Chapter 0: Once or twice upon a time. Definitely no more than thrice.

Our Mother has decided that enough is enough and I need to clean out my room right now, OR ELSE!!! (just generic 'or else', making it hard to judge if bearing the consequences might be a viable option) I'm not sure why she bothers, being too old to be put to bed (me, not her). There is no need for her to enter my room except for dumping laundry at the doorway. I have memorised the spots where it is safe to put my feet when navigating my room in the dark, so it would be a shame to disturb the patterns, especially those composting heaps of the half-eaten-meal-graveyard in the corner. Those can be vicious. Anyway, my identical twin loves-of-my-life in the form of the sisters Star and Portia Micelli, who have stated the intention to go and study Archeology and Biochemistry, are having bets out on how long it will take to evolve a sentient life form from my room, apparently not counting yours truly.

All right, a little light cleaning couldn't hurt the social hierarchy. Where to start? Let's try to see it from Mom's point of view: The Doorway. According to Feng Thingy it is all about sightlines, I could just move that old mirrored room divider to hide half the room from sight and dump my precious belongings from the other half behind it and: Voila! An optically clean room, without disturbing the evolutionary experiments in the other corner too much. It may even help getting rid of that Dragon of Murkiness that has been hiding under the bed.
Hmmm... Didn't know they made room dividers out of lead. Must be all that glass for the mirrors.

'SIS!! Can you give me a hand? Bring the rope, harness, some slings and plenty of carabiners!'

If we set this up right, we will be able to drag that thing into place without clearing the path on the floor first. We just need some sturdy anchor point. Maybe if I wedge this handy piece of timber in the doorframe and hope it holds.

'OK Sis, here's the plan: One end we fix to this timber anchor, then loop it between the carabiner fixed to the room divider and the one at the anchor a few times, pass it through this one fixed to the sling on the banister rail before fixing it to your harness, Robyn. On the count of three, you jump down the stairs. Don't forget to pull the rope tight first and fix it before you jump! Let me check the knots.'

Zzzzzzzooooommmmmmmscreeech!!!!

Yes!! It works. Not as fast as I hoped though. 'Can I have a go with the jumping Sis?'

Zzzzzzzooooommmmmmmscreeech!!!!

Oh, how I love leverage.

Zzzzzzzooooommmmmmmscreeech!!!!

'Oopsy!'

'Hi Dad.' What do you mean with 'What are you doing?' Can't you see we're cleaning my room as per instructions from the management? You can hardly expect us to drive a forklift truck up the stairs to do so, can you? As you can see, everything is under control. If you would be so kind to reattach the banister rail back to the wall tonight, hardly anybody will notice it came off in the first place. I'll even help you prepare the stucco to fill those bigger holes afterwards. The stairs needed repainting anyway, after Robyn's artificial lava experiment.

'Thanks Sis. If you can put the climbing gear back in the camping stuff storage, I'll get the shovel, because I think I'll manage the rest of the refurbishment on my own.'

Those floorboards are hardly damaged! I never imagined ever using old pizza as a lubricant. Maybe we should patent it?

What do we have here? That looks like an old Sinterklaas present, with the wrapping half torn off. Let's see what it is. No rattle, so no Legos. Wrong shape for a banana. Oh, I remember. It is my new and Virgin Diary. (one corner could even be considered extra virgin, judging from the olive oil stain).

I wondered where that went. Now we know. Looks like I have some catching up to do on the diary front, but only after brushing off this fire extinguisher powder.

Well... This brings us directly toooo....

Chapter 1 - Dear New Diary

Where do I begin? To tell the story of...
Oh, hang on, you're not going to catch me out reproducing the lyrics of that Love Stories song I had to cross-dress perform for Music Education at school. Still having traumatic twitches in the presence of wigs. Being able to play the piano does have its advantages. It's just a shame our parents never let me try and give me a fighting chance to avert the role of queer-soprano-cum-two-tangerines-taped-to-my-upper-torso. (the budget didn't allow for melons anyway).

Let's just pick up where I ended in my last diary (The full and unabridged venison of which can be found at Christmas dinner) (Sorry, I got distracted), the full and unabridged version of which is located here, after that eventful Sinterklaas encounter of the third kind. We weren't there yet, COVID lockdown-wise. That Christmas holiday was locked down again and one week longer to give the politicians a break. (We later found out what they all did during that break, didn't we?). It must have been hell for our parents, especially when we claimed all the allowed visitor capacity by inviting our friends. Well, they have to make sacrifices, as prospective parents-in-law to my twin girlfriends. A stroke of genius and a nice example of the (lack of) empathy of politicians was when they removed the visitor limit THE DAY AFTER Valentine's Day. Luckily, by middle of March, nearly all restrictions had been lifted, so we could find out whether we survived. I personally think that one is for the judges.

Because online education made it difficult to do any sort of meaningful testing, not one person had flunked in the whole country for two consecutive years. Now the aftermath is a different story (well any sort of math was problematic). When loads of pupils in secondary school have to redo a year because of not doing a lot in the previous two years, while there is still a large influx from primary school, it can get rather crowded in the classes, especially when several teachers have taken the lockdown period to rethink their strategy and have decided that now is the right time to travel the reopened world to countries where pupils still have the respect for teachers beaten in from a young age.

Despite all this, Robyn and the other Girl Geeks, the Twins and me all managed to reach the final level of secondary school. Now we just had to figure out what to do after our exams, since lying in bed with your phone can only be a meaningful career for the happy few paid software and medicine Beta-testers.

Caiman Raptor Elk

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