Bank Holiday Sunday

We had a long standing arrangement to go to Chris and Julie’s today. We used to see them pretty much every weekend but life seems to have gotten busier these days and we have to coordinate diaries well in advance to book weekend get togethers nowadays. The plan was a barbecue which although early weather looked unlikely to be suitable for by the time we arrived there at midday it was bright and sunny and perfectly acceptable weather for.

The cooking was a fairly communal affair with Julie and I doing some indoor stuff and Chris and Ady doing the outdoor stuff. We all ate completely different things I think catering for vegetarians, carnivores, Scarlett eating Disney princess pasta shapes as she’d refused any sort of barbecue fayre, Davies insisting on tinned hotdog sausages when he heard sausages were on offer, Julie cooking some tuna steaks which needed using up and Chris, Ady and I eating homemade lamb burgers.

The four older children played most of the time outside, coming in at various points.

Julie bathed Lorna which all of them wanted to help with and was very cute :).

Davies spent some time cooing over Lorna and I got all misty eyed thinking that he is only 3 weeks away from being 8 yet it doesn’t seem five minutes ago he was as teeny as Lorna is now.

We sat around chatting, drinking copious amounts of tea (Chris kept making endless cups and I think we counted up that he and I had had seven cups each in the end),talking about camping, laughing about all sorts of things and Julie showed me their new peg loom which I fell instantly in love with and have ordered one of my own off ebay :).

We finally left there, loads later than planned after 5pm.

I had picked up a leaflet at work about The Big Picnic, a series of events across West Sussex to celebrate the handing over of the Olympic torch from Beijing to the UK. We’d planned to attend a couple of the events but had written the idea off as the weather had looked so crap. But as we were driving home from C&J’s the sun was shining, the children were in happy moods with loads of energy left still so we decided to stop in Worthing for the last event of the day.

We parked, walked through town to McDonalds for some tea for them and then walked back to the park where the event was being held and spent some time with the children having races, generally being silly and listening to the vocal group practising. The children and I chatted about choirs, different singing voices and tenors, basses, altos and sopranos, harmonies and stuff.

The event started with a marching band of soldiers in full red and black uniform complete with busby hats, one of whom was on stilts. They marched on parade to standard brass band music and then it suddenly changed to Queen’s Good Time and they did some breakdancing – very funny 🙂

They were followed by a three piece string set with invisible instruments and very strange face masks worthy of Doctor Who monsters.

Then came a chicken, a crow and a baker on stilts with the ‘baton’ of bread and a very large egg which will apparently hatch in 2009 as part of a Celebrate Sussex event.

The children were all invited to collect a lantern then; either a star or a crab. Davies and Scarlett both got crabs, which Davies was initially disappointed by as he’d wanted a crab but turned out to be for the best as they were quite heavy and his arms were aching by the time he’d carried the star round and the crab would have been heavier. About 100 children all circled the whole gardens walking behind an accordianist in a procession just as darkness fell. It was quite, quite lovely :). It took probably the best part of half an hour (no wonder their arms ached!) and Scarlett spent most of it at the very front of the the parade as she was chatting to the crow and the chicken 😆 Davies joined her for some of it and fell back further into the line for some of the rest.

As they walked past lanterns around the park they were lit and they walked past the flagpoles where the mayor was waiting and the Olympic flag was raised


they finally ended at the giant teepee thing which was representing the Olympic torch and the choir sang by the light of all these child-held lanterns. Then it ended with a pyrotechnic display.

It’s not often I think very highly of Worthing, despite it being my home town and one I’ve returned to but last night I did feel quite proud to be part of it; there was a nice community feeling and quite a cool mix of people :).

We came home and the children went from park to toast to pjs to bed to asleep within half an hour 😆 We had an extremely late dinner of curry at about 11pm and then I sat up chatting to online friends until long past 2am.