This was written as part of the entertainment for an evening of a Scout Leaders training weekend. The the theme was Sweden and the obvious choice was sing something by ABBA. The wife didn’t like this idea, and neither would anyone else if they’d heard her sing, so I came up with this as an alternative.

Too add to the entertainment the audience were all given a bingo card with song titles on to mark off as the play progressed. A prize for the first person to call house. Every card had the title ‘Thank you for the music’ so sweeties we handed out to all.

The song titles have been highlighted in the text.

The Cast:

At least 4 actors are needed! If more split the roles of actors 3 and 4.
The Narrator could be one of the actors or a separate person.

Actor 1: Fernando
Actor 2: Cassandra, The Prince
Actor 3: Svenvolio, Lady Erikson, Erikson, Friar Laurence, Mercutio
Actor 4: Chiquita, Tybalt, Servant, Johanson, Bjorn

Characters in each scene:
Act1 Scene 1 – Svenvolio, Tybalt, Prince, Fernando
Act 1 Scene 2 – Servant, Svenvolio, Fernando
Act 1 Scene 3 – Lady Erikson, Chiquita, Cassandra
Act 1 Scene 4 – Erikson, Cassandra, Fernando, Tybalt

Act 2 Scene 1 – Fernando, Cassandra
Act 2 Scene 2 – Friar Laurence, Fernando
Act 2 Scene 3 – Svenvolio, Fernando, Chiquita
Act 2 Scene 4 – Friar Laurence, Fernando, Cassandra

Act 3 Scene 1 – Mercutio, Fernando, Tybalt, Prince
Act 3 Scene 2 – Chiquita, Cassandra
Act 3 Scene 3 – Fernando, Cassandra

Act 4 Scene 1 – Bjorn, Friar Laurence, Cassandra
Act 4 Scene 2 – Cassandra, Chiquita

Act 5 Scene 1 – Fernando, Cassandra, Erikson, Johanson

This is most likely will not be what you are expecting, it was not what I was expecting and it came from my mind. This is the longest thought I have written and would you believe took me fives hours to write. There was no way it could be sensible but it was one single mistake that made it take the course it did. If anyone has any idea what it could really be all about, please let me know! And I apologize if you sit through and read all of this, as I said it is a little longer than the others.

Twice upon a time. Yes this all happened more than once. How anything could let it happen a second time is unknown, but it did.
Two evenings long ago, both times it was cold and wet, a tall dark stranger rode into town. Both times he rode a large black horse, though it was a different horse the second time around. He rode in in complete silence, neither horse making a sound on the cobblestone road. Both times the few villagers out that late in the evening watched him carefully, wondering who or what could be moving so quietly. The stranger stopped outside of the village inn and dismounted then tied up his horse. He patted it gently telling it to be still and to wait. He then entered the inn. As he opened the door lighting flashed outside, both times making the view of him coming into the inn look very dramatic, a dark shadow in the doorway against the bright sky behind him.
He called across the inn as he found an empty table, ‘Innkeeper, bring me a drink.’. Both innkeepers were quick to bring the stranger the drink, you do not argue with some one who makes such an entrance, and the second inn keeper remembered the story from the first. The stranger quickly drank his drink then shouted to the innkeeper for another. The innkeepers took the stranger his drinks, both gingerly reminding the stranger he had not yet paid for the first. On both occasions the stranger gave the innkeeper a look, a look which turned both innkeepers white with fear. He then gave them both a quick grin and held up a gold coin to each of them and asked the innkeepers to keep the drinks coming.
The stranger sat in the corner and drank for the rest of the night, making no sound except to ask for another drink. No one dared to go near him, in the first inn out of fear of what their imaginations thought he could do, and they stayed away from him the second time knowing what he could do. This pleased the stranger, no one interfering made it easier for him. As the two nights drew in the two innkeepers began to clear the inns. The stranger stayed sitting in his seat, drinking his last drink. Once everyone else had left both innkeepers asked the stranger to leave. The stranger asked for a bed for the night instead. ‘You have drunk a lot of ale sir, I don’t think your coin will stretch to a bed for the night’, both innkeepers said wearily. The stranger handed each innkeeper another gold coin, ‘I expect breakfast and a bag of oats for my horse as well for this.’, he added. The innkeepers nodded in acknowledgement and lead the way to the room that the stranger would spend both nights in.
Both mornings that followed were bright and sunny, the early sunshine had dried up the paths and fields as well as the strangers horses which stood and waited for him outside the inn. Neither time did anyone think of taking the horse to the stables, though neither horse would of gone. They had been told to wait, so wait is what they would do. The innkeepers took the horses the oats, while the innkeepers wives took the stranger his breakfasts. The second innkeepers wife looked worried as she handed the stranger his second breakfast in the village. ‘You look troubled’, said the stranger to her.
‘I am.’, she replied, ‘We don’t want trouble like last time. There isn’t going to be any is there ?’
‘I do not know. Let us hope not.’, he sighed.
The second innkeepers’ wife turned and left as the stranger began to eat his breakfast. The first innkeepers wife turned and left too, wondering why the stranger had been muttering to himself before he began to eat.
The stranger finished his breakfast, washed and dressed on both occasions. He then made his way to  the main room of the inn, thanking the innkeepers wife on each occasion for the delicious breakfast, then left the inn.  He then patted his horses necks, climbed onto his saddle and began his ride out of the village. On both mornings he was stopped by a group of young men who still had a little too much drink in them from the night before. ‘I believe your purse is too heavy sir, and ours are too light. Maybe we should even things up.’ said two of the young me, one on each of the occasions. ‘I am happy with the weight of my purse’, he replied to both of them. ‘Well we are not’, the two young men who spoke before said as they drew their daggers. The stranger sighed. The other young men drew their daggers too. ‘Go home. You will be forgiven for drinking all your money away. There is no need for you to try and take mine.’ the stranger told them all.   The two leaders did not listen to him, they wanted, needed his money, both of them would get a good beating at home if they returned with out any. ‘Hand over your money now.’, they both said, ‘You are no match for me and my friends.’  The stranger sighed and drew his sword. It was a magnificent sword that shone in the morning sunlight. Some of the young men backed away. The stranger was relieved, hid not wish to hurt them all. The two groups began to back off a little more, the two leaders were shouting at them to come back and fight. Suddenly there was a strange glint in the eyes of the young men of both groups. They all began to draw swords, swords the stranger thought young men of a small village like this should not have. He sighed again as all of them cam towards him.
Neither group of men were very good with the swords, it was easy for the stranger to hold them off from doing him any harm on both occasions. It was not long before both groups began to get angry on either occasion, their thrashing became wilder and harder for the stranger to fend off, but as yet no one had hurt him. It then happened at the same time into both fights, some one caught his horse instead of him. The horses flinched at the pain from the sword that had cut it, but both of them held their ground. Both groups of young men moved their attacks to the horses, the stranger could not easily defend his horses and it was not much longer before both horses fell. On both occasions the stranger managed to roll free of his falling horse. He was now enraged with the young men and began killing both groups. As the stranger began the killing cries from the young men made it back to their village, but they would be all dead long before any one would reach either group. When the last man fell each time the stranger sank to his knees and began to sob beside his dead horses. As he wept the villagers arrived to see what was going on. The villagers stood around the carnage that surrounded the stranger, no one entering the circle either time. Shouts and cries came from both sets of villagers but no one came near the stranger, after a while the shouts stopped and just the crying of mourning mothers could be heard, every one still stayed in the circle. ‘Some one please bring me a spade, so I can bury my horse.’, the stranger asked.
‘What about our sons ?’, two voices asked one from each time.
‘I am sorry for what happened to them, and mourn their deaths as you do. I will dig the graves of those who have none.’
The relatives of the dead young men entered the circle and took the dead men away. The rest of the villagers made their ways back to the village. On neither occasion did any one question the stranger on what happened, and neither time did anyone seem angry with him once they left the circle.
After everyone had left the stranger began to bury his horses beside the road out of the village. The first horse he buried on the left side and the second on the right. Once he had finished he looked back towards the village, on both occasions ten bodies laid out on the path ready for burial. The task had been left to him, as he had offered each time.
The village had a hill on either side of it, on each occasion he took the bodies up one of the hills and buried the young men, saying a small prayer over each one of them as he filled in the graves. When the graves were all filled on both occasions the stranger walked down the hill then on out of the village. Both times he did not look back. And both times he hoped he would not visit the village again.

This play was written for a Cubs Christmas show,  another Leader came up with the idea and I filled in the gaps and wrote the script.

The Cast:-
Teddy
Clown
Robot
Doll
Soldier
Puppet

Anything in italics like this is an action, not speech.

Six toys are sitting on a shelf waiting to be taken by Santa to places around the world.

This was originally written, as with most of the Second Thoughts, way back in 1998.
This was 9 years before my son was born; but his name happened to be the first name I picked for this skit. The other character was called John, this is similar enough to one of Adam’s friends, Jake, that I changed the characters name. I seriously hope this skit is something they will never act out, or anything similar, but some days I do wonder….

One night as Dorf laid in bed a thought started forming in his head…..

While reformatting this and reading through I had my own thoughts on whether thoughts have a sex or not. I’m sure I’ll get some stick for this but it was obvious really. Rational thoughts are male and irrational thoughts female.

I think I’ll leave it at that.

This is an odd little skit. I wonder what sort of twisted mood I was in when this was originally written some time ago. Have a read and let me know what you think.

Ever wondered how we would cope with a flat world. (Yes I know it is not really flat. Took me a couple of weeks to get over it.)
Just think you could have fun travelling to all four corners of the earth. And what happens at the edge? Do you just stop or can you fall off? Falling off would add a new dimension to space travel. No need to waste lots of money building big rockets and using lots of fuel. All you need to do it sail to the edge of the world and fall off. Much easier, less fuel, more environmentally friendly and easy enough to do when you have nothing better to do and are sailing near the edge of the world on a Saturday afternoon. Discovering countries by going the wrong way around the world would not work any more. And no trips all the way around in 80 days either. Though new journeys would be possible; travel the perimeter of the world or one of the two diagonals. I am sure all the new journeys would be much more fun than what we have had in the past. Just do not expect to be able to travel from China to Mexico as quickly as you would with the world round. Goods from one side of the world would be able to sell for far greater prices having to come from so far away. Those exotic goods would become even more exotic. Relationships between countries like America and Japan would be a lot further stretched with the further distances having to be travelled.
Then we come to those poles. A compass would not really work anymore. Think about it. Put the north pole in the centre of the up most side of the map and take this as where north is as you always have. Now let us say go to the right side of the world. We want to got to the top right corner. Now being on the side this is easy, we just follow the edge. But what if we were in a little way. If we got our compasses out and pointed it north, we would slowly find ourselves travelling to the left as well as up. So instead of ending in the top right corner of the map, as we wanted. We would end up in the top middle area of the map. A new method of direction finding would have to be used.  Another question that just cropped into my mind, a strange place for any question to go. How would a flat world rotate around the sun ? And where would the sun rise and set.  The easiest way to solve this would be to stop revolving around the sun and get the sun to revolve around us, very much like the moon does now. It would then shine brightest on the side that the sun was going around at the time. The world being flat and the sun being very big would mean that we would see the sun all the time. So we would not have a sunrise or sunset anymore, just a nearer and further away sun. That part of the day when the sun being further away being a little dimmer than when it is near. The next thing is the water, which is controlled very much by the rotation of our planet amongst other things. Well with the sun revolving around us there is no need for us to rotate. No need for our flat world to move at all. This of course will stop the water swirling down the plug hole in a clockwise or anticlockwise direction. With all this revolving and rotating gone, we should hopefully get rid of things like hurricanes and tornadoes too. Hopefully the sun can get around the earth as quickly as we used to rotate on our axis, so the length of a day stays the same. Would not want that to change too much. But unfortunately without us moving around the sun the months and years will have disappeared. A very slight drawback really. No need to know what day it is, we can get on with life without knowing it is Saturday. Though it would be very hard to take that Saturday sail off the edge of the world. Once you start taking all these facts into consideration you begin to notice that a flat world does not sound as much fun as it did at the top of the page. You would not be able to cross the date line and gain or loose a day. Globes would stop selling as well as compasses. We would not think that the people in Australia are upside down. They would just be a long way down the world. We should not really call it south any more!   Another problem solved by the flat world is of course the millennium bug, with no real way record a year, there would be no problem.  And should the world be completely flat? Not just the loss of the globe shape, but a loss to all those mountains and hills too. Do we let nature get away with mole hills? Or should it be flat is flat?
Without these hills to walks up and mountings to climb up it would take a bit of fun out of the world. What would all the hill walkers and mountaineers do? No need to build bridges across canyons (they would not be allowed either) or tunnels through mountains. So at least we would save some money on the construction of our roads and railways.
With lots of open spaces we could lots of windmills as the wind would not have anything blocking its path beside the odd building or tree. How flat is the earth? Should there be some thickness to it? Or is flat, flat? A Wafer thin world would be a problem, you would dig down to bury your dead next door neighbour and open up a hole in the world! At least you could just drop them through and not worry about him. But if it was a relative, it is sometimes nice to visit their graves. You could not do that if they were just dropped through a hole. Not much foundation for buildings or plants either. A wafer thin world would not be able to take a lot of weight. Really big buildings might be too much for it and just drop through. Think of all those people, pets mice, goldfish and cats that would be lost. And if a building did fall through you would want to make very sure that it was not the bank holding your money.  If the world was this thin, you would have to watch what you ate too. You would not want to go falling through because you are too heavy!

Some things just don’t fit in any other section. If that is the case they make their way here.
On the original version of this website this section was called ‘After Thoughts’ but after thinking I had lost most of this site and when finding it again (it was down the back of the sofa) I decided to update many of the articles and merge in one of the other sections.

It was then the second version of ‘After Thoughts’, thus ‘Second Thoughts’.

I am way beyond the second version of this section, but the name has stuck.

This section has a large variety of bits and pieces that at the moment don’t fit under one of the other categories. But some day a selection of them may gel together to become their very own section.