One word? When seven would do…

It had shades of going very wrong at times. Very inverse managerial discipline technique going on actually – a big wobble at the beginning followed by a lovely afternoon and evening finished off with further irritation, but in all a nice time.

Yesterday morning was one of those rare occassions when everyone slept in (which was mainly because Ady and I had been up with Scarlett for hours in the night, then we persuaded Davies to come into bed with us and watch Peter Pan with the headphones on for an hour) so it was gone 9am before we got started really. On that basis we decided to go out for late breakfast / early lunch as none of us would be having a proper dinner anyway. We went to Sainsburys where the children were quite far from your model restaurant companions but I think we just about held it together. We all ate loads though and it was over half an hour in coming so I am prepared to concede hunger as an excuse for them being rowdy!

Came home and did some jigsaws altogether then Ady went off to get ready to go. With about an hour before my parents were due to arrive I went to grab the tickets from the pin board (we have booked tickets to about 6 various things over the rest of this year so as they arrive I shove them in an envelope, write the day of the event and who it is on the front and then shove them up on the pin board) to discover they weren’t there. Cue frantic emptying of various drawers, looking under sofas, asking everyone including the cats if they had moved them and generally raising stress levels 🙁 Ady tried to ring my parents to tell them not to come over for babysitting and I started trawling through emails to try and find the confirmation of the booking. This turned up several pieces of information – the first being that the tickets would not be sent out until 7 days before the event – which made me realise that infact they had just never arrived and for some reason I had not noticed their absense, the second that it was a picnic event and the final one being that there was absolutely no contact phone number for the company I’d bought the tickets from (lastminute.com) with an ever sinking heart I started googling to try and find a phone number and just turned up loads of references on various forum about what a crap company they are, how people had never had tickets arrive, had no reply to emails and so on.

My parents arrived and Ady kept them out in the garden so as not to further incite my rage (he told me later when I had calmed down that I had been terrifying!) while as a last ditch attempt to sort it out I rang Leeds Castle, I confess now possibly more to see if there was a chance of buying more tickets on the gate and trying to sort out a refund for the missing ones later. The woman was totally unfazed, told me the event organiser had a box office on site opening at 4pm and to come bringing evidence of my booking, some ID and the credit card I’d paid with.

By now my parents had come in the house, I was yelling at everyone to stop hassling me (she decided she wanted to talk them to the beach which necessitated sun cream, shoes, finding juice for them to take, sorting them out with a spare key to get back in, finding nappies and wipes for them to take with them and getting the pushchair out of the car – grrrr!!!!), Ady in his nervousness at me managed to misplace all the sets of keys to house and cars, I forgot to bring my sunglasses and sun hat and didn’t have time to get changed 🙁

Parents and offspring set off for the park with me hanging out of the window as they walked down the road yelling at my Mum to have Davies walking on the inside of her and the pavement, not right alongside the road 🙁 and me and Ady looking at each other in horror at the thought of our two most precious things being in the care of such pillocks for the rest of the afternoon and evening (yes, I know, but we so rarely don’t have them with us and are so crap at letting them be with anyone else that we tend to worry more about the kids and what they are doing than enjoy some time without them 🙁 ). Finally got in the car and set off with no hope of a picnic in sight!

Arrived at the castle in excellent time, slightly calmed down but ready for a fight at the box office just the same. The gates opened at 5pm with the concert starting at 7.30pm. We arrived shortly after 4pm and found several thousand people already there queuing. At the box office I was about to launch into my composed rant but she just asked who I booked through and my name and address and there were my tickets, in an envelope with my address on – WTF?! I assume that if I’d realised the tickets hadn’t arrived I would have contacted them and been informed that they were actually to be collected but as I’d paid nearly a fiver for postage and they had my address, email and two phone numbers for me I would have expected them to let ME know… and to think we nearly didn’t go and the tickets would have been sat there waiting for us…. will be emailing later to rant and at least get my postage charge refunded!

Joined the queue and was staggered at the fact that far from being the oldest people there I was probably one of the youngest – not sure whether I am happier being old before my time or whether I prefered feeling like an overgrown teenager really 😉 I assume it was more about the atmosphere of the event – in castle grounds, picnic all afternoon then watch the concert where you sat (there were some seats which were an extra tenner each and I think I preferred the space and freedom of being in the field really) which appealed more to couples and various other stereotypical groups of people. (we had the gay men couples in their low rise trousers cut to show off their snakey hips, permatanned and with pierced nipples peeping through their fluorescent vests, we had groups of women in home made ‘we love you will’ t shirts – funniest one was a group of four who had ‘W’ ‘I’ ‘L’ and ‘L’ on their backs – we amused ourselves for ages thinking about them losing the ‘W’ woman in the crowd :-), some sort of middle aged divorced and formerly repressed group of women, lots of ‘beautiful people’ couples who clearly shopped in Waitrose with their wicker picnic baskets crammed with strawberries, champagne and things like cous-cous and some gangs of hen night style women who had dance routines co-ordinated for the songs!). We bemoaned the fact we had not realised it was a picnic stylee thing and failed to bring our cool boxes, picnic rugs, parasol, folding chairs, citronella candle on a stake and so on like so many others had but in the end we were glad as it was a right trek from the car park to the actual grounds and we would have been even unhappier about carting them all back again in the dark at 11pm like everyone else had to 🙂 So we enjoyed having beer, wine and alcopops out of plastic glasses, chicken curry in pitta bread with indian snacks and crepes from all the overpriced refreshment stands. Also bought a glittery cowboy hat each to give to the children 😉

So the grounds were beautiful, a perfect setting for a summer afternoon and evening picnic, the weather was perfect, a hot air balloon took off into the sunset against the backdrop of the castle just as Will came on stage and he was excellent.

The trek back to the car was longer than remembered (as we had waited twice in queues on the way in it had broken it up) and then there was complete chaos in the car parks trying to get out. People were being complete tossers and ignoring the marshalls who were trying their best to co-ordinate it and having sat for nearly an hour we suddenly realised we were among the last few cars left in the field depsite being some of the first people back to our car 🙁 Eventually we got directed out of a different field and round a big diversion to rejoin the motorway all of which added lots of our journey time 🙁

Got home around 1am to veyr subdued parents (I think they were wiped out actually!) very reticient about the afternoon so have been pumping the kids all morning for information about what they all got up to 😉

Not sure what we’re doing today. We were going over to Ali’s but she rang last night to cancel, we need to do some food shopping, the kids want to go to Paradise Park but I’m not really in the mood for it so I am planning a food shop buying picnic type lunch and persuading them to eat and play in the garden. I have water toys and I also have painting as an outdoor activity to bribe with so I may be successful 🙂