James gets expert help for his school projects

Dances with werewolves writes:

Well, I did my duty and played the outraged parent to James when I got him home.

"What did you think you were doing in Computer Club?" I asked sternly. "You've gone and upset Miss Huffkin, Mrs Lunn and the school governers. What have you got to say for yourself, young man?"

James looked only very slightly contrite. "We wanted to tell Albert Einstein the good news about CERN working on the Grand Unified Theory of Everything," he said innocently. "He was working on it when he died. I though it might help his spirit to rest easily."

"You know what I think about Ouija for Windows," I sneered. "It's a great big con. It's never worked properly. And version 6.1 is full of bugs."

"It worked on Wednesday lunch-time," answered my son smugly. "We got a really clear connection. It was better than on Skype."

That was impressive. Maybe the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider really did make the fabric of time and space flap around. "So did you....er...get through to him, then?" I asked.

"Oh yes," he answered. "We had a really good chat. Albert's very excited about finally getting some experimental data to support his theoretical work. So excited that....erm....well..." He broke off to stare at a really interesting sparrow in the garden. I started to have foreboding feelings.

"Yes?" I asked, as sweetly as I could. If you get angry with him too soon then he clams up and you never get a straight story.

"He wouldn't go back," James mumbled, staring now at the odd socks on his feet. "He's staying to see how the Large Hadron Collider experiment turns out."

"Staying....where?"

"He's hanging out with me." A defensive note crept into James' voice. "He says he can help me with my school work this year. You wanted me to learn German, didn't you? It'll more fun than that LingQ website you use."

I thought that was a bit cheeky. Working on the LingQ website is definitely more fun than hanging out with lost souls. Well...most of the time.

"And we're going to do a science project together," James continued quickly. "The teacher have decided that year 6 can do group projects for their homework this year. So Stanley and Jay and I are going to do a German project and a science project together.

This was a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand the school had several bits of paper with my signature on swearing that James would not be meddling with Dark Forces or talking to strangers this year. On the other hand, this sounded really rather educational. Foreign languages and science are key parts of the National Curriculum.

"I should keep quiet about the fact that you are getting, erm...outside help," I said slowly. "If you let on that you are communicating with a strange foreign man, particularly a post-living one, I shall get called into your school counsellor's office even more this term. I can really only stand so many of Miss Bunn's Rich Tea biscuits."

"No sweat Mum!" he answered chirpily. "I'll keep quiet about him. In any case, Albert likes talking in German when he's discussing science, so if anyone does hear us they won't understand any of it." That's true enough. Mrs Figg-Newton, the German teacher at Bouncing Bunnies, and I are probably the only adults in Dusty Mouldings who speak any German. It's not a very international area.

"I still have to punish you for getting into trouble at school," I remembered. "I'm going to stop buying you the Fortean Times for the rest of the school year."

James smiled angelically. "Fair enough," he said. "I was planning to buy the New Scientist from now on anyway. Albert wants to catch up on the last fifty years of scientific developments."

Oh Lordy. Still I would like to see him learn a foreign language. And it'll keep him away from causing trouble with Minnie on the streets of Dusty Mouldings.