Hey Blog! I notice that it has been a very long time since I updated you on this story, so here it is: The Story of the Box!

The trinket seller’s vending box

The trinket seller took the box, and kept it for a long time. He stood on pavements, and alleys, and gained quite a reputation. For almost twenty years the box held trinkets, watches and knives and imitation jade ornaments and fake pearls, and two removable shelfs were made in it, to hold all these items. Most of his customers were sailors, getting things for their loved ones at home, or poor people trying for a bit of glamour when they went out to dance. In time, the box was used at his home, to put clothes in, and even afterwards, when it was used for its proper purpose again, it still smelled faintly of mothballs. His children knew it as “Dad’s chest picked up at the hotel” but it was mostly referred to as “Dad’s trunk”. When his eldest son came into the trade, the box passed to him, which was ironic as he had bashed and dented it several times when he was quite young! Many times he demonstrated the sharpness a hatchet, or clasp knife, by carving a gentle line on the lid of the box. A number of cuts were picked up this way, and in time, the board on top had to be replaced. However, this did not help the lines on the decorative edging around it. One day, he told everyone that he would sell a great quantity of items on the same day next week. He duly bought a large amount of trinkets, and sold them for a big profit. While counting the cash, he observed a man with three anchors tattooed on his arm coming fast towards him. When he reached the spot, he asked if he had anything left to sell. As the trinket seller did not, he said so, and the sailor was just turning to go, when he said:

“That your box? Fancy selling ‘er to me, three doubloons and a stick o’ baccy to go with it for ‘er?”

“Why, yes, I’ll sell, but keep your tobacco, I can do without it. The box was my father’s, to be sure, so take good care of it.”

The sailor assured him he would do so, and the box changed hands once more, on a long, long, journey that would take it many times round the world, taking with it some cuts and several scratches.

Hey Blog! Just a short one this week, partially as there is another one coming today and partially as this small post has a big topic to think about – get ready to dive into the biggest issue humanity is facing at the moment: the environment!

To start with, a few facts: There are just over 8 billion humans on the planet currently. That’s just one species. You’re probably one (unless you’re a fully independent robot, cyborg, other intelligent primate, alien, or any other proven or unproven creature – in which case, please tell some scientists!), one of 8,000,000,000 individuals. Insects, on the other hand, make up 80% of all known species on earth. An estimated two-thirds of all moth species are unknown to science, (and many other different types of animals still have entire other unknown branches of the family tree) yet the weight of all the chickens on the globe outweighs all the other bird species combined. These may sound completely unrelated, but they are all in my opinion stupid facts that should not be true. If we don’t value nature enough to give it the capacity and space that it needs to survive, it will be like what I heard on the radio today – not the “enough soup to break the universe”, but enough biomass of chickens to cause a mass extinction!

I also think that climate change is one of the, if not the most important problem we’re facing at the moment. This is because the climate is something that will last as long as the earth, and we are not. Therefore, as humans, we have a duty to put the future first, so that what comes after us will also be able to enjoy this planet. We should not be power-hungry nitwits who only care about themselves, we should be kind, sensible and considerate to all that come during and after us in the history of Earth (another fun fact – ding ding – notice I said just Earth there? NASA says we should call our planet “Earth” rather than “the Earth”: I don’t think you say “the Mars”, do you!). I myself think that there should be a Chivalric revival: it’s a pity it went out of fashion, as it told people how to behave properly, though you might think totally differently!

So, there you are, some things to think about. I would say “please send your comments in to tell me what you think”, but unfortunately, I can’t. However, you can think about them on your own, and try to prevent the earth becoming a second, rather unbeautiful Venus!

Hey Blog! Last week I turned thirteen, and on Saturday I had a party to celebrate. So that’s what this blog post is about!

Last year, I also had a small party, but we booked the woodland hut in Shining cliff woods and had a play around there. This year, we decided to have a party at home, and had been planning it since early February. Mum had found a murder mystery party game – pizza themed – and had ordered it. On Saturday, the day of the party, I was kept out of the playroom till Mum and Dad had set the room up. This involved all the junk being shoved upstairs and left in the bedrooms, where no one would see it; the tables being moved, and covered with tablecloths; and the pinboard having crazy pictures of the friends who were coming with their faces superimposed onto clipart pictures. The hallway had a supposedly dead body stick man drawn in masking tape, who was covered with the carpet until it was time for the game.

All my friends who came were in costume, and looked very good, considering that one had bought theirs that morning and most, including mine, were constructed in a hurry. I, for instance, was Michael Angelo, an artist, wearing black trousers, white vest and open pale shirt. Mayor Fiasco, the mayor, had his dad’s suit, and a (watch) chain of office. Mario Carta, the Swede-talion plumber, was in his sister’s dungarees and a red shirt turned inside out. Don Cannelloni, a lawyer-turned-crime-boss, was in a black suit and dark sunglasses, and Lolita Cannelloni his ‘daughter’ was in a white floral dress, with hair ribbons, high boots and stripy tights!

After all the guests had arrived, the ‘body’ was found under the carpet, and the suspects were questioned. With only five guests, picking any one of them meant you had a 20% chance of being right, so higher than a full game of Cluedo, which has six suspects. Next, we all went into the kitchen and received one piece of paper. If it had a cross in the corner, you were the murderer, and the number at the bottom told us the order of confessions. The detective then told us what was going on, and told us to look for the murderer. This was done by asking and answering questions, which were set, but we could choose who we asked. The answer was sometimes different depending on whether or not you were guilty, and you answered according to the truth.

Most of the guests couldn’t pronounce cannelloni, including one of the Cannellonis themselves, instead saying “insert surname here”! Two or three tried an accent at the beginning and gave up, while Mario Carta kept coming in and out of the accent. I however kept going all the way through, though it did descend into a bad Scottish accent in the middle – Lolita was threatening to hit me (I’m not sure if this was real or not – it’s hard to tell with her) if I kept on with the Italian one as no one could understand it! We had a great time, going through everything except the confessions while eating the starters, before the pizzas arrived (thank you very much Dominoes!). After dinner, in which between five people, three large pizzas were reduced to one half and a bit, the confessions were read out. I was number five and the murderer! I kept that secret well, didn’t I? (snigger). Most people thought I had been using the accent to hide the guilt but no – that is actually how bad my Italian accent is. It doesn’t help that all the guests have lived in deepest darkest Derbyshire for their whole life, whereas I am a bit of a globetrotter; you don’t get many Italians round here!

I absolutely loved the evening, and would certainly recommend it to any and all party-planners. It helps if you have two amazing parents to do furniture logistics and provide tablecloths, crazy party outfits, and a noticeboard with funny pictures, so a massive thanks to Mum and Dad – you are amazing! xx. Also, you must have really good friends to invite. And who knows what I might do next year?!

Hey Blog! This week we’re going mystical and even some undead! Welcome to a blog with vampires attached!

The supposed original vampire was the famous Count Dracula, the titular villain of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. This was a dark character, who slept in a coffin full of Transylvanian earth, drank people’s blood, forced others to drink his blood, and tried to turn people into other vampires. Horror? Dark? Gothic? Yup, all three! However, this wasn’t the first ever vampire to set foot on the world stage – vampiric tales had been going around for many years before ever this undead nobleman got into literature, but Stoker was the first one to properly lay out the rules of vampires – aversion to sunlight, shapeshifting, blood-sucking, telepathic control, terror of religiously blessed items, connection to bats, and some connection to the devil. Though vampires had curses, dark magic, and great strength, a few things – crosses, garlic, sacred bullets, maybe some mountain ash (otherwise known as Rowan, this is my wand wood; see post Wild Woods and Wands, Feb 22) and a stake through the heart, would all weaken their powers/kill them. However, this is not a book review, and instead, it’s about a play!

This play was a spoof of Dracula, by the Ambergate Players, called The Vampire Strikes Back. We went with a friend’s family, as they also wanted to come. It was in the traditional panto theme – loads of jokes, funny lines, and a totally different plotline to the original. This was all about the treasure of Vlad the Impaler – the supposed Dracula from the novel, though this has never been confirmed – and his descendants, vampires every one, and their hunt for the treasure!  Not only that, “the most powerful of them all was Count Dracula”, who wanted to find the three keys to open the treasure box. These keys alone would open the box and give Dracula the wealth he so craved. As usual in pantos, there were silly lines and jokes, e.g., rhyming lines such as mistaking “empire” or “higher” for “vampire”; or being attacked by a bat – a cricket bat! The plot was that Dracula had been terrorising the local village, attacking people with cricket bats, hypnotism, and blood loss (sucking out their blood), and the heroine Sapphi (and her “rapid vampire hamperer” weapon) was trying to confirm it was actually Dracula, so she could attack him. The interval had the best bit of the evening cake (rocky road for me) and drinks, as in all the best performances!

As for whether it all came right in the end – well, I can’t say “read the book” (I haven’t actually read Dracula, but I might one day), so Yes, it did. Thankfully at noon sunlight shone down the chimney, and the characters were able to use a mirror to reflect it back onto Dracula. But he wasn’t gone forever – as this panto was The Vampire Strikes Back, could it be Return Of The Sapphi next? (See Star Wars Titles The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi for where I got this idea from). Anyway, if the players do another next year, I will probably go!

Hey Blog! I’m rather late uploading this post but it’s all about art, and this time it’s by one of the most famous artists, and it’s got light displays as well!

On Friday 17^th, we went to Leicester to see an exhibition on one of the greats of the art world, a painter who did his own style that is famous for bold colour and if he had lived in the present day, would have been in his element painting for Ukraine – Vincent Van Gogh!

Van Gogh, or Vincent as he wanted to be called (“In future, I want to be known as I sign my pictures, that is namely Vincent and not Van Gogh, as they do know how to pronounce it here”), was a painter alive from 1853 to 1890, born in the Netherlands, but he lived a large part of his life in France. His paintings are spectacular and often have swirls of colour, and a lot of light and dark. Living in the 1800s, he knew some of the great impressionist artists, but formed a slightly different branch of his own, with lots of colour (even though he said, “The way to paint is with lots of drawing and little colour, the way not to paint is with little drawing and lots of colour”). He also included natural subjects, including skies, stars, himself, and sunflowers. Though he received little attention during his lifetime, he is now one of the world’s most renowned artists, and one of his paintings would cost about the same as an entire island!

At the moment, there are a few venues across the UK hosting a celebration of his art. We decided to visit one with a friend’s family, but they were ill on the date we had booked. Hopefully we can go with them on another date, but we haven’t planned that yet. The venues – we went to one in Leicester – have a large amount of information on Vincent’s life, from his birth to suicide, and on the most revolutionary revelation – Van Gogh, the master of colour, was probably colourblind! The huge piles of pigment were most likely his way of seeing something that he couldn’t see clearly. But the star of the show was the big display, the place where Vincent’s greatest paintings were projected onto the walls. This was in the big hall, which was in the middle of the route round, and had chairs for visitors to sit on during the c.30 minute show, which was on loop, in which paintings moved, and lights danced on the floor. We also took some pictures:

We watched the show for almost 60 minutes, so once repeated. After this, we left, as the only things after this were a colouring activity – make a copy of a painting, using your own colours – and the VR experience. We didn’t do this, as we will possibly do it another time. However, we did go round to Leicester Museum as we had a good few hours before the train. Hopefully we can arrange that date and go again, as I’d really like to do so!

Hey Blog! This blog is about the annual Scout cooking competition!

This competition was a Scouts one. Every year the Belper district has a Ready Steady Cook! Challenge, with two parts to it. First is a troop stage, when two or three teams from each troop compete till the leaders decide who should go on to the district round, where the best team wins the trophy. This trophy is a chopping board! My troop, 1^st Belper, won last year, though I was not on the team – the team I was on did not make it past the judges’ test. However, this year we did!

We only made the main meal in the first stage but there were only two teams taking part in the initial stage so it wasn’t too hard to win. The main was so good, the judges (scout leaders) let us in to the district round, which was yesterday!

The meal specifications were a three-course meal for two people, Asian-inspired, that cost less than ten pounds. We decided to cook sweet-and-sour chicken noodles, with prawn sesame toast for a starter, and eight treasures rice for a pudding. For those wondering what eight treasures rice is, it is a Chinese rice pudding, normally served hot but passible to serve cold, with eight different kinds of dried fruit as a filling. Made like a Christmas Pud, most people who came round to our table thought it like a Chinese version of the classic pudding; it is very good as I generally don’t like cold rice puddings, but I kept going back again and again for this one!

The pudding could be made in advance – by me, in this case, as we had the recipe – but the starter and main had to be made there on the day. We had also practiced the starter, so I took charge of that. It wasn’t too difficult, but with only 1 and a half hours to do the entire thing, it was a task. The other two on my team tackled the main. The sauce had to be cooked first, and then added to the chicken and noodles. Luckily, there were a couple of no-shows on the day, so we were able to commandeer a spare table and serve on that, as our table was supremely messy after cooking! Here is a photo of the meal:

The judges gave some excellent comments, but I think the most important fact was that our meal disappeared faster than anybody else’s! This could be due to the fact that we had more of it than anybody else’s, or that ours was better! My pudding disappeared fastest of the lot. The judging takes a surprisingly short time, but while the all-important conference was happening, people got to taste their own and other’s food. When the verdict came, we hadn’t won – Duffield Scouts had won – but Mum has just seen a post on the Facebook page for Scouts from the local Scout District Commissioner saying, “That pudding was amazing!” so I don’t mind!

Hey Blog! This one’s a bit late, as my grandparents were here last week, so I left the blog to this week. However, for the third time on Home Ed in a Shed, we’ve got a camp to write about!

Every year, my Scout troop does a camp in January, known as the “Chilly Challenge”. This is meant to be deliberately cruel very cold and challenge yourself to spending a night out in a chilly environment. I have taken part in it once or twice before, but this was at a new campsite I’ve never been to, north of us on the roads towards Chesterfield. We found it in the dark, but weren’t sure anyone was there as we couldn’t see anyone’s lights. However, at last we explored up the slope and found the rest of the Scouts setting up tents.

If you go camping, with Scouts or otherwise, I recommend SETTING UP YOUR TENT IN DAYLIGHT. It is a pig of a job to do when you can’t see properly, and if you don’t know your tent is even worse. I also recommend bringing one bag of everything, which I usually do anyway. Including a thick warm blanket to keep warm and block the sun out when you’ve only had three hours sleep (and if necessary to block out your tentmate’s snores!). Either way, we managed to put the tent up, and then all went to collect firewood. This was really the only chance to see the site, as we were not there in daylight for long enough to fully observe it. We did not go everywhere, but managed to pick up enough for a decent fire, and then sat round it on camping chairs and some of us told silly stories.

All of us had had dinner before we arrived so supper was hot chocolate with a single slice of unbuttered cheap white bread. There are also cupasoups at Scouts but these are a good few years out of date so they taste a bit old and none of the Scouts want them. We must have stayed up till 10 or 11 at night, more likely the latter, and then went to the tents just as an owl began hooting. You could tell this was a Tawny male, as it goes Hooo, Hooo. The female tawny owl goes Kee-wick, which, if put before the male’s call, goes, as even Shakespeare put it – “the Tawny Owl goes to-wit, to-woo” or something like that! Most women say you can tell which is the male and the female by what they say to each other – the lady says “twit!” and the other says “to you!”.

In the morning, we all got up – some at different times. I am generally one of the first up on a camp, at which point I pack up my sleeping bag, roll mat, and everything else, and then go out and wait for my Scout leader to tell the others to get up you lazybones (he doesn’t say that!) and for breakfast. This time, it was bacon cobs (also known as baps, burgers, or oven-bottom-muffins) and then shortly afterwards it was time for striking (packing up) tents. However, we didn’t go home until one of the people who manage the district Scout organisation came round and handed out the exclusive Chilly Challenge badges. Mine is already on my uniform!

As to whether I would do it again YES, I would. Definitely. And I will, next year!

Hey Blog! This week is about a celebration and tradition that has been going around for about a thousand years, and maybe a bit more. This week, I come a-wassailing!

The tradition of wassailing is very ancient, performed by people carrying flaming torches who march shouting through an apple orchard. But it isn’t as crazy as that really, nor so stupid. It’s a festival in which participants seek to, as this wassail we went to said, “wake the trees with noise and fire” and bless them so they give a greater crop next year. We attended one at Wessington, or more specifically at the Amber Valley Vineyard three days ago. Here they have planted a small apple orchard to make cider, and it was through this that the highlight of the evening came.

The first thing we did was go to the drinks table (typical!) where the adults were all rationed a cup of mulled cider free with the tickets. Unfortunately, the children were not allowed this (Pity – in the mediaeval period children were allowed alcoholic drinks, admittedly very weak ones, but still…) so I had to have a cup of hot chocolate instead. We then watched the T’owd (said Toad) Man Morris Dancers do some crazy dancing. It may sound like some badly spelt half-frog-half-man people who dance around in a pond, but no – T’owd man is a carving in the Wirksworth church, said to be the world’s oldest representation of a miner. Wirksworth is the town where these dancers are from, and t’owd is the local word for old: the nearby village to where I live is called Ambergate, but has the old name of T’owdmoor, meaning the old moor. They’re quite right even if they did mean the amphibians – Mum goes out on a toad patrol in the spring to rescue the animals from cars!

Either way, these dancers were very good. Morris Dancing includes people skipping around each other holding sticks and then hitting another person’s stick like swords. I am considering whether to go and take part in this kind of dancing, as it certainly looked like my style – more than ballet or tap dancing…! I also felt at this point that the entire atmosphere, from the bonfire, which had just been lit, to the dancing, to the fake horse’s skull, to the shouting, to the costumes, all matched PERFECTLY The Dark is Rising, the book I reviewed two weeks ago! Next we went over to the bonfire. It was perfectly laid, and the top sticks fell at just the right place to keep it burning – I wish I could lay a fire like that! We watched the flames for a while, and I tried to hold them – I think I succeeded! However, shortly afterwards, it was time for the big event – the wassailing! We all went forward to the apple grove…

Where they were handing out flaming torches. Apparently, this year, there is a national shortage of flaming torches – something to do with the warehouse’s roof collapsing – so we were lucky to have them! I managed to get one, and then the march started. The tradition involves carrying these torches through the orchard, shouting as you do so, and giving the trees toast soaked in cider. Maybe this is where the saying “Raise a toast” comes from: the expression is often said at the winter festival and this is the time when you raise the toast to the boughs of the apple tree! More likely not though. Either way, when the trees were all blessed, it was time to go home. However, it was a very enjoyable evening!

Hey Blog! This week is a mix of things, including a walk, one of my favourite TV programs, and a bird I’ve longed to see but never seen (yet…).

Yesterday Mum found out (see, parents do have complex nets of spies searching the countryside, don’t they!) that there were hawfinches to be seen in Cromford. Cromford is a really nice town up the Derwent valley. It has Sir Richard Arkwright’s mills, the first cotton mills in the world and the birthplace of both the industrial revolution and the factory system; the best bookshop in the world (in my opinion, it has an amazing café and both indoor and outdoor seating at the top, all hidden behind a door of books; rooms full of books that go all around the place with three stories; it seems to be built on a foundation of books!); and is the north end of the Cromford canal, which Arkwright haggled over when it was being built so he got a bumper share of the profits! Either way, this morning, we went up on the train to Cromford and went round to have a look.

We were reported to on the bridge over the river that the Hawfinches had been there this morning, but had vanished, most likely because of the children who were running around underneath the trees where the birds were (could someone please tell them to move it when there are Hawfinches around?). We decided to go over to the bench which had been suggested to get a bit closer so we could see if they decided to come back.

Did we see them? No, of course not. They’ve done this before, for which reason we call them Haw-haw-hawfiches – they laugh at us every time as they aren’t in sight. Actually, Hawfinches don’t make a laughing sound, they make a sound more like a cheep. However, we did have a very nice walk back along the Cromford Canal. The canal was iced over, and it looked like a bird had walked over it – if a bird was four times as big as a golden eagle and could freeze water as it stepped on it. Which it could if it was a magic bird, I suppose. However, I’ve never seen one, nor has anyone else, so I’m putting the water patterns down to Jack Frost (who I’ve also never seen, nor has anyone else) – OK, OK, let’s just say they were scientifical patterns the water made as it froze. Actually, the bird is a lot more exiting though…

It doesn’t take long to get home along the canal, though that is probably due to the fact that I have very long legs, inherited from my Dad, which speed me along. We did not see all that much, except a Dipper, a few Little Grebes, some Mallards, and a Coot. However, we are going to round off the day by taking dinner upstairs and watching Winterwatch, the winter wildlife program. There are three seasons of the Watches: Springwatch, Autumnwatch, and Winterwatch. They are presented by Chris Packham, among others. They always aim to bring you “the very best of British wildlife”. Now I’d better go upstairs…

Hey Blog! Second post in a day, and this one is a continuation of my serialised version of…

The story of the box

The silk merchant’s storage box

The Caliph now had lots more jewels, and the wedding present he himself had given was seven handsome rolls of silk. He had told the silk merchant that he would make the value up to him when he got back and when he did, gave him three bags of gems and the box that they had been given in. The silk merchant thanked him, and went off on his camel train through Asia, and at last reached China, going back the way he had formerly come some time later. He repeated this journey many times, and, upon one time, feeling quite older than he was when the box had first been given to him, he failed to journey, but sent his son, who was his heir for the camels, goods and in fact, all parts of the trade, off to China. When he was there, he heard that his father had formally retired, and that his father’s trading wealth had passed to him. He hurriedly sold his goods, thinking his father ill, and by the time he was packing his camels, the box was forgotten. It lay in the house that he had rented for his stay, and the landlord didn’t notice. Six years went by, before a guest said, “That looks like a nice box, and I could have sworn that I’ve seen it before. I’d like it for my trinket selling…”

“Your name?” said the landlord. “I seem to recall it was left here by a previous visitor.”

“You wouldn’t know me. I’m the son of that merchant that stayed here every summer. I’ve only been in this land once before and now I’m looking for a house here.”

“Well, I guess you can take the box. It cost me nothing, so it should cost you nothing!”

So the box, once lost in China, was recovered for a new purpose, and its adventures continued. It collected a few tea-stains, some scratches, and lost its key, which was left in the purse of a guest and forgotten about.