Sunday, August 28, 2011
Feelgood Sunday, Love and Other Drugs P2
Warning. Potentially emotional.
Last year Sam - a vibrant, good looking 24 year-old man - was playing soccer when he suffered a series of massive strokes that left him fighting for his life.
Doctors believed that if Sam survived he would be unable to walk or talk.
Australian Story shows how the love and persistence of Sam's fiance and family has led to an amazing medical discovery and ongoing battle with health professionals.
Last year Sam - a vibrant, good looking 24 year-old man - was playing soccer when he suffered a series of massive strokes that left him fighting for his life.
Doctors believed that if Sam survived he would be unable to walk or talk.
Australian Story shows how the love and persistence of Sam's fiance and family has led to an amazing medical discovery and ongoing battle with health professionals.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Feelgood Sunday, Marlow and Fran Cowan of Ankeny.
An elderly couple walked into the lobby of the Mayo Clinic for a checkup and spotted a piano. They've been married for 62 years and he'll be 90 this year. Check out this impromptu performance.
The follow-up concert....
etc etc
The follow-up concert....
etc etc
Friday, August 26, 2011
Vertical street theatre.
Around 12 years ago I performed for the opening of an eccentric bar in NZ called 'The Wunderbar'.
I spent a week gluing various lengths of cassette tape to a pair of overalls for my costume and had a friend who ran a hang-gliding business rig me in a harness and suspend me from the top of the building with all the safety requirements met. I spent the evening floating around , pushing off the building and workshopping the movement qualities of my situation.
Whenever I worked at the Edmonton festival in Canada, John Ullyatt would pick my brain for interesting things. He'd used one of my ideas before, 'Pedestrian cross theatre' which Rob Maclaren and I had started in NZ and when I told him about my suspension work he got excited. The next year he and his partner Annie Dugan spent part of the festival dressed as fashion critic bugs, hanging from a building with pen and paper and writing down compliments and fashion advice for specific passers by before scrunching the paper into balls and throwing it down to those concerned.
Whimsy.
I spent a week gluing various lengths of cassette tape to a pair of overalls for my costume and had a friend who ran a hang-gliding business rig me in a harness and suspend me from the top of the building with all the safety requirements met. I spent the evening floating around , pushing off the building and workshopping the movement qualities of my situation.
Whenever I worked at the Edmonton festival in Canada, John Ullyatt would pick my brain for interesting things. He'd used one of my ideas before, 'Pedestrian cross theatre' which Rob Maclaren and I had started in NZ and when I told him about my suspension work he got excited. The next year he and his partner Annie Dugan spent part of the festival dressed as fashion critic bugs, hanging from a building with pen and paper and writing down compliments and fashion advice for specific passers by before scrunching the paper into balls and throwing it down to those concerned.
Whimsy.
Chieti Buskers Festival 2011 - Eventi Verticali 16.08.11
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Escaping the cult of the average.
This is an ideal Clown employment sales pitch.
Shawn Achor is the winner of over a dozen distinguished teaching awards at Harvard University, where he delivered lectures on positive psychology in the most popular class at Harvard.
His research and lectures on happiness and human potential have received attention in The New York Times, Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, as well as on NPR and CNN Radio, and he travels around the United States and Europe giving talks on positive psychology to Fortune 500 corporations, schools, and non-profit organizations.
Achor graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a BA in English and Religion and earned a Masters degree from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics.
Now he is the CEO of Aspirant, a Cambridge-based consulting firm which researches positive outliers-people who are well above average-to understand where human potential, success and happiness intersect. Based on his research and 12 years of experience at Harvard, he clearly and humorously describes to organizations how to increase happiness and meaning, raise success rates and profitability, and create positive transformations that ripple into more successful cultures.
In Shawn's TEDxBloomington presentation, he says that most modern research focuses on the average, but that "if we focus on the average, we will remain merely average." He wants to study the positive outliers, and learn how not only to bring people up to the average, but to move the entire average up.
"So how can we pursue happiness right now?
When I was counseling overwrought Harvard students, one of the first things I would tell them is to stop equating a future success with happiness. Empirically, we know success does not lead to happiness. Is everyone with a job happy? Is every rich person happy? Then step one is to stop thinking that finding a job, getting a promotion, etc. is the only thing that can brings happiness. Success does not mean happiness. Check out any celebrity magazine to look for examples to disabuse you of thinking that being beautiful, successful or rich will make you happy.
Second, realize that happiness is a work ethic. Happiness is not a mystery. You have to train your brain to be positive just like you work out your body. We not only need to work happy, we need to work at being happy. Try an experiment right now called the 21 Day Challenge. Pick one of the five researched habits and try it out for 21 days in a row to create a positive habit.
1. Write down three new things you are grateful for each day into a blank word document. Research shows this will significantly improve your optimism even 6 months later, and raises your success rates significantly.
2. Write for 2 minutes a day describing one positive experience you had over the past 24 hours. This is a strategy to help transform you from a task-based thinker, to a meaning based thinker who scans the world for meaning instead of endless to-dos. This dramatically increases work happiness.
3. Exercise for 10 minutes a day. This trains your brain to believe your behavior matters, which causes a cascade of success throughout the rest of the day.
4. Meditate for 2 minutes, focusing on your breath going in and out. This will help you undo the negative effects of multitasking. Research shows you get multiple tasks done faster if you do them one at a time. It also decreases stress and raises happiness.
5. Write one, quick email first thing in the morning thanking or praising a member on your team. This significantly increases your feeling of social support, which in my study at Harvard was the largest predictor of happiness for the students."
Shawn Achor is the winner of over a dozen distinguished teaching awards at Harvard University, where he delivered lectures on positive psychology in the most popular class at Harvard.
His research and lectures on happiness and human potential have received attention in The New York Times, Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, as well as on NPR and CNN Radio, and he travels around the United States and Europe giving talks on positive psychology to Fortune 500 corporations, schools, and non-profit organizations.
Achor graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a BA in English and Religion and earned a Masters degree from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics.
Now he is the CEO of Aspirant, a Cambridge-based consulting firm which researches positive outliers-people who are well above average-to understand where human potential, success and happiness intersect. Based on his research and 12 years of experience at Harvard, he clearly and humorously describes to organizations how to increase happiness and meaning, raise success rates and profitability, and create positive transformations that ripple into more successful cultures.
In Shawn's TEDxBloomington presentation, he says that most modern research focuses on the average, but that "if we focus on the average, we will remain merely average." He wants to study the positive outliers, and learn how not only to bring people up to the average, but to move the entire average up.
"So how can we pursue happiness right now?
When I was counseling overwrought Harvard students, one of the first things I would tell them is to stop equating a future success with happiness. Empirically, we know success does not lead to happiness. Is everyone with a job happy? Is every rich person happy? Then step one is to stop thinking that finding a job, getting a promotion, etc. is the only thing that can brings happiness. Success does not mean happiness. Check out any celebrity magazine to look for examples to disabuse you of thinking that being beautiful, successful or rich will make you happy.
Second, realize that happiness is a work ethic. Happiness is not a mystery. You have to train your brain to be positive just like you work out your body. We not only need to work happy, we need to work at being happy. Try an experiment right now called the 21 Day Challenge. Pick one of the five researched habits and try it out for 21 days in a row to create a positive habit.
1. Write down three new things you are grateful for each day into a blank word document. Research shows this will significantly improve your optimism even 6 months later, and raises your success rates significantly.
2. Write for 2 minutes a day describing one positive experience you had over the past 24 hours. This is a strategy to help transform you from a task-based thinker, to a meaning based thinker who scans the world for meaning instead of endless to-dos. This dramatically increases work happiness.
3. Exercise for 10 minutes a day. This trains your brain to believe your behavior matters, which causes a cascade of success throughout the rest of the day.
4. Meditate for 2 minutes, focusing on your breath going in and out. This will help you undo the negative effects of multitasking. Research shows you get multiple tasks done faster if you do them one at a time. It also decreases stress and raises happiness.
5. Write one, quick email first thing in the morning thanking or praising a member on your team. This significantly increases your feeling of social support, which in my study at Harvard was the largest predictor of happiness for the students."
Existential Crisis of A Penguin.
Past life theory suddenly makes a lot of sense.
I can also save you time, ExistentialPenguin.com is taken. A DC housewife mother of one blogs her pensive world via it.
If you combine those two elements you have a perfectly sound explanation.
Existential Penguins make seemingly unwise, unpenguiny, decisions but may well simply be enlightened and leave their collective huddled lives to waddle towards metaphoric goals, [like far away mountains] to die and be recast as evolved yet vaguely unfulfilled DC housewifes.
How many of us I wonder used to be Penguins?
I find this video comic. The choral background, the clipped German [Werner Herzog] accent, the question posed "But why?"
I've watched it 4 times already, it keeps getting funnier. I don't want to overdo it, I'll probably only watch it once more today.
For those interested existentialcrisispenguin.com is still available.
I can also save you time, ExistentialPenguin.com is taken. A DC housewife mother of one blogs her pensive world via it.
If you combine those two elements you have a perfectly sound explanation.
Existential Penguins make seemingly unwise, unpenguiny, decisions but may well simply be enlightened and leave their collective huddled lives to waddle towards metaphoric goals, [like far away mountains] to die and be recast as evolved yet vaguely unfulfilled DC housewifes.
How many of us I wonder used to be Penguins?
I find this video comic. The choral background, the clipped German [Werner Herzog] accent, the question posed "But why?"
I've watched it 4 times already, it keeps getting funnier. I don't want to overdo it, I'll probably only watch it once more today.
For those interested existentialcrisispenguin.com is still available.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Rational discussion, flowchart.
If people were trained to approach discourse like this then they wouldn't tolerate the pap they are presently fed, first by their parents, then authority in general. A sharp seven year old learns that the world is full of irrational bullshit and most of us simply accept that and get on with choosing from a limited selection of flavors of irrationality. Capitalism for example, by definition unsustainable, yet the bedrock of western values. Who dares question it? That's just one example.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Things I need to do.
I have been ensconced in a facility full of recovering addicts in various states of picking up their lego pieces from the scratched linoleum floors of their minds enough to cobble ad hoc structures together to perhaps live out the rest of their lives in sober aftershock.
I have been to China and Michigan in this time for brief clown business.
I have, with the help of others, published a book of stories from my life.
I have allowed an emotional cauterization to heal.
I have been steadfastly glued to a substance free mindset.
But this isn't about that, this is about the things i need to do that are not done yet and I thought a list might be helpful.
--I need to finish my second book that begins
"I came to this planet 49 years ago. I spent the first 9 months in a fluid filled bag stocking up on limbs and brain chemistry.
The owner of the fluid-sac was very stressed, this has been shown to accelerate certain brain functions. I was lucky."
--I need to completely recreate my website from scratch, focusing on who I am and what I want to do. A new section called 'Commissioned on demand' will highlight potential futures and the writing will be made into more of a revenue stream . I want to work performance-wise in purist mode on the streets of Europe, [I've never been to Italy and Italians are the only people I've met who ever dared to weep with gratitude at me]
-- I need to memorize some of my writing and recite it to camera while putting my makeup on for youtube experimentation purposes.
Damn , now I'm tired.
Impro everywhere , 'Say something nice'
People just need structures to trigger permissions to play and celebrate.
A glowing review of my book unbidden
Quite flattering.
Charlie Chaplin once said that busking (Street performing) was the most honest form of entertainment in the world. You perform a show and then the audience gets to decide what it was worth, if anything.
The idea of making ones living by collecting retroactive admission appeals to only the rarest of individuals. In order to succeed in this lifestyle as well as being incredibly talented in their field of endeavor one must also be brave, emotionally tough as nails, resilient, adaptable, confident, funny, engaging, charming, sharp-witted, quick-footed, and barking mad. I believe with all my heart that Martin Ewen must be just such an individual.
I was first aware of Martin Ewen about 10 years ago. I found him holding court with Butterfly man, Taxi Tricks, and a handful of other full frontal, hard core, world weary, street performers, over on performers-dot-net. Unlike most mimes who only want to regale you with stories of harrowing escapes from invisible boxes, Martin A.K.A. 'Lurk' would unload on a nearly infinite number of topics with clarity, humor, tremendous intellect, acerbic sarcasm, and whimsy. Literately, I was smitten. In my opinion, whips can only aspire to be as sharp as Martin Ewen.
Martin could often use hyperbole and superlatives to paint prose so blindingly purple it should not be read without wearing the proper safety equipment. But, unlike the high school student who produces prose of this ilk that made you want to pull your eyes out with a writing implement, Martin produces a shade so lovely you would paint your house with it.
So when the legendary Nick Nicholas told us all about Martin's new book in this thread I immediately procured a copy and put it at the very pinnacle of my vacation reading list.
Well, last week while I was in the wilds of Maine with my family eating Lobstah' and sailing the bounding Atlantic I pulled up Panto Demascus on my protectively weather sheathed Amazon Kindle Reader and fell into the outrageous alphabetical memoir of the tall man with the white face and the tanker's helmet. A clown who is not only unafraid of the 'C-word' but makes it respectable. A misanthropic mime who drinks like a fish and talks like an "untethered fire-hose". To use the word brilliant to describe this short tome would not be an overstatement. I loved it, the best $2.99 I have spent in a long time. If you have ever wondered what it must be like to travel the world with nothing but the props in your kit and the clothes on your back and still manage to have a great time - you need to read this book.
Feelgood Sunday, BBC documentary, 'The Illusion of Reality'
So...fresh from a flattering comparative dip into all that was stupid we now travel to a place where complexity is explained in a way that even we can understand and questions are presented that ask us, who spend most of our lives in a mentally manufactured sandpit consisting of spoon fed political farce and personal adventures with consumerism and servitude to reactionary impulses emotional, economic and socio-political, what the entire playground could possibly be made of?
There is a certain dignity about being confused. I think laughter is the act of this being transmuted.
There is a certain dignity about being confused. I think laughter is the act of this being transmuted.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
Epicurus, proto-hippy, pursuit of happiness.
341 bc
The earliest formal hippy on the pursuit of happiness
The earliest formal hippy on the pursuit of happiness
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Scared Weird Little Guys
Met these guys at the Edmonton Street performers festival. They are at ease on stage and their energy translates effortlessly to the street .
A children's bedtime story I wrote
[It needs some tweaking and some quirky illustrations, so that's what I'd be looking for. and some critique]
Emma was a little girl who was 4 and lived with her mother on a big boat full of people on holiday.
Emma’s mum was called Ann and she worked on the boat playing the drums in the dance band.
The boat was as long as a railway station and had swimming pools and shops and a big playground on it with trampolines and sand pits and a big merry go round with horses on it. (not real ones though)
Emma would usually wake up early and get dressed herself, and being careful not to wake Ann, because Ann played drums very late at night and liked to sleep in, Emma would go outside, onto the top of the boat.
Sometimes she would play at the playground and sometimes she would talk to the grownups lying around sunbathing and sometimes she would go to the edge of the boat and hold onto the rails and look down at the water going past and think of all the fish in the water and wonder if fish had holidays.
Emma’s best friend was called Lucy and she was 7.
Lucy had long red hair and a very loud laugh and was quite naughty, but she could be good as well.
Lucy lived on the boat with her father called Eric who was the person who worked at the swimming pool, looking after the people in the water.
One day Emma was playing in the sand pit when Lucy came up with a big heavy shopping bag, and, trying hard not to laugh, showed Emma what was inside.
Inside the bag were 20 green frogs, all jumping on top of one another.
The frogs were bright green and had shiny blue eyes.
Emma and Lucy made a big house for them in the sand pit and put them in it, but they kept jumping out the windows and trying to run away so they put them back in the shopping bag and decided to take them down to show Ann.
Ann and Emma’s rooms were a long way down in the boat and sometimes their windows had to be shut because the sea would splash in if there were big waves.
Ann had one room with a bed and some drums to practice on and a big picture of a man with a chicken on his head. (don’t ask me why)
Emma’s room had a bed and some bookshelves with lots of childrens books and toys on the floor and a dolls house and on the walls, lots of drawings that Emma had made herself, and in one corner there was a big plant with yellow flowers.
Emma and Lucy ran all the way down to Emma’s room and as they ran the frogs would go jump/bump, jump/bump inside the shopping bag.
Lucy was laughing her great big laugh and Emma was singing, See-saw-marjory-door, and getting puffed because Lucy was running too fast.
When Emma got home, she and Lucy dropped the frogs in her room and went to see Ann.
Ann was having a shower and shouted,
“Hi Emma-Hi Lucy, I’ll be out in a minute and we can have baked beans and fruit salad for lunch if you like.”
The girls said
“OK Yummy”
Just then the phone rang and Emma answered it and said,
“Hello, Can I help you?”
and a mans voice said
“Hello little unit, Is your mother the item there please?”
Oh No, thought Emma, Its silly Tod- the singer in the dance band.
Emma said
“My mothers in the shower. Can I take a message?”
Tod said
“Tell Ann that practice is at 3 this afternoon”
“OK” said Emma and hung up-”Phew.”
She shouted
“Practice at three.” -to Ann and then she and Lucy went back to her room to play with the frogs.
But when they looked in the shopping bag all the frogs were GONE!
“Oh No” said Emma and Lucy together, “The frogs have run away”
“Quick.” said Emma, “They have to be still in the room, lets find them before we get into trouble.”
So they looked everywhere in Emma’s room.
They found 4 frogs under the bed,
and 5 frogs hiding in the dolls house,
and 1 frog inside a shoe,
and 2 frogs in the pot plant,
and 3 frogs in the bookcase,
and 1 frog behind Emma’s pillow
and 1 frog on the window sill. (Lucky the window was shut thought Emma)
and 1 frog was on the lamp shade,
and 1 frog was behind Emma’s pencil case on the floor.
The two girls put the frogs back in the bag and counted them.
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19......
There was still one frog missing
Just then Ann put her head around the corner to call them for lunch.
Emma and Lucy showed her the frogs and told her about how they all got out and how they couldn’t find the last one. Ann just laughed and told them not to worry, it would probably turn up later.
So they tape the top of Lucy’s bag so no more frogs could get out, then went to the top of the boat and had baked beans and fruit salad and watched the seagulls floating in the air above the boat.
Emma said
“Good lunch aye”
and Ann said “Don’t say aye”
and Emma said “Sorry?”
and Ann said “Don’t say sorry-Say pardon.”
and Emma thought-Phew!
After lunch, Ann went to practice with the band.
Emma and Lucy played hop-scotch and took the frogs back to Lucy’s and did some drawings.
After practice, Ann took them to the movies and they watched cartoons, a story about a little pony who wanted to be a taxi driver.
After that it was getting close to bed time, so they had some dinner.
Lucy rang her father, Eric up and asked if she could sleep at Emma’s overnight.
“No problems.” said Eric.
So they got into their dressing gowns and played with the dolls house until Ann came in and put them both to bed and said “Sweet dreams” and went out again.
Emma and Lucy had turned the light out and said goodnight to each other, when, from under the bed, they heard a small squeaky voice, singing-
“I wish I didn’t wait so long
for everything to happen
I’ve been a frog for two years now
and can faintly see a pattern”
“What was that?” Cried Emma and Lucy
Leaning over, they both looked under the bed.
Right under the bed, next to the wall, sat the missing frog.
“Hello girls.” it said in it’s little voice, “I expect your a little surprised I can Talk.”
“Wow!” said Emma
“Gosh!” said Lucy
“How come you’re a frog and you can talk?” asked Emma
“Well” said the frog. “I’m a frog because of tradition I suppose, because frogs are usually what magicians turn things into.
I used to be a hairdresser and it’s a very long story, but I’m a frog now and as far as being able to talk, well I just listened to people and learnt I suppose. I can speak English and a little Spanish and a little French.”
“Ola.” said Emma
“Ola” said the frog.
Lucy had jumped out of bed and, being brave, she picked up the frog to see if its lips moved.
“Say something.” said Lucy
“Well I must say I find your red hair adorable.” said the frog
(His lips did move-so it wasn’t a trick)
“Why thank you.” said Lucy, who was quite proud of her hair.
She put the frog down on the bed next to them and they both looked at it.
Emma and Lucy were amazed and astonished and a little bit shocked that they had a frog that could talk staying in their room.
“well.” said the frog, “You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here aren’t you?”
“Well, Yes we are actually.” said the girls
“Well its quite simple really.” said the frog. “To be perfectly honest I was getting bored with all the other frogs because they couldn’t talk, and I haven't talked to anyone in 2 years. I thought I would find some children and have some fun, and I could show them my special trick that I haven't shown anyone yet.”
Emma and Lucy both grinned, they liked tricks.
“OK” said Emma “Thats fine by us, you being in our room, we won’t tell anyone, but what is your magic trick?”
The frog smiled. “My trick is that I have magic spit.”
“Ooh Yuk” cried the girls
“Spittings not nice.” said Emma in a shocked voice.
“Spitting is messy.” said Lucy very seriously.
“Well yes.” said the frog, a little put out. “Children shouldn’t spit and I’m not encouraging you to take it up, but we frogs spit all the time. Oh yes we certainly do!
We spit on the ground, we spit on our food, we spit on flowers and bushes and because I’m a magic frog, I have magic spit..Watch !”
The frog made a little noise in its throat and spat a tiny bit of water on one of Emma’s books on the floor and the book suddenly went flying all by itself up to the roof and hung there.
“That’s not all-watch this.” said the frog and the book flew down next to him and the frog jumped onto the book and went flying round and round the room.
He whizzed about very quickly and sang out in his little high voice.
“ I’ve often wondered what would come
of spitting out my wishes
A life too full when all is done
for sadness no-one misses”
Then he landed on the foot of the bed with a little bump.
Emma and Lucy were very excited and bouncing on the bed and clapping and making quite a bit of noise and the frog became worried that someone would come and find them so he said,
“Well, that was great, this is the most fun I’ve had in ages,
but now I’ve got you all excited and you’ll want to stay up all night and tomorrow
you’ll be all ratty and bad tempered and I want to have fun tomorrow too,
so what I’m going to do now is give your pillows a little lick of magic spit
so when your head touches the pillow, you’ll fall asleep right away
and have especially good dreams.”
Then the frog jumped up and licked Emma’s pillow, just a little lick at the side, and then Lucy’s pillow the same and then jumped down on the floor and waited.
Emma didn’t want to go to sleep, but she thought she would give it a try. As soon as her head hit the pillow she couldn’t open her eyes for tiredness and drifted straight off to sleep.
Lucy saw Emma fall asleep and tried her pillow and she fell asleep straight away as well.
The frog jumped up into the dolls house and slept in one of the dolls beds.
LUCYS DREAM
In Lucy’s dream there was a competition for the naughtiest girl in the world.
All the naughty girls were on a stage and the judges were school teachers and policewomen and ladies who sell make-up in department stores.
The first test was for general naughtiness and everyone had a turn at loosing their temper.
Lucy yelled and screamed and cried and kicked a chair and threw a cushion and hit another girl and argued with everybody, saying “No I Won’t” and she won that part of the competition but was quite tired because being naughty was hard work.
The next part of the competition was food naughtiness.
There was a pretend kitchen and someone would bring food in and try and make your lunch and you had to be as naughty as possible.
Lucy loved that because food naughtiness was her favourite.
She didn’t want brown bread, she wanted white bread and she wouldn't eat it until the crusts had been cut off and she didn’t want milk she wanted apple juice, and she didn’t care that there wasn’t any in the fridge, and her eggs were too hot so she played with them and dropped them on the floor and she tipped all the sugar out of the bowl on purpose and won the whole competition.
She got given a prize of 50 packets of potato chips that she could eat all at once if she wanted.
She was very happy, but very tired because its hard work being naughty.
So after her dream she fell into a deep sleep without any more dreams that night.
EMMA’S DREAM
In Emma’s dream, she was in the country with Ann and they stayed in a bus with beds inside, and she met two boys called Patrick and Thomas and they went for horse rides across green hills, down to the sea and then they played on the beach and collected shells and found bits of wood for walking sticks
In the dream Emma went for a swim and the water was so warm it was almost like a bath. Then Emma and Ann and Patrick and Thomas had a picnic and Emma ate the most out of everyone.
After their picnic everyone got on their horses, Thomas and Patrick on one horse and Emma and Ann on the other and they had a race down the beach and Emma and Ann won by about 2 inches.
After that they went back to the bus and there were lots of people there, having a party with loud music and a big outside fire.
Emma met lots of people and they were all very friendly and everyone was dancing and singing songs, and it must have been a very good dream because when Emma woke up in her bed in the morning, she was laughing and Lucy was asleep and the frog was looking out of the dollshouse.
What happens next, I’ll tell you later in the next part of the story-But now its time for you to go to sleep and have good dreams and maybe wake up laughing...
Goodnight.
Emma’s mum was called Ann and she worked on the boat playing the drums in the dance band.
The boat was as long as a railway station and had swimming pools and shops and a big playground on it with trampolines and sand pits and a big merry go round with horses on it. (not real ones though)
Emma would usually wake up early and get dressed herself, and being careful not to wake Ann, because Ann played drums very late at night and liked to sleep in, Emma would go outside, onto the top of the boat.
Sometimes she would play at the playground and sometimes she would talk to the grownups lying around sunbathing and sometimes she would go to the edge of the boat and hold onto the rails and look down at the water going past and think of all the fish in the water and wonder if fish had holidays.
Emma’s best friend was called Lucy and she was 7.
Lucy had long red hair and a very loud laugh and was quite naughty, but she could be good as well.
Lucy lived on the boat with her father called Eric who was the person who worked at the swimming pool, looking after the people in the water.
One day Emma was playing in the sand pit when Lucy came up with a big heavy shopping bag, and, trying hard not to laugh, showed Emma what was inside.
Inside the bag were 20 green frogs, all jumping on top of one another.
The frogs were bright green and had shiny blue eyes.
Emma and Lucy made a big house for them in the sand pit and put them in it, but they kept jumping out the windows and trying to run away so they put them back in the shopping bag and decided to take them down to show Ann.
Ann and Emma’s rooms were a long way down in the boat and sometimes their windows had to be shut because the sea would splash in if there were big waves.
Ann had one room with a bed and some drums to practice on and a big picture of a man with a chicken on his head. (don’t ask me why)
Emma’s room had a bed and some bookshelves with lots of childrens books and toys on the floor and a dolls house and on the walls, lots of drawings that Emma had made herself, and in one corner there was a big plant with yellow flowers.
Emma and Lucy ran all the way down to Emma’s room and as they ran the frogs would go jump/bump, jump/bump inside the shopping bag.
Lucy was laughing her great big laugh and Emma was singing, See-saw-marjory-door, and getting puffed because Lucy was running too fast.
When Emma got home, she and Lucy dropped the frogs in her room and went to see Ann.
Ann was having a shower and shouted,
“Hi Emma-Hi Lucy, I’ll be out in a minute and we can have baked beans and fruit salad for lunch if you like.”
The girls said
“OK Yummy”
Just then the phone rang and Emma answered it and said,
“Hello, Can I help you?”
and a mans voice said
“Hello little unit, Is your mother the item there please?”
Oh No, thought Emma, Its silly Tod- the singer in the dance band.
Emma said
“My mothers in the shower. Can I take a message?”
Tod said
“Tell Ann that practice is at 3 this afternoon”
“OK” said Emma and hung up-”Phew.”
She shouted
“Practice at three.” -to Ann and then she and Lucy went back to her room to play with the frogs.
But when they looked in the shopping bag all the frogs were GONE!
“Oh No” said Emma and Lucy together, “The frogs have run away”
“Quick.” said Emma, “They have to be still in the room, lets find them before we get into trouble.”
So they looked everywhere in Emma’s room.
They found 4 frogs under the bed,
and 5 frogs hiding in the dolls house,
and 1 frog inside a shoe,
and 2 frogs in the pot plant,
and 3 frogs in the bookcase,
and 1 frog behind Emma’s pillow
and 1 frog on the window sill. (Lucky the window was shut thought Emma)
and 1 frog was on the lamp shade,
and 1 frog was behind Emma’s pencil case on the floor.
The two girls put the frogs back in the bag and counted them.
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19......
There was still one frog missing
Just then Ann put her head around the corner to call them for lunch.
Emma and Lucy showed her the frogs and told her about how they all got out and how they couldn’t find the last one. Ann just laughed and told them not to worry, it would probably turn up later.
So they tape the top of Lucy’s bag so no more frogs could get out, then went to the top of the boat and had baked beans and fruit salad and watched the seagulls floating in the air above the boat.
Emma said
“Good lunch aye”
and Ann said “Don’t say aye”
and Emma said “Sorry?”
and Ann said “Don’t say sorry-Say pardon.”
and Emma thought-Phew!
After lunch, Ann went to practice with the band.
Emma and Lucy played hop-scotch and took the frogs back to Lucy’s and did some drawings.
After practice, Ann took them to the movies and they watched cartoons, a story about a little pony who wanted to be a taxi driver.
After that it was getting close to bed time, so they had some dinner.
Lucy rang her father, Eric up and asked if she could sleep at Emma’s overnight.
“No problems.” said Eric.
So they got into their dressing gowns and played with the dolls house until Ann came in and put them both to bed and said “Sweet dreams” and went out again.
Emma and Lucy had turned the light out and said goodnight to each other, when, from under the bed, they heard a small squeaky voice, singing-
“I wish I didn’t wait so long
for everything to happen
I’ve been a frog for two years now
and can faintly see a pattern”
“What was that?” Cried Emma and Lucy
Leaning over, they both looked under the bed.
Right under the bed, next to the wall, sat the missing frog.
“Hello girls.” it said in it’s little voice, “I expect your a little surprised I can Talk.”
“Wow!” said Emma
“Gosh!” said Lucy
“How come you’re a frog and you can talk?” asked Emma
“Well” said the frog. “I’m a frog because of tradition I suppose, because frogs are usually what magicians turn things into.
I used to be a hairdresser and it’s a very long story, but I’m a frog now and as far as being able to talk, well I just listened to people and learnt I suppose. I can speak English and a little Spanish and a little French.”
“Ola.” said Emma
“Ola” said the frog.
Lucy had jumped out of bed and, being brave, she picked up the frog to see if its lips moved.
“Say something.” said Lucy
“Well I must say I find your red hair adorable.” said the frog
(His lips did move-so it wasn’t a trick)
“Why thank you.” said Lucy, who was quite proud of her hair.
She put the frog down on the bed next to them and they both looked at it.
Emma and Lucy were amazed and astonished and a little bit shocked that they had a frog that could talk staying in their room.
“well.” said the frog, “You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here aren’t you?”
“Well, Yes we are actually.” said the girls
“Well its quite simple really.” said the frog. “To be perfectly honest I was getting bored with all the other frogs because they couldn’t talk, and I haven't talked to anyone in 2 years. I thought I would find some children and have some fun, and I could show them my special trick that I haven't shown anyone yet.”
Emma and Lucy both grinned, they liked tricks.
“OK” said Emma “Thats fine by us, you being in our room, we won’t tell anyone, but what is your magic trick?”
The frog smiled. “My trick is that I have magic spit.”
“Ooh Yuk” cried the girls
“Spittings not nice.” said Emma in a shocked voice.
“Spitting is messy.” said Lucy very seriously.
“Well yes.” said the frog, a little put out. “Children shouldn’t spit and I’m not encouraging you to take it up, but we frogs spit all the time. Oh yes we certainly do!
We spit on the ground, we spit on our food, we spit on flowers and bushes and because I’m a magic frog, I have magic spit..Watch !”
The frog made a little noise in its throat and spat a tiny bit of water on one of Emma’s books on the floor and the book suddenly went flying all by itself up to the roof and hung there.
“That’s not all-watch this.” said the frog and the book flew down next to him and the frog jumped onto the book and went flying round and round the room.
He whizzed about very quickly and sang out in his little high voice.
“ I’ve often wondered what would come
of spitting out my wishes
A life too full when all is done
for sadness no-one misses”
Then he landed on the foot of the bed with a little bump.
Emma and Lucy were very excited and bouncing on the bed and clapping and making quite a bit of noise and the frog became worried that someone would come and find them so he said,
“Well, that was great, this is the most fun I’ve had in ages,
but now I’ve got you all excited and you’ll want to stay up all night and tomorrow
you’ll be all ratty and bad tempered and I want to have fun tomorrow too,
so what I’m going to do now is give your pillows a little lick of magic spit
so when your head touches the pillow, you’ll fall asleep right away
and have especially good dreams.”
Then the frog jumped up and licked Emma’s pillow, just a little lick at the side, and then Lucy’s pillow the same and then jumped down on the floor and waited.
Emma didn’t want to go to sleep, but she thought she would give it a try. As soon as her head hit the pillow she couldn’t open her eyes for tiredness and drifted straight off to sleep.
Lucy saw Emma fall asleep and tried her pillow and she fell asleep straight away as well.
The frog jumped up into the dolls house and slept in one of the dolls beds.
LUCYS DREAM
In Lucy’s dream there was a competition for the naughtiest girl in the world.
All the naughty girls were on a stage and the judges were school teachers and policewomen and ladies who sell make-up in department stores.
The first test was for general naughtiness and everyone had a turn at loosing their temper.
Lucy yelled and screamed and cried and kicked a chair and threw a cushion and hit another girl and argued with everybody, saying “No I Won’t” and she won that part of the competition but was quite tired because being naughty was hard work.
The next part of the competition was food naughtiness.
There was a pretend kitchen and someone would bring food in and try and make your lunch and you had to be as naughty as possible.
Lucy loved that because food naughtiness was her favourite.
She didn’t want brown bread, she wanted white bread and she wouldn't eat it until the crusts had been cut off and she didn’t want milk she wanted apple juice, and she didn’t care that there wasn’t any in the fridge, and her eggs were too hot so she played with them and dropped them on the floor and she tipped all the sugar out of the bowl on purpose and won the whole competition.
She got given a prize of 50 packets of potato chips that she could eat all at once if she wanted.
She was very happy, but very tired because its hard work being naughty.
So after her dream she fell into a deep sleep without any more dreams that night.
EMMA’S DREAM
In Emma’s dream, she was in the country with Ann and they stayed in a bus with beds inside, and she met two boys called Patrick and Thomas and they went for horse rides across green hills, down to the sea and then they played on the beach and collected shells and found bits of wood for walking sticks
In the dream Emma went for a swim and the water was so warm it was almost like a bath. Then Emma and Ann and Patrick and Thomas had a picnic and Emma ate the most out of everyone.
After their picnic everyone got on their horses, Thomas and Patrick on one horse and Emma and Ann on the other and they had a race down the beach and Emma and Ann won by about 2 inches.
After that they went back to the bus and there were lots of people there, having a party with loud music and a big outside fire.
Emma met lots of people and they were all very friendly and everyone was dancing and singing songs, and it must have been a very good dream because when Emma woke up in her bed in the morning, she was laughing and Lucy was asleep and the frog was looking out of the dollshouse.
What happens next, I’ll tell you later in the next part of the story-But now its time for you to go to sleep and have good dreams and maybe wake up laughing...
Goodnight.
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