One word? When seven would do…

Six years ago (almost to the day) Davies, Scarlett and I met up with some previously ‘imaginary’ friends at the Diana Playground in London. In many ways it was the start of our Home Ed journey. It was the first time we met Jan & Jonathan, Alison, Layla, Jax, Sarah and Barbara – people who I now number among my best friends.

That was one of the first trips I took to London with the kids and an epic journey home. Today we were off to meet more friends at the same venue. Turned out six years on we still haven’t quite cracked doing it smoothly ;).

Everyone was up, fed and ready to leave by 845am, we drove to the library, parked the car and bought train tickets (having already had a mini drama when I realised my family and friends railcard was out of date and despite me being convinced I had renewed it I couldn’t find a current one so we had to leave without. So £5 more on rail tickets than planned – grr 🙁 . I’d left without a cup of tea as the Asda right next to the station had a vending machine last time we went to London so I could pop in and pick one up to bring on the train rather than bolting one made with cold water before we left. Turned out they don’t have the machine any more 🙁 So in serious need of tea we bought some pastries there and then I ducked into a little cafe and got a takeaway tea before we went to the platform. 909am saw us on seated on our train, complete with pastries all round and tea for me, my book for Book group tomorrow (large print copy, argh for being heavy carting round London but I needed to get it read) and the kids DSs. Davies struggled a bit to settle and spent some time trying to get Tarly and I to chat / play games but eventually we were all doing our thing.

We got to Victoria, crossed to the tube and jumped on the circle and district line getting off at Kensington High Street. Despite having been to the Diana playground three times before we’d not done train and tube from home before – the first time we black cabbed it, the second we went from Reading with Layla and Alison and the third we went with Em from within London. For some reason I had in my head it was left from the tube so we set off left. 20 minutes later I was forced to concede it might not be left after all. So we retraced our steps a little and asked someone who said it was right from the tube. So 15 minutes back to the tube, another 10 to Kensington Gardens and then a further 10 minutes through the park – London parks are HUGE. I had a child holding each hand, both Davies and Scarlett still default to holding my hand if we’re walking somewhere. I know it will end and I know we’re probably way past the age most kids hold a parents hand but they do most of the time. Which is lovely and special, but given both of them tend to prance rather than walk it gives me an odd gait when I have that going on at the end of both arms 😆 Add to that my very heavy bag slung over a shoulder containing food, drink, that large print book and my still slightly dodgey ankle. Within ten minutes my previously super comfortable shoes had given my a HUGE blister on the sole of my foot so I now had the appearance of a marionette operated by a three year old with both arms and legs marching along to different tunes pulled by children and hobbling with bad ankles and blisters and a bag throwing the whole balance out of kilter.

We paused a while to watch some people abseiling down a building in a crazy fashion and then continued on our epic journey to the park finally arriving nearly an hour after we left the tube 🙁

Fortunately the company of LovelyEm and later Ali made it all totally worth it 🙂 I barely saw Davies and Scarlett who had a whale of a time and just appeared every so often for food, drink or to be fawned over by me :).

LovelyEm and co left to get back for Cubs and we galvanised ourselves to be off not long after. Ali suggested the bus to Victoria which given the bus stop was a much closer option than the tube sounded like a good plan to us, our travelcards are valid on train, tube and bus anyway so we went for that. We got straight onto our train at Victoria which was already packed full and standing room only really. It was one that split further down the line with Ali and Freya needing the rear half and us the front half but we decided to stay on the rear half with them and just move forward when it split, theoretically so we could chat. Infact the packed train and demands of children meant that didn’t actually happen anyway with Ali and I managing just the smallest bit of verbal banter and resorting to texting each other. I did chat to a very nice Australian bloke who was standing next to me for a bit though and Scarlett rang Ady while Davies sent me texts saying ‘poop’. Oh it was a laugh! 😉

We moved forward, sat on the floor for a bit and finally walked down the train and found seats for the final bit of the journey. Scarlett had brought a little bird spotting book with her so sat charming the other passengers by finding all the birds she’d seen in London and knowing all their names – for a child who can’t read she is surprisingly adept at finding birds in a book 🙂

As we went past the library we called in to collect books for tomorrow’s book group only to find the big boss is off sick. They had been ringing me to find out whether I was happy to host it and having not actually finished the book yet I was quite happy to make the call to cancel it so brought home the list of contact numbers for everyone and rang round to say we wouldn’t be meeting tomorrow after all.

Back at home the kids had a bath and dinner and I retired to the bath with a glass of wine.

Ady came home, the kids went to bed and we had dinner and finally watched some of the Crazy Gap Year programme having been told about it by about 6 different people.