.: Greetings, fellow Gerbils! :.

Greetings, fellow gerbils!
Hey there, it's Gerry here! As you may have gathered, I am a gerbil and this is a blog about my life on this planet. I appear to humans through a machine called the GerbilMaestro, which is an exact copy of my master. I control this machine and most of the time pretend to be my master in front of other humans.
I hope you enjoy reading my blog. Thanks a gerbillion!

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Wednesday, 31 December 2014

Top 12 Moments of 2014: No. 1

Topping this year's list...

No. 1: Buy buy (sell sell)

On a personal level, I feel that I have really discovered a passion for business this year. That one typo ('buy guys'), the subsequent picture and that laughs that followed really sum up the Team Business nature of things around here. It brings such joy that can only be rivalled with your response to this blog. Thank you everyone for making this such a spectacular year with so many fantastic memories.
By Simon Wicks

I think it's time now to say buy buy to 2014. Bring it on, 2015!

Further reading:
WNR #62

Top 12 Moments of 2014: No. 2

A worthy runner up...

No. 2: B.A.D.G.E.R.

We felt that it was our duty to form the 'Board And Directorate Governing Enthusiastic Rangers', especially with ConscienceSarah's affiliation and affinity for honey badgers. This has also lead to the legendary rivalry between Team Badger and Team Eagle, which brought us a showdown in the form of a game of Messy Twister. Overall, the topic of badgers has been an especially significant part of our lives for the past year, however we have yet to answer the eternal question; do honey badgers give a [insert expletive]?

Further reading:
WNR #57

Top 12 Moments of 2014: No. 3

Rolling in at number 3...

No. 3: Slickens wins the award for Best Skiver

At Slickens' dance show, she was awarded for her outstanding contribution, even though she was absent for a number of lessons. Now that called for a standing ovation. I'm sure we will forever be in awe of the sheer power of Slickens' performance.

Further reading:
WNR #77

Top 12 Moments of 2014: No. 4

No. 4: A standing ovation for obvious statements

It all started with Alexis and his crew near the beginning of the year; someone said something obvious and, as a friendly way of humiliating them, everyone would give them a standing ovation. Nowadays, we don't do it to humiliate anyone as such but we still like to stand up and clap for various reasons, such as accomplishments etc.

Top 12 Moments of 2014: No. 5

Making it into the top 5...

No. 5: Doncasterish

What can I say, it's become quite a trend, this year, to go for a more Northern accent. It's just so infectious, sometimes Master finds it difficult to snap out of it, but thank goodness Sharah is keeping her eyes and ears on the case to make sure Doncasterish doesn't creep into the former's speech.

Further reading:
Quote Advent Calendar 2014 - Day 23

Top 12 Moments of 2014: No. 6

No. 6: ...and vomiting!

It's just typical that Master would fall for an internet hoax. When re-telling it to everyone, there was a particular emphasis on this rather minor detail. Once again, I'm not completely sure why we found this funny...

Further reading:
WNR #72

Top 12 Moments of 2014: No. 7

No. 7: Balloon Jen

Well, it was quite something for Master to walk into the classroom and see her usual seat occupied by a balloon version of herself. Even though slightly unsettling at first, this trend brought along our dear friend Balloon Cat, pictured below.
Balloon Cat
Further reading:
WNR #61

Top 12 Moments of 2014: No. 8

No. 8: The Scissor Incident

Somehow, offering scissors to another human in need of scissors proved to be quite a challenge for Master. The longer she left it, the more awkward it would be to ask if said other human still needed scissors. I'd like to think that we all learnt a lesson that day; don't hold back, take a chance, 'speak now or forever hold your peace', all that sorta stuff.

Further reading:
WNR #55

Top 12 Moments of 2014: No. 9

No. 9: Regurgitation

Nothing was ever the same after Master spat out a leaf from her salad. Alexis and his crew came up with a hypothesis, that has yet to be proven, about Master's ability to regurgitate random every day objects (a particular favourite was Blu Tack, for some reason). To this day, whenever anyone mentions regurgitation, Master remembers this ol' gag (if you'll excuse the pun).

Top 12 Moments of 2014: No. 10

No. 10: Exams officer?

This definitely deserves the award for 'Most Hilarious Case of Miscommunication'. The exams officer was already peeved, ArwaChihuahua was confused, and the former was less than inclined to give her a hint. *sigh* Never mind...

Further reading:
WNR #68

Top 12 Moments of 2014: No. 11

No. 11: DISGUSTING!

We all found this particularly humourous, perhaps because of the passion that ConscienceSarah put into saying this word. I think it's fair to say that she found this utterly grim. #skelting

Further reading:
WNR #69

Top 12 Moments of 2014: No. 12

Welcome, one and all, to our Top 12 Moments countdown! Today we'll be reviewing the year and taking a look back at some of the most memorable parts. So, let's get started!

No. 12: 20p's

I'm not completely sure when this became a thing, but it has definitely earned its place as one of our recurring jokes. I'm pretty sure we made a SoundBite on this, which was never released, but I've managed to find the cover image for the video.
Art by Simon Wicks
The story was that Wicks' grandmother would occasionally send her coins in the post. We then went on to ponder that if people sent us 20 pence pieces we'd probably have enough to pay for the old Minecraft server, not that we have much time to play on it nowadays anyway!

Twelve Days of Cwismas: Day 6

On the sixth day of Cwismas, the Gerbils sent to me...
Six Informers,
Five Balloon Friends,
Four Gifts from Scruffs,
Three Monsters weaving,
Two many puns, and
A Honey Badger Attic Attack!

Tuesday, 30 December 2014

Perfect Sandwiches: End-of-year review 2014

Tuesday 30th December, 2014

Perfect Sandwiches
End-of-year review 2014

At the end of every year, I find myself more surprised than I was the year before. I think this is mainly because the support that we get each year always exceeds my expectations. For example, it's amazing that people are still reading Weekly News Round-Up, which we've had 80 editions of over the past few years. We've just had our fifth Christmas on this blog and we're still as enthusiastic, if not more, as we were four years ago. What started off as nonsensical ramblings and everyday happenings has now become a weekly staple. After all this time, people are still reading, and we're still writing. I think that's quite something.

This is further supported by the number of pageviews that we receive. As seen in fig. 1 (see bottom of page), the numbers have increased exponentially in the second half of this year. Currently we do not have much evidence to conclude as to why our views have increased; we've continued with classic segments such as Quote Week and WNR, there were very few notable additions. One aspect that we have observed is our dramatically increased views from across the world. A large proportion of our views come from USA, however we are unsure as to if these viewers are repeat viewers, spammers, or just happened to stumble upon the site as a one-off. As long as we don't have spammers, everyone is welcome. Even though the original target audience was just us lot here at Perfect Sandwiches, we're proud to open it up to the world.

In our mid-year review this year, we stated that we wanted to expand further in terms of the entertainment blog and Podcaasting. This last half of the year has seen a few executive decisions having to be made about the possible expansion. It has become clear to us that, due to the nature of our current full-time training at Nasha Academy, it would be best for us to postpone these developments until a more suitable time. The implications are that the entertainment blog and Podcaasting will be put on hiatus for the time being. This has been slightly disappointing for us as we had plenty of ideas to implement but not enough time to achieve the desired standard of quality. I truly hope you understand the reasoning behind these decisions as I strongly believe that this is the right move for us. Besides, this also means that we will be able to focus completely on this main blog.

Like always, we will continue to have Quote Weeks and WNR's, with the focus being on punctuality of posts. It remains that these are always well-received, which just goes to fuel our motivation. As always, we will try to incorporate a larger variety of content, particularly when we have a large pool of talent in our team.

After such a tremendous year, we are excited to welcome 2015 with the promise of quality and quantity.

Fig. 1: Pageviews 2014. Figures as of 30/12/2014. Click to enlarge.

Twelve Days of Cwismas: Day 5

On the fifth day of Cwismas, the Gerbils sent to me...
Five Balloon Friends,
Four Gifts from Scruffs,
Three Monsters weaving,
Two many puns, and
A Honey Badger Attic Attack!

Monday, 29 December 2014

Twelve Days of Cwismas: Day 4

On the fourth day of Cwismas, the Gerbils sent to me...
Four Gifts from Scruffs,
Three Monsters weaving,
Two many puns, and
A Honey Badger Attic Attack!

Sunday, 28 December 2014

Weekly News Round-Up #80: 21/12/2014

Happy Yule, everyone! It's been such an exciting week for us, you just gotta ove this time of year.

At the beginning of the week, pretty much all of us went into town to get Christmas presents for eachother. Splitting up into pairs, we managed to get te majority of things that we wanted. I'd call that a good day's work.

What was also tremendously exciting was that Arcadia arrived in the post. Of course, we carried on reading and also contemplated perhaps learning it and making a production out of it for next summer. We'll see whether or not we go ahead with that plan.

Come Friday, it was time to exchange and open our presents from eachother. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for my wonderful gifts, it is very kind of y'all.

The year is incomplete unless we have our traditional game of Squares. As usual, ANT and Master were required to concentrate fully on the task at hand. It came down to a pretty close call where there was a particular chain that could make it or break it for both sides. In the end, Master won 57-33. The level of game play was truly astounding, well done to the both of them.

Promptly afterwards, we were ushered down to the astro turf, where the Academy had planned an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the most Christmas crackers pulled at the same time. It took a little bit of setting up, what with trying to get so many people coordinated. In the end, there wasn't much of a countdown and the drone plane cameras managed an appearance before, when we were getting ready, but not when the crackers were pulled. It was a good attempt, but never mind.

After a busy week, we were all invited over to Wicks' for a Yule dinner. We all contributed in some shape or form; Master made a shawarma starter, Wicks, Ruby and Cap prepared the apple and pumpkin curry, Sharah made yellow snow cupcakes (as pictured below) and ShoeLobber brought the sweets.
Santa's making a snow angel to the left
Post-dinner activities included a card game using two decks of cards and plenty of presents wrapped up. Both decks would be shuffled (quite unsuccessfully in or case) and one deck would be dished out to the players.The remaining deck would be given to the Game Master, Wicks, who would take a card from the deck, say the card and whoever has the same card would put down their card and take a present (hearing the name of the card correctly provd to be quite a task for Master). However when all the presents have been taken from the middle of the table, players can take from eachother. This continues until all the cards have been called out. One particular present that we all seemed to be fixated on was an oddly shaped item, at one point described as the 'one present to rule them all, [the] one present to bind them'. In the end, ANT got it and, when unwrapped, she was delighted to find that it was a fridge magnet snow dome featuring a dolphin, which she named Sid (as picture below). For the rest of the evening, ANT seemed totally contented, her and Sid were inseparable.
Sid, the dolphin
Meanwhile, ConscienceSarah wound up with both of the meh presents; some tissues and sponges, which she named Spongebob and Derek. Here they are:
Spongebob and Derek
ArwaChihuahua also got a pretty sweet deal with a children's toy cutlass, which turned out to be multi-purpose as it could also hold a lollipop!

Throughout the evening, we decided to use the cake tin lids to reflect light onto Sharah, creating something along the lines of a spotlight effect. The rest of the time we spent reading Arcadia and listening to pan pipes music. It must be said that we all fell in love with the pan pipes. Some tunes that were particularly enjoyed were a Christmas medley and a wonderfully emotional rendition of 'You Raise Me Up'. The ones that we've linked were particularly appreciated because of the musicians' apparent love for what they do. On a side note, Wicks did experience a jolt back whilst listening, which sent Ruby and Master into fits of laughter.

All in all, a smashing time was had by all. Thank you to Wicks for being a fantastic host and everyone for making it so much fun.

We won't be having a WNR for a few weeks now, but hopefully we'll resume our usual antics on Sunday 25th January. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and wish you all the best in the new year.

Until next year, have a good one :D

Twelve Days of Cwismas: Day 3

On the third day of Cwismas, the Gerbils sent to me...
Three Monsters weaving,
Two many puns, and
A Honey Badger Attic Attack!

Saturday, 27 December 2014

Twelve Days of Cwismas: Day 2

On the second day of Cwismas, the Gerbils sent to me...
Two many puns, and
A Honey Badger Attic Attack!

Friday, 26 December 2014

Twelve Days of Cwismas: Day 1

On the first day of Cwismas, the Gerbils sent to me...
A Honey Badger Attic Attack!

Thursday, 25 December 2014

The Highlighter Complex

The Highlighter Complex
By Colin Slickens

Original concept: A test to see the way candidates react to a simple task in an attempt to discover their concept of order, their reaction to colour and their creativity/originality

Task set: Order the six highlighters in any order of your choice

Merry Christmas everyone!

Wishing you a fantastic day :D

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 25

"It's because of the Christmas spirit."
- S.A.

Story behind quote:
At the Elf screening, this was the get-out-of-jail card to get around any plot hole.

Wednesday, 24 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 24

"No, you don't." *spoken in Doncasterish*
- H.W. J.C.

Story behind quote:
The only explanation I have for this quote is that Doncasterish is just so infectious.

Tuesday, 23 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 23

"Are they making a film?"
- Man in [insert name of fast food chain]

Story behind quote:
When Sharah, Wicks and Master were at Nine Worlds ('Geekfest'), they went out for lunch at a nearby fast food chain. At one point, most people at the convention were piling in for their lunch as well. Given that everyone was in a costume of some sort, a man turned around and asked Wicks, "are they making a film?" to which Wicks simply replied "No." It seemed like a strange thing to ask as all our costumes were of different genres, so what sort of film would we supposedly be shooting...?

Monday, 22 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 22

"If you start getting excited, refrain."
- S.A.

Story behind quote:
Sharah explained to us all that when translating the word 'excited' into French, there is often more than one meaning. So the best thing to do is just to steer away from excitement altogether.

Sunday, 21 December 2014

Weekly News Round-Up #79: 14/12/2014

Hey y'all, how's it going? Well we've had one hell of a fun week, so let me tell you about it...

Monday saw us hanging out in the library, however we were quite surprised to find that there were quite a few 'real' diamonds just sitting on the table. And we're sure that they're 'real' because they make such a convincing plastic sound when hitting the table.

When we got talking, ConscienceSarah explained to us all that she has a very particular specification when choosing somewhere to live. One aspect was that certain places have what she likes to call 'fluffy bird air', which makes her feel choked up. I'm pretty sure that it is just a psychological thing.... "It's all in you head, Slickens."

Onto other strange conversations, Wicks and Sharah had quite a lengthy discussion about whether the former is the heir of Slytherin. Wicks claimed that she has always been the rightful heir and attempted to prove it by explaining to us how her basilisk watched over her when she was born and Sharah was her sworn enemy. In the end, there were a few minor plot holes, leading us to believe that Wicks is not the heir...or is she?

Following on from that conversation, ArwaChihuahua and Wicks showed us the play script that they found in their maths classroom. I think it must be noted that the first line of the photocopy was most capable of grabbing a reader's attention. It was Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. We were quite intrigued and decided to conduct a table read, casting most, if not all, of us as various characters. After being so utterly impressed by what we'd read we decided to continue reading, so Wicks speedily bought a copy online. We'll keep you updated when it arrives.

In the middle of the week, Sharah conducted a study on highlighters and how different people would order them. It proved to be highly interesting, with a large variety of results. This study will be published on this blog hopefully on Christmas Day. You won't want to miss it.

This week has also proved to be quite revolutionary for Master, in terms of style choices. She rocked up one day in a rather chunky scarf that dropped hairs everywhere and was initially uncomfortable with how exactly to wear it. Thankfully, the discovery phase was over and lead into the Tumnus phase. The Tumnus look is, of course, heavily inspired by the Narnia character of the same name; you literally take one end of the scarf and throw the other end around your shoulder, making sure not to scarf slap someone in the throwing process. There you have it. Simple, classic, statement.

As the weekend rolled around, we all went to ANT's for a screening of Elf, which was preceeded by some good ol' Mario Kart. Let me tell you now, Master was utterly terrible because she'd never played Mario Kart on the Wii. Thankfully, ConscienceSarah took her under her wing and guided her throughout the trials. Boy does Sharah have a competitive streak when it comes to Mario Kart, wow.

When we finally tore ourselves away from Mario Kart, we watched Elf. It was agreed pretty early on that any plot holes in the movie, such as the CGI, the Clausometer, etc. can be fully justified simply by the sheer amount of Christmas spirit. What a heart-warming tale it is.

To top it all off, we had plenty of pizza and ANT's fantastic reindeer cake pops, as pictured below. Delightful!
ANT's fantastic reindeer cake pops!
Until next week, have a good one :)

Note: We are not affiliated with Hogwarts, Tom Stoppard, Narnia, Nintendo, or the creators of Elf.

Happy Yule everyone!

Have a wassail on us!

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 21

"I only go for my favourite ham."
- A.T.

Story behind quote:
ANT on a certain supermarket chain endorsed by a certain celebrity.

Saturday, 20 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 20

"We like to think that the fat tinsel has been losing weight throughout the year."
- S.A.

Story behind quote:
Every year, the Slickens family like to bring out the 'fat tinsel' (a long-haired tinsel, as opposed to a shorter cut, more sparse tinsel) however this year it was nowhere to be found. This is Sharah's explanation.

Friday, 19 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 19

"It's like cancer in audio form."
- A.T.

Story behind quote:
There's just some types of music that ANT can't stand. Master found this description particularly chortle-worthy.

Thursday, 18 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 18

"...oh wait, I'm a carnivore."
- H.W.

Story behind quote:
Wicks contemplates the thought process of canines, often known for eating anything and everything.

Wednesday, 17 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 17

Sharah: "It was quite a short review."
Wicks: "I'm a short person."
- S.A. H.W.

Story behind quote:
Sharah comments on Wicks' Thor 2 review.

Tuesday, 16 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 16

"ANT, I have a big announcement...I am the heir of Slytherin."
- H.W.

Story behind quote:
Wicks just doesn't have the heart to tell ANT that she can't make the Elf screening. But in the end she still made it back in time. All good :)

Monday, 15 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 15

"He weeds and feeds every other week..."
- S.A.

Story behind quote:
Slickens reveals her father's gardening rituals.

Sunday, 14 December 2014

Weekly News Round-Up #78: 07/12/2014

Hi guys, hope you're all well! We've had quite an average week just going abouts our business, but here are a few highlights.

To start off the week, we had a jolly good game of 'Heads Up' at breaktime. It proved that our knowledge of American celebrities isn't actually as good as we believed it to be.

Later on, we got onto the conversation topic of toilets and Cap explained to us that, at her old school, they used to lock the toilets. After contemplating the possible issues with this plan, for example, if someone was to be sick, this was a natural cue for that line '...and they were running and vomiting'. That old chestnut.

It seems that Academy just loves Christmas. They managed to get a massive tree which took an afternoon for the caretakers to put up. Of course, they had to cut bits off and flatten the bottom of the trunk, but what did they do with the all the extras? Well, they just stuck them behind pillars and in the old fire place. Beautiful. One of the caretakers also made a joke about putting your login details on the slice of the log they'd cut. Whatta joker. Afterwards, we questioned whether it would be such a good idea to put it up so early, not to mention in the hottest room in the House. The next morning, when we came in, the room was all decorated, with beads and lights on the tree and stars around the room, even though some were placed upside down...questionable.

In the middle of the week, DisneyLoverMolly and Master set out to conduct an interview about the Academy's Wi-Fi. We contemplated acting as if we were internet noobs and using archaic language, but ultimately opted against it. When writing it up, it because clear that what we'd originally labelled as an informative piece had become somewhat more of the comedy genre. Never mind, I'm sure people have a good sense of humour.

One trend that Wicks and Master have taken to recently is speaking in a Northern accent, in particular Doncasterish, which Master has deemed incredibly infectious. It seems that she is now trying to get out of the habit of using this accent, however it may be questioned how successful her attempts will be.

Towards the end of the week, Wicks had an idea for a new year's resolution; we could become ninjas. No joke, we could work on strength, stealth and endurance to become warriors of a sort. We'll keep you posted on whether or not this goes ahead.

Until next week, have a good one ;p

Note: We are not affiliated with the mobile application Heads Up.

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 14

Jen: "What does Wi-Fi stand for?"
Wicks: "Umm...wireless fireless?"
- J.C. H.W.

Story behind quote:
Wicks reveals the 'true' meaning of Wi-Fi.

Saturday, 13 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 13

"Slickens, go [insert obscenity here] thy self."
- H.W.

Story behind quote:
Wicks is not impressed with Slickens' idea to turn up to her [Wicks'] birthday tea party dressed as a chimney sweep (not as in the person, but the sweeper brush).

Friday, 12 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 12

"A unicorn?"
- L.R.

Story behind quote:
No, Cap, she's meant to be a lily. #danceshowcostumes

Thursday, 11 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 11

"...and whether she can take Mr Feeley in a white."
- H.W.

Story behind quote:
Not quite, I think the words go the other way round...

Wednesday, 10 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 10

"Hello diabetes..."
- Sharah's History teacher

Story behind quote:
When pouring sugar from the bag into his tea, Sharah's teacher likes to welcome the prospect of diabetes.

Tuesday, 9 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 9

"No hammers allowed!"
- S.A. J.C.

Story behind quote:
Master misheard Sharah when she said 'no cameras allowed'. There was some outrage as to why they gotta discriminate against the likes of Thor, especially when someone with a hammer could be quite handy when required to fix things.

Monday, 8 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 8

"...I'm now a chick magnet!"
- L.R.

Story behind quote:
Control pants turn anyone and everyone into chick magnets. Women will be physically pulled towards you.

Sunday, 7 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 7

"Sherlock would be having a field day!"
- H.W.

Story behind quote:
Wicks notices and comments on the fact that ConscienceSarah has muffin on her face.

Weekly News Round-Up #77: 30/11/2014

Good day to you all, how are you? Well what a week it's been for us all over here, I'll cut the intro short and just jump right into it.

Kicking off the week, we started on quite a quirky note; I can't be sure how we got onto this topic, but somewhere along the way Wicks came up with the idea of a children's book titled 'The Rude Mug', which would tell of the trials and tribulations of the mug owner and possibly how the mug might spit in your tea... Welp, moving along.

Wednesday saw ConscienceSarah thinking that she could possibly encounter a middle age crisis in the future. She predicted that, with her current 'a chocolate brownie a day' mentality, she could end up putting on a considerable amount of weight. This lead to an in-depth discussion about muffins, Sharah possibly waking up one morning, realising she had put on weight over night, and also how weight gain doesn't quite happen over such a short space of time. Wicks eventually suggested that if Sharah became a famous author and put on a few pounds, she would most likely hear about it from the tabloids first, perhaps DLM's future newspaper?

On that same day, Master also shared her Tumblr philosophy, stating "if I see a post, then it was meant to be, there's a reason why I saw it." To settle the confusion, I'll explain; because of the sheer volume of posts on Master's news feed, she thinks that there must be some sort of universal reason for her to see the posts that she sees. It can be terrifyingly unpredictable when Master thinks too hard.

Towards the end of the week, Wicks brought in a bumper box of Family Circle biscuits that she'd bought at a bargain price of £2. It was also revealed that ANT is probably the only person ever to have a particular liking for plain shortbread biscuits. We also noticed that there was some false advertising on the packaging as a particular shortbread round appeared on the box, but was not included in the selection. Adding to the current number of biscuits, Cap brought in her home made Smarties biscuits, which tasted fantastic! In other biscuit-related news, Wicks told us about her favourite 'Malted Milk' cow biscuits, which we had all forgotten about until that conversation. To round off this biscuit business, Cap and Sharah talked about fun family circle activities, such as writing down facts about ourselves, mixing them up and seeing if we can guess who wrote the fact.We'll see if we ever get round to trying it out ;p

Winding down on the working week, Master went into town to get some cookies and also a pack of Frazzles for ANT. When ANT got round to paying Master, they ended up fighting over who kept the 5 pence change (incoveniently made up of a 1p coin and two tuppence pieces) as none of them wanted the extra change. Master attempted to convince ANT that it was Black Friday, meaning that ANT should take the money, but ultimately it came down to a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, where Master triumphed and ANT had to keep the change.

The main event of the week was ConscienceSarah's dance show, which we went to see on Saturday. It was a sequel to Alice in Wonderland, titled 'Malice in Wonderland', which we all enjoyed very much, and perhaps even more so, in the second half, after consuming the mega marshmallows during the interval. Preceeding its straight-to-DVD release, we have an exclusive excerpt from a review by Localville's very own entertainment magazine, Total Bilm:

"Malice in Wonderland was a tremendously exciting production. We were particularly impressed with the diversity of cast members, from the young ones to the Dance Nans, who all performed exceptionally whilst having to cope with a rather slippy floor. Over-looking the odd slip, trip and the kid facing the wrong way, it was outstanding, even though we did spot a member of the principal cast chatting away in a particular scene.

Apart from the fantastic plot and routines, we also loved the costumes, even if they always wanted to become detached (looking at you, glitter hats and the rabbit tail). There were some very interesting pieces that the talking flowers got to wear, the lily and the poppy were particularly memorable. Also, props to the guys doing ballet, although next time he could have a longer gown to wear over his tights?

The main aspect of the production that let it down was the use of technology; there were often very long pauses when the tech team were preparing for scenes, the microphones could still be heard even when they were not supposed to be and I should hope that there was a warning of intense sustained periods of flashing lights for anyone with epilepsy. Anyway, we should still applaud the Dance Dads, who were unapologetically undisguised and in charge of clearing the stage and setting things up.

All in all, a good time was had by all. A particular highlight was Colin Slickens' performance as the Red Queen. I'm positive that he will be a strong contender for this year's 'Best Performance' and 'Skiver' award. In the end, we couldn't help but clap along the 'Shake It Off' and 'On Top of the World' as the performers took their final bow. A massive well done goes out to everyone."

What a great night, even though there's always one that cries at the end and doesn't want to go back on stage. On the way back home, our very own harsh reviewer ANTdeemed it worthy of 12 out of 10 stars. I think that speaks for itself.

Until next week, have a good one :D

NOTE: We are not affiliated with the following brands and people: Tumblr, Family Circle, Smarties, Malted Milk Biscuits, Frazzles, Taylor Swift, Imagine Dragons.

DISCLAIMER: Total Bilm is a fictional magazine created solely for the purpose of entertainment and comedy.

Saturday, 6 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 6

"...Bilbo...?"
- H.W.

Story behind quote:
The people in The Maze Runner simply reminded Wicks of a certain hobbit, what with their little backpacks and hiking/walking sticks.

Friday, 5 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 5

"They start with joy and end with sadness."
- H.W.

Story behind quote:
An accurate description of the massive marshmallows we had during the Zombie Apocalypse LARP.

Thursday, 4 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 4

"Parenting advice for a stem cell: you can be anything you want when you grow up."
- Poster that Sharah observed

#inspirational

Wednesday, 3 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 3

Master: "There's a label here-"
Pound Shop check-out worker: "No."
- Check-out worker, J.C.

Story behind quote:
Before the Zombie Apocalypse LARP, Wicks, Cap and Master went on a trip to town to obtain a few resources. In their hurry to get back, Jen attempted to help out the check-out worker with little success.

Tuesday, 2 December 2014

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 2

Ranger: "Can you spell it out for me?"
Master: "Jen."
- Ranger, J.C.

Story behind quote:
Jen calls the Park Rangers but is surprised when they ask her to spell out her name...

As featured in WNR #74.

Monday, 1 December 2014

100,000 views... blimey

I just wanted to say a massive thank you to all our readers. Thank you. I hope you continue to enjoy this blog :)

Quote Advent Calendar: Day 1

"But when would I wear it?"
- A.T.

Story behind quote:
ANT deliberates over how much use she would realistically get from a 'V for Vendetta' mask.