PANCAKE DAY

11 attending

Happy Pancake Day! This week's very important theme was all about pancakes!

Beginning by sharing favourite pancake fillings, followed by a round of the 'line of a story each' game, we looked at two pancake poems as inspiration. 'Mix a Pancake' by Christina Rossetti, and 'Shrove Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, when Jack went to plough'. Inspired especially by 'Shrove Tuesday', the young writers were challenged to write their own poem or story about someone making pancakes and something going wrong - either in the pancake making itself (burning/wrong ingredients etc) or while the pancake making is happening (e.g. an interruption, something bad happening in the background with the pancake making as a distraction, etc).

Here are some of the pieces:

From Leo:

Pancake McCancake
I wonder if I can,
Make the batter
be much better
forty times today.
I should have milk
still to date,
The eggs might be slightly cracked
and flour,
I don’t need that,
I’ll just fry them for an hour.
Oh what’s that?
A burnt pancake you say,
Nonsense, I beg to differ,
It is just slightly toasted,
After all I make the best
Pancakes McCancakes.
If you are unsatisfied,
I could always pour some syrup,
Delicious and dried
in the cupboard for forty years.
For decades I have made the
best Pancakes McCancakes,
AND NO THEY DON’T COME OUT OF A CAN.

From Zoe (in emoji!):

🥞😋

🥞❌🏹👩

🔐

❌🥚🥛

🏹👧🥞😋

❌🤕

From Neelesh:

I love pancakes and I eat it everyday but recently my mum
has been on a vacation. This means that I have to live with my idiotic older
brother, Tim. I can't believe it! Nearly my whole week has been a disaster.
Suprisingly, Tim said he will make pancakes for breakfast today. After 15
minutes or so, we got all the ingredients and we were halfway there when
something terrible happened...

From Gene:

It was the 29th of February leap year of course,
we had dinner fish and chips with sweet and sour sauce.
The children they were happy after eating they we at play,
And then it dawned on me the next day is pancake day!
I would hate to disappoint and the world would probably end,
Their happiness fading because they’d never forgive me again.
So I left at 8 to get the ingredients I was eager.
I got the pancake mix, the syrup and if fussy lemon and sugar.
The next day I dished it out, 3 pancakes should be what they require,
They both sat down and said to me, “after fish and chips we’re on a diet.”

From Aurora:

The clock on the oven read 6:47 in blurred numbers, likely
shimmering in Felly’s vision due to the fact that it was 6:47 in the morning
not 6:47 in the evening. Somewhere down the hallway, small thuds pattered the
carpeted floor, which meant that the child was awake. The consequent click of
the toilet light confirmed as such. Now, Felly (formally known as Felicia
Ficklesberry, although that was a stupid name so everyone just called her Felly
instead) did not go to work until 9 AM, and the devil child six-year-old monger
of doom and destruction, Angelina Ficklesberry, didn’t need to be at school
until 8 AM.

Since the school was literally just down the road, to which
they could get ready and walk to in about 10 minutes (for all her ruinous
tendencies, the one thing that Angelina was loathe to destroy was her mother’s
schedule, and was actually a golden child if one only took into account the
sample size of exactly the first 12 and a half minutes of her waking hours),
there was no need for Felly to be awake at quarter-to-seven and in the kitchen
making pancakes aside from the fact that it was pancake day. Tell truth, she
was quite remorseful for this, as it was likely her moving about the flat that
had awoken the demon that would soon ravage her sanity and become
nigh-impossible to control. Making pancakes cannot be so bad however, as they
seemed to stem Angelina’s greed for war the last two years Felly had made them.

To tell truth again, though, it was not solely for the sake
of a ravenous child that craves blood that she had been making pancakes in the
bird-chirping hours of the morning.

You see, Felly was going through a divorce. And, when it
came to the choice between filling out contracts and writing emails and
fighting custody battles or making a twelve-stack of maple syrup and whipped
cream pancakes for the child she was so desperately trying to keep a hold of,
she would much rather be making pancakes.

Next, inspired by the start of Lent, the young writers were challenged to come up with a character (or use an existing character) and decide what would be the most difficult thing for them to give up (something they really love - e.g. a food, a piece of clothing, music, dancing, etc) and write a story about what happened when they tried to give it up, and how they coped with it.

From Zoe:

I was sitting in the car, going to the hospital waiting for the results. The more I wait the more it feels like the walls are closing in on me. Soon though the doors swing open and a nurse walks in holding a clipboard and a pen. We follow her down the corridor and into a room. Everything inside was blue. The walls were blue, the chairs were blue (I am writing this in blue). One chair was facing away from me. As soon as I sat down the chair (the mystery one) turned around revealing a doctor wearing a cowboy hat. “Hello!” He said cheerfully. And then he broke the news I had been dreading. At that moment in time, I wish I could be flung into space to never return.

From Aurora:

Date: 5/4/788 (1717 B.A., 5th Day of Helvestas) Today’s council meetings were… hectic, to say the least of them. Of course, I must say the least of them, for the goings-on of the inner-Protosi Empire are highly classified. Scholars are loathe to silence, however, and as I am such a scholar, I feel the need to allow my tongue (or in this case, my quill) free reign, to let it run like a horse over the great plains. What I have learned is… … … … … plan to poison… … … terrorists, honestly they have no… … … … legal repercussions, but the border guards… … … … … … … … … … … … … studies are helping… … … … … times are changing, times are changing ever so fast. I am so loathe to the idea of abstention, for I do not engage in activities simply for fun (well, aside from woodcarving, but the old bags in the Tower of Stars simply cannot take that away from me, so I have been forced to pretend as though I hate the activity).

I fear I must give up duelling for now, it seems the least mandatory of all my activities, being pursued… … of good health. I… … … … … finally will be… … … … … … Helvestas is a wild season. One more thing, and this I fear is of grave import. No jokes, no japes, no kids – this is a serious matter. … is innocent of this crime, of these accusations. … is innocent. He will not be charged with …, not on my watch, … will not be charged. The Emperor himself can fling me from the highest towers of Protos, and be happy about it, but he shall not quell my voice. … is innocent of murder.

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PANCAKE DAY