Playschool Read Free

Poland has lodged a complaint with the United Nations.
Three-legged race – Teams are made up of families. Where there are more than two children, like in the Flood family, they are all tied together and have to leave some of their legs in the changing room. Where there is only one child, they are allowed to grow an extra leg for the day. There is always a protest about this race from the Millipedes – a family of witches and wizards from a damp ditch in Tristan da Cuhna – who claim the whole race is ‘leggist’.
Long distance cricket – You will probably find it hard to believe but long distance cricket is actually slower and even more boring than normal cricket. One wicket is on the school playing field and the other wicket is thousands of kilometres away in the back yard of number 7, The Street, St Kilda. 5 Top score for a three-day match is Quicklime College 3, Scotland 0.)
    After the school anthem, other teachers stood up one by one with various announcements: things that had been lost – the usual iPods, fountain pens and fingers; and things that had been found – usually nothing because the school was kept very clean and tidy by someone we shall meet later.
    And as it was the first Assembly of term, there was a report of the past holiday’s great achievements by students and ex-students. The highlight that holiday had been Winchflat Flood’s creation of a volcano right at the North Pole.
    â€˜Talk about global warming!’ said Professor Throat to hoots of laughter.
    â€˜Well, I thought that was what they wanted,’ said Winchflat. ‘What with so many humans walking around whingeing about how cold they were.’
    Finally, Assembly was dismissed and everyone went off to their classes. Classes at Quicklime’s are different from those at other schools. Apart from thesubjects being much more interesting, children of different ages are often in the same class. Quicklime College knows that you don’t get more clever as you get older. You’re as clever when you die as you are on the day you’re born. The only difference is that you know more stuff.
    Even better, the school doesn’t make anyone go to any lessons they find boring – which is a bit like a Steiner school, except that at Quicklime’s everyone actually learns to read and write. So, if you are really keen on something like genetic engineering, you can go to every single Genetic Engineering class each week no matter what age you are. And if you think that maths is boring, which of course it is, you don’t have to go to any Maths classes. The only rule is that you have to go to four classes every day.
    The Flood twins, Morbid and Silent, went off to study Invisibility. Satanella trotted off to her Special Breeds class.
    Winchflat, who was brilliant at everything, shook a little bag with all the lessons written on different tiles, like Scrabble, and picked out the classhe would go to first. His favourite class was Genetic Engineering, so to make sure he went to that class more often than the others, he had twenty-three tiles with ‘Genetic Engineering’ written on them and only one each for the other subjects.
    And Merlinmary went off to play Gristleball.

Lesson: Sport with Pain
Teacher: Radius Leg
    â€˜Today, children, we will enjoy the pain that great sport can bring,’ said Radius Leg. ‘I don’t mean the pain caused by the screaming boredom of watching a normal human soccer match or the pain of trying to stay awake during a normal human cricket match. Nor do I mean the mild physical pain of playing cricket with hand grenades. I mean the sheer bone-breaking, skin-tearing, blood-squirting, bubonic-plague-ridden joy of Quicklime College’s own special game: Gristleball.’
    The thirty-nine children in the class were standing at the top of the Gristleball field as theschool’s sports teacher addressed them. They were all raring to go because, like