Verona Strauss.comjust because life is fun! …

This week’s book is ‘Impossible parents’ by Brian Patten.

Ben and Mary had absolutely impossible parents. Their Dad has a dandruff-filled ponytail. He has a nose ring and wears a shell suit with a bobble hat and a black string vest with holes in it.

Their Mum likes to wear a fishnet body stocking and she’s a belly dancer.

In the story there is a parent’s Day at the school and Ben and Mary do not want their parents to come because they have such disgusting habits. But it turns out that none of the children want their parents to come.

ALL of the parents end up going to the school and all the children think that ben and Mary’s parents are really cool because all their parents have disgusting habits too!

The teacher secretly wants to be a belly dancer.

My favourite part is when Ben and Mary bury their Dad’s clothes in the dustbin to try and stop him coming. I found that really funny.

I think it’s a hilarious book.

An excavation at the Dean Heritage Centre

Today I went to ‘Can you Dig It’ at the Dean Heritage Centre.

There were people from the Gloucestershire County Council Archaeology Service and they set up a Victorian excavation for us.

As I’m interested in Victorians I wanted to go. My Grandma took me. We had to dig for Victorian treasure, design Victorian wallpaper and sort some old Victorian things that had been found on another day into the right boxes.

You had to record on a piece of paper all of the things we found.

I enjoyed designing my own wallpaper and the digging best of all. My favourite item was an old oil lamp.

There was a really nice lady called Ma Meek dressed up as a Victorian who taught me how to finger knit. It’s really fun and my chain is already about 1 metre long. Eventually I would like to make a rug.

Learning to finger knit

Ma Meek told me a lot about Victorians such as the washing and how servants had to get up at 5am. The washing was left in a tin bath over night and it had to be rinsed out the next day. Young children had to go and collect the water in heavy iron saucepans and heat it up over a fire.

She explained to me all the things in an old miners cottage like a baby’s cot, the chamber pot, a big bedroom and small bedroom. It was very dark because there was no electricity and the windows were small. I don’t think it would be much fun to live without electricity; I would miss being able to cook easily the most.

I also walked two ferrets called Tonto and  Vern.