One word? When seven would do…

Ady has yet another little extra role at work of being the nominated ‘green’ person meaning he is trying to help the company be more environmentally friendly in any possible ways. He is also tasked with finding new products suitable for selling on QVC so is registered with all sorts of places under that hat. Yesterday he got through his visitor pass for Ecobuild a 3 day event at Earls Court. The only day he could go was today so he asked if we wanted to go along too. It was free to attend and having spend fruitless time trying to ring and email them to ask if we could bring children I found some feedback from exhibitors at last years show talking about how visitors had brought children with them so decided it would be fine and registered them as visitors too.

Back in the days of Dreamieland both Ady and I did various Trade Fairs – mostly at NEC, Birmingham but a few smaller ones at Manchester GMEX and other London venues. My most memorable one was a toy fair in March 2003 where I was away from a 4 month old Scarlett for 12 hours after snow delayed all the trains and had a queue of 100 people at the train station all asking down the queue who was going where and coordinating our own taxi sharing home so we all got home that night (friendly place, Manchester :)). I’d been in agony for hours without a baby feeding from me every couple of hours, started leaking on the train and practically exploded when I got home 😆 My overriding memory other than that of trade fairs is that your feet hurt, the food is overpriced and you get lots and lots of free stuff. We did take Davies and Scarlett to a toy and gift fair at NEC when they were smaller on the way home from a visit down south – Scarlett was still pushchair age and they’d not been the only children there. Our plan was to see how they found it and if it proved unenjoyable or difficult then I would take them off and we’d meet back up with Ady again later today.

So we were out early, parked at the library and caught the 839am train, changed at Gatwick and were at Earls Court just after 10am when it opened. As I was printing off mine and the children’s passes one of the doorpeople came over to say they didn’t really allow children in and that it did say that on the poster outside. I was gearing up to ask just what use a poster outside the venue is when 99% of the visitors will have travelled bloody miles especially to attend and to start ranting about how I’d attempted to check whether it was ok yesterday but been unable to get a reply (still no response to my email even now!) when she very patronisingly said that they wouldn’t turn us away now but we would have to ‘keep the children under control’ and that ‘we couldn’t have them running about or screaming’. I agreed that that wouldn’t be acceptable indeed and in we went.

Davies and Scarlett were utter stars, but to be honest no better than I would expect – and know I am confident to expect of them. They were really interested in the stands and exhibits, being both knowledgable and interested in green issues and also aware that self-building is something we might one day think about doing. For Davies, particularly the idea of learning about environmentally friendly ways of building is of great interest with his passion for architecture. They were, aside from a tiny baby in a sling, the only children there and while I would be lying if I said they didn’t attract the odd glance or even tut (totally unwarranted!) they were far more of a novelty and treated very well by 99% of the people we talked to. We stopped for drinks, lunch, ice cream (oh, the ice cream!) and were there for about 4 hours. They came away with a stress ball each – which they are currently retelling each other and anyone who will listen anecdotes about how I had one when I was in labour with Davies and when it failed to ease any of the labour pains got bitten by me instead! They got two similar rubbery material to stress ball little houses each (great for chucking at people without hurting them much, according to the man who gave them to them), a little gel handwarmer each which we timed the heat output for (35 minutes) and have since reactivated and have ready for use tomorrow, discussed other uses for such technology (smaller ones to fit in gloves, insole shaped ones to fit in wellies made of more flexible and stronger material) and googled to find out exactly how they work, having done a fair explanation in the middle of Earl’s Court which was clearly being listened to by a greater audience than just D and S :lol:. They also got a variety of pens, fuzzy bugs, a very nice rucksack each (which will come in very handy for all those future moments when they want to bring toys, moan that they are hungry or thirsty or ask me to carry things for them – evil cackle!) and loads of sweeties along the way.

Ady talked to loads of people about various things for work – most interestingly some solar powered aircon which is so simple but would be massively effective in the nursery greenhouses (me and the children looked at the solar lighting that bounces light round corners in a reflective tube from a panel in the roof out through light units into rooms in a house – again very simple but effective). He also talked to some of the many, many companies there selling living roofs which was easily the most common product there today. It was interesting to discover that all the companies he spoke to buy in their plants from abroad for the roofs so potentially a market for his company. Finally we were very impressed with a brick company which among other clever ideas have designed bricks which are bat boxes and swift nesting boxes to be incorporated into new builds. Some great ideas :).

We spent a while looking at a very interesting area where they were doing demonstrations of straw bale building, making bricks from straw and mud, making pegs with old fashioned manual wood turning tools and more. Davies and I were really interested in the timber house frame made of shaped wood of cam and dowel style fixings held in place with pegs. We all commented several times on how ‘back to basics’ some of the ideas were, taking inspiration from age old techniques and ideas about construction, insulation, heating and so on that we seemed to have lost somewhere along the way and are now rediscovering. Davies has been very fascinated by the Roman arch building we saw at Fishbourne last week and was explaining the whole idea to Ady when we saw some bridges along the train journey this morning and I was telling him about dry stone walling. We also liked the wool roof insulation and the rain water harvesting systems we saw.

Kevin McCloud was there earlier today speaking although we didn’t see him and we were approached by Five Production company with leaflets incase we were doing anything they might want to make films of and some people from Dragon’s Den came over too to ask if we were looking for investment! Fame and fortune were within our grasp – but of course Ady brushes such things away now with a weary air about him :lol:. There was also a food stand run by River Cottage but Hugh wasn’t there himself and the food was all a bit lentil-y so we ate at the Pizza Express stand instead :).

The most exciting bit for Ady was definitely when he was invited to have a go on the exercise bike and light up four lights to enter a prize draw for a fold up bike. He was unfortunate enough to do directly after a guy who was actually carrying a cycle helmet with him (having probably cycled down from Scotland or something) but did really well and only had to sit down for a while and stop wheezing afterwards. I was most entertained by the fact they didn’t even bother asking me if I wanted a go! 😆 He got a free energy drink for doing it though, and the kids were thrilled.

We were keen to get back for swimming lessons if at all possible and by 2pm reckoned we’d had a good enough walk round to take in anything really interesting or important so went to the station. The best route back seemed to be to Clapham Junction and then direct to Lancing so we did that. The first bit of the journey Davies sat with me and Scarlett sat with Ady and we played two seperate games of ‘one day I went to the supermarket and I bought…’ Davies has my leaning toward the ridiculous though and ours had us coming out of the supermarket, going to B&Q to buy two planks of wood then going back to the supermarket to buy… type twists. Then we played train window scenery bingo (trampoline, horse, plane, road type stuff) and finally what does that cloud look like to you? Once we’d moved and were all sitting together with a little plastic table I got out a bag of little 3cm x 3cm rubber squares I’d collected from one of the stands. It is brighly coloured rubber to be used for flooring and comes in about 70 different colours and loads of different textures and they had all these little colour samples to take. I thought it would be great for mosaic picture type playing so gathered as much as I could without looking very odd and they played with that on the table making pictures. Then we build a tower to see how high we could go before the train movement knocked it down and which was the most stable method of placing the squares (ie not a single stack).

Once we got off the train at Lancing we walked past Woolworths and right at the front of the store was a huge end of Doctor Who figures on BOGOF at £6.99, making them £3.50 each. Davies chose a Sycorax that he’s been after for a while and Tarly chose a Rose so that was an unexpected surprise for them :). We got home with just enough time for them to get changed and me to plait Tarly’s hair before heading back out again for swimming lessons.

They both had a really good lesson – Tarly is really coming along and I can see such a change in her in just half a term, Carolyn the instructor said she just wants to see a little bit more evidence that she can swim across with floats without putting her feet down and she will get her first badge. Davies has definitely passed into being a swimmer and now just needs all that practise on perfecting strokes, building up strength and getting his techniques and things like breathing sorted out. Best £60 each a term my Dad ever spent ;).

Home for tea for them and then bed where they both fell straight asleep after a long and tiring day. They both said they really enjoyed the Ecobuild and were really glad they’d come. I know it wasn’t an event for children particularly but I think sometimes events not designed to be ‘child friendly’ are actually far more interesting and appealing to children than the ones tailor made for them.