun is probably the best Pokemon game I've ever played. It's brilliant!

Cadbury's Flake Cake!

I wonder what teenage dramas I'll have to endure in the future? I'll keep you updated on them!

Pony Club Games!

Despite the bleak weather, I still had a fantastic time at Pony Club yesterday! We played gymkhana games bareback. We had to do things like get a ring off a pole at one end of the school then ride down to the other end of the school and put the ring on the pole at that end then run back. It was a lot of fun! I really enjoy riding bareback since it's very comfortable and warm compared to sitting on a leather saddle.

At the end of the day, we lined up and posed for the camera!

Sitting sidesaddle!

Sitting backwards!

Christmas Catch-up!

Who would have thought separating beans and peas would be so exciting!

At Gamlingay, we travelled back in time to the Medieval times to learn all about how people in that era lived.

To get an idea of how difficult it was to earn money back then, our Medieval Instructor split all of the children into teams. In those teams, we harvested crops, sheared sheep and stacked hay. Of course, we didn't use actual crops, sheep or hay. Instead we used beans and peas for the crops, small printed pictures of sheep for our animals, and cut up pieces of  drinking straws for hay. It might sound like quite a silly game but it was very intense and serious.We had to earn as much money as possible and it wasn't easy! Occasionally, one of your teammates had to leave the game since the King had called them to work for him. My team only barely had enough money to survive!

After the incredibly tense game of Medevial life, we all got to do something a lot more calming; drawing with a quill. It might not sound much fun, but I actually really enjoyed it.


 Everyone had a sheet of thick paper to write on, a pot of black ink and a guide on how to draw every letter with a quill. When using the quill, you can't drag it up!

All of the pen strokes have to go either down, left or right. Because of this, a lot of letters have to be changed to be able to write them with a quill.

For my first time writing with a quill, I think I did pretty good!




When I heard that the next activity was going to be outside, I was not very impressed. It was absolutely freezing outside! Either way, I went out with Tilly to see what was going on. There was archery and jousting going on but I couldn't say it was very interesting. Tilly and I stood and stared at it for a while before deciding it wasn't worth freezing for!

It was freezing!

Just chilling out

In other news, it's almost Christmas! Mom, dad and I have been very busy putting up all of the Christmas decorations and getting the house as festive as possible. Everything was put up around a week early this year apart from the Gingerbread house. A gingerbread house is one of the most important parts of Christmas and we still haven't made it yet! Hopefully we'll have the gingerbread
ready in time for Christmas.

Getting ready for Christmas!

Update on my Wii!

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to try to convert a Wii game so I could play it on my laptop. I spent my entire Thursday evening desperately trying to make it work but I just couldn't do it. I figured out that to do it, I needed to pay £6.00 for a SD card. I definitely don't think the SD card was worth £6.00, but I was determined to succeed so I bought it anyway!
I tried again with the SD card and it actually worked. I could hardly believe it! The instructions on how to actually convert the Wii game were very complicated so I don't think I'd be able to explain them. If you want to know how to do it, you can read the tutorial by clicking here!

Catch-up Post!

I've done a lot of things since my last blog post and I just couldn't find the time to post about them all!

Lately, I've been making a lot of progress at Pony Club so Lora decided that it was time that Lily and I got to learn to canter! I always expected cantering to be really smooth. I was so surprised at how rocky it was when the horse started cantering that I almost fell off! When I cantered a second time, I was much more prepared and it was a lot of fun. I felt like I was going really fast! When the horse was cantering, I felt like I was on a very rocky speedboat going over massive waves in the ocean.

Me and mom went back up to the Guild Hall in Grantham to see a beautiful ballet of Romeo And Juliet. Even though ballets aren't really my thing, I thought it was quite good.



I've recently discovered that Manga books are quite expensive. Manga are like Japanese comic books. The word manga, pronounced Mahn-ga, with a hard G, is Japanese for "random or whimsical pictures".  Mom and dad weren't very pleased when I told them I wanted to spend around £65 on a bunch of books. They gave in eventually, though, so now I own 7 novels of the manga series Servamp. It's amazing how much of the Japanese language I am learning! The rest of the series isn't released yet but I'll definitely buy it once it comes out.

The other day I had a massive clear out of all of my old games and dvds and I found a copy of my favourite game Okami. The game was meant for the Wii but I really wanted to play it on my laptop so I found a (very complicated) way to convert game so I can play it on my laptop. I doubt it'll actually work but I'm still going to try it anyway. I'll tell you if it works in the next post!

Plague Day at Woolsthorpe

You come across all kinds of strange people when you go for a walk in the woods around Woolsthorp Manor. Mind, it was Gravity Fields Festival and Woolsthorpe was celebrating Plague Day!
There was a trail to follow that took us through fields and over styles and along rough and muddy forest paths.
The first person we saw was very scary. He wore a Bird Mask and didn't speak at all. He just pointed us on our way.

We came across a small church and in the graveyard was Samuel Pepys and his wife. He was writing in his diary about his fears of the Plague. He asked us if we'd seen any people who looked like they were ill. He told his wife he wanted her to leave London with his children so they wouldn't become infected. His wife was crying because she didn't want to leave him. It was all very sad.

Inside the church it was deserted apart from a young woman singing a sorrowful song. She sounded heart-broken. When I looked closer I saw she was holding a dead child in her arms. No wonder she was so sad.

Mourning her dead child

We made our way into the village and suddenly a man appeared. He didn't look well at all. He had red boils and blood on his face. We walked swiftly passed!

Next we saw a woman standing by a little bridge that went over a babbling stream. She didn't seem ill  and she was holding small bunches of yellow flowers in her hands. After she'd checked that we weren't infected she tried to sell us the flowers as she said they would protect us from the plague. "Buy a ring of rosies, a pocket-full of posies" was what she said to us.

She was also selling  what looked like pendants with number squares on them. She explained the numbers would protect us from the plague too. She was quite insistent we buy from her but then we were interrupted by a loud bell ringing and a clattering noise! It was a small boy pulling a wooden cart. Suddenly he yelled, "Bring out your dead!"  He asked us if we'd seen any dead people. We were about to say "No" but then I spotted a couple of bodies in a nearby stream. The boy was excited because the more bodies he collected, the more money he was paid!

We headed along a path into the woods and soon came across an elderly couple. The old man asked us if we'd buy his wedding ring because he needed money so they could head north to find "cleaner air" His wife was upset and crying; she didn't want to leave at all.

Further along, and deeper into the woods we came across a lady sitting knitting. She said she was waiting for her children. It turned out her children were sewer rats! They came screaming out of a tunnel and gave us all a fright! She said "Oh, come here my lovely children" but then she scolded them for eating the corpses!

Knitting clothes for her "children"

The "children" turned out to be Rats!

 Further into the forest it became darker and then we came across the Grim Reaper! He didn't say much, he just glared at us and beckoned us further into the wood.

We came across a clearing and we saw three graves. Mom and I posed for a picture. We didn't hang about though as a man with a Bird-Mask carrying a Bible made his way towards us. Mom asked why he was wearing the mask but we were met with a stony silence.

We headed quickly off and came across another couple. They turned out to be a rich land owner who had lost all of his family and servants to the plague and the lady with him was his last remaining servant. He had a pile of his belongings and a "special" chair. However, he expected his servant to carry all of it! She was crying because she couldn't carry it all. The land -owner turned to father and asked him if he could buy me! He actually though I was a servant! Dad asked him "How Much?

We climbed a very awkward style, crossed a path and out of nowhere two women appeared. They definitely had the plague so we kept our distance. They pointed at Father and said, "He definitely has the Plague!"

There were more graves in the fields. This time a man stood nearby. He had lost his wife and child and he had nothing left to live for.

We climbed uphill and came across a woman and her little boy sitting in the field. She looked really grey and sad. She wanted us to take her child because she was dying. She didn't look too bad until she pulled up her sleeve and her arm was covered in ghastly boils. It made me feel quite sad.

Further uphill we saw the Mayor. He was surprisingly jolly. He was confident the plague would not reach the town and things weren't really that bad. We were asked lots of questions like, did we have a cough, or a fever or boils on our bodies. When we answered "No" we were allowed to go on our way. Thankfully, the plague never actually spread as far as Woolsthorpe but sadly it claimed many, many lives.

Gravity Fields Festival!

As you know, a festival in Grantham is being held to celebrate 350 years since Isaac Newton's Year Of Wonders. The festival is called Gravity Fields. In my last post, I wrote about the first show to start off the festival: Ockham's Razor. The rest of the weekend was packed full of Isaac Newton themed events and shows.

The first part of the festival that we saw on Saturday was the Anti-Gravity Box. The box was decorated to look like it was flipped on its side. When you had your picture taken inside the box, it looked like gravity didn't affect you! It was a bit disorientating but it was quite a lot of fun to try to come up with creative poses!

Shortly after having our pictures taken in the Anti-Gravity Box, we saw a talk about maths from the author and scientist, Simon Singh. The talk was themed around The Simpsons. Before the talk began, I couldn't understand how you could have a maths talk about The Simpsons, however, once Simon started explaining all of the hidden maths references in the show, I realised that there were loads of things to do with maths.

Quite a few of the directors and writers of The Simpsons are mathematicians, so they liked to slip a few maths jokes in every now and again.

The next show was very unique. It took place in a little van with a tent attached to it for the audience. Since me and father arrived to the show early, we got to sit inside the van, right next to the man who was performing. The performance was all about the first trip to the Moon. The man played Michael Collins, the third man who went up to the Moon in the Apollo 11 spacecraft. Michael, however, did not land on the Moon. He was left in the spacecraft, unable to contact anybody, for 48 minutes while he orbited the dark side of the Moon. He actually went around the Moon multiple times as Neil and Buzz explored the Moon on foot. During the 48 minutes while he orbited the moon he played his guitar, he ate snacks, and contemplated life.
Just based on this story, the show sounds very serious. The man made the talk quite the opposite, though. He sang, played his guitar, joked around, danced and played music for us. For one part of the show, he had me hold a microphone for him and father hold a torch, while he gazed out of the van window as if it really was a spaceship window. I was desperately trying to stop laughing! It didn't help that the man who led everyone to the van was laughing his head off beside me.

Even though the show was really light-hearted and funny, I definitely learnt a lot about the first mission to the Moon.

For the final show, we saw Dr Death and his Rat teach us all about doctors and surgeons in the 17th century. He explained how the answer to any sort of medical condition was bleeding. As you can probably imagine, it didn't work very well and a lot of people died from illness and injury back then. The illness that killed the most people was the Great Plague. There was no cure for the plague and the people didn't really know how to prevent it. There was no such thibg as hygiene then so the plague spread quickly. People thought it was passed from person to person through smells, so they wore masks with scented flowers inside to try to stop themselves from getting infected. The plague was actually spread by rats and their fleas!  To help explain all of this, Dr Death had a little rat puppet who liked to sing and interrupt Dr Death. He was very funny! There was a lot of maggots, blood and drinking urine!
Saturday was the Ingenious Night Out with street performers, fierce fire-blowing machines and rainbow umbrellas. The streets of Grantham were very busy and noisy!

I wonder what Isaac Newton would have made of it all!







Isaac Newton Statue in Grantham

Ockham's Razor!

The Dance Of Death!

Ockham's Razor is an ariel theatre group that have recently been performing for the Gravity Fields festival in Grantham. The Gravity Fields festival is being held in honor of the 300-year anniversary of Isaac Newton's Year of Wonders. When Isaac Newton returned to his home in Grantham due to the Great Plague, he discovered many incredible things such as the Laws of Motion, Gravity and how light is made of a spectrum of different colours. We call this year his "Year of Wonders".

The Ockham's Razor performance was held at the beautiful St Wulfram's Church. The magnificent stained glass windows definitely added to the aesthetic of the entire performance. When me and mom first arrived, we thought we were in the wrong place because everyone looked very posh and sophisticated. Most of the men even had suits on and there were women serving glasses of champagne!
During the show, extremely talented acrobats danced and performed on balancing poles and scaffholding structures high off the ground. The entire show was split into three sections and each section told a special story.
The first section featured two women and a man and it showed "the best and worst of humanity". Without speaking, the acrobats displayed love, envy, hate, fear, mercy and forgiveness.
The second part was a duet between a man and a woman on a metal frame suspended in the air. It was based on Holbein's woodcuts of "The Dance Of Death". Death was represented as a skeleton who danced a woman to her grave. It was quite dramatic!
Isaac Newton said, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." The third part of the show was about how everyone's actions affect someone else and how those actions can lead to friendship. There were four acrobats in this performance who twisted and spun and climbed while suspended by 25 metres of rope.

Watching all of the magnificent performances made me feel very calm, as if nothing else was happening in the world. I wonder if the other Gravity Fields performers will be as good as that?

Perfect Purple Pottasium!

I had a very early start yesterday as I had to get up at 6 am to go to the all day hands-on science show at the University of Bedfordshire in Luton. It was a long drive and we had to be there by 9.20 am! Despite leaving an entire hour early, we still arrived late thanks to the incredibly slow traffic in Luton city centre. It was absolutely ridiculous! I normally like long car journeys as I can listen to my music in the car but it was not an enjoyable journey.


We arrived at the University in the pouring rain and we were late. Fortunately, everybody else was late too! There were around 20 home ed kids there including Tilly and Lavinia.
The show itself was very impressive. It was more like a workshop because we did loads of hands-on experiments and we got to handle all of the dangerous chemicals and acids ourselves. We did the work-shop in a real laboratory in white coats, gloves and goggles! Health and safety was important; I had to cover my open sandals with blue shoe covers and tie my hair up! Next time, I will come prepared and save myself from the embarrassment of wearing unflattering plastic bags on my feet!
The first half of the workshop was all about Biology and Digestion. There was a life size model of a human torso showing all the organs inside. We did lots of experiments with enzymes to see which ones work better in different conditions. Enzymes are important for the digestion of food. I was surprised that we got to handle such dangerous chemicals like Hydrochloric acid.

We had to wear gloves for that but it was still quite scary. We did experiments on eggshells to see how quickly they dissolved in different solutions. The solution of hydrochloric acid and pepsin at body temperature was the most effective at dissolving the eggshells. After lots of cool experiments we stopped for lunch at 12.30.

The second part of the Science workshop in the afternoon was all about Chemistry. We used Bunsen burners to observe the colour of the flame as we burnt different chemicals. We had to wear safety goggles for this but we were told that we didn't have to wear gloves. My favourite colour flame was a really vivid green. I forgot which chemical you used to get that colour but it was really pretty! I've just checked my notes and it was copper sulphate! The flame burned a lovely purple when it was exposed to potassium. We were given a task to try to identify chemicals by igniting them and looking at the colour of the flame. Sounds simple doesn't it? The first set of chemicals were easy to identify but then it became much more difficult; all of the chemicals had an orange flame! It was really frustrating and I though we must be doing something wrong. It turned out they were all the same chemical: calcium. This was no mistake by the tutors, it was deliberate to confuse and baffle a bunch of kids! Apart from that, I really enjoyed being a scientist for the day!

It was a long drive home and by the end of the journey, I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open! I definitely won't be waking up at 6am again for a long time.