One word? When seven would do…

Yesterday was a planned ages in advance as diaries seemed to be full day trip to London to meet up with Em, Eve and Rei :). Em had suggested the Museum Of Childhood which sounded a great place for a visit and also one suitable to going to with friends rather than some of the museums which are better for doing just us so we can talk about the exhibits instead of run wild with mates (them) while I trail behind shushing and trying desperately to get them to look at things instead :lol:.

So the children and I were up early, dressed, breakfasted and picnic packed and off walking to the station. I was convinced I had allowed more than enough time for the walk(10-15 mins max) and buying tickets etc. but somehow despite walking quick enough to have the children moaning about their pace and stride in comparison to mine we were still struggling for time. The ticket office is the other side of the crossing to where we arrive at the station and indeed where we need to get on a train. The gates were down so we dashed over the footbridge, across to the cashpoint as I recalled at the last minute that they don’t take delta cards and then as the ticket office had a massive queue we went back over the footbridge as the gates were down again to the platform for our side and joined the equally big queue for the self service ticket machine. The woman in front of us kindly let us go infront of her as she overheard me telling the children ours was the next train due to arrive, but that flustered me enough along with the children both wanting to press the touch screen buttons that I bought the wrong tickets :roll:. Instead of the travelcard which gets us return rail tickets to London and inclusive tube tickets too for under £20 I bought single rail tickets for £16. And only realised once we were on the train which pulled in just as the machine spewed the change and tickets out.

We stood for the train journey up to Haywards Heath (about half an hour) and made friends with a woman taking her siamese cat to the vets in a wheely cage. Then we got a train to London Bridge where we sat in the end with the luggage racks which filled up lots when we stopped at Gatwick Airport. We played paper, rock, scissors and the ‘on Monday I went to the supermarket and I bought’ memory game. And talked about luggage and bomb threats. We then totally deviated from the journey planner of the tube route and got there earlier than expected anyway despite stopping to buy tube tickets and get a tube map.

The museum was good, I guess we were there for maybe half an hour before Em and the girls arrived; time to find the loos, look at the zoetropes and start playing a make your own character to go through a platform computer game terminal – sort of a rudimentary Bamzookis :). The children took all of about ten minutes to warm up to each other and then we walked round the rest of the museum as a gaggle. The children were interested in the puppets, the ‘antique’ fisher prices stuff that they have seen at grandparents’, the geomag Big Ben and a lights and optic fibre area. Em and I enjoyed the nostalgia of toys from our own childhood and the custom made dolls houses made as replicas of rich children’s own homes and decorated in miniature.

We left and sat in a park next door to eat lunch. Well Em and I sat and ate lunch; Davies chased pigeons, Rei worried about him chasing pigeons, Eve worried me she’d got lost by sitting on the floor next to our bench and Scarlett ate carrots. They were all very adamant that the park was not a park at all as it had no play area. Em and I speculated that it might actually be Bethnal Green :lol:. Put to the vote all the children wanted to go to the Diana playground at Kensington Gardens so that’s what we did. As we left what I will now call Bethnal Green there was an interesting discussion between the children about what makes a birds feathers fall out and quite how it happens. Neither Em or I could contribute anything concrete factually to the conversation but we did enjoy listening to Davies speak with utter confidence and authority of tone even though we suspected he was talking nonsense! 😆 I’ve since googled and can answer any future questions on the matter.

On the underground Scarlett sat with Eve and Em and was impressed with Eve’s reading while introducing them to Rose her cuddly dinosaur who accompanied us to London (much against my advice). Rose, who is a triceratops was only christened on the train on the way up to London as Rose, having previously enjoyed the more Scarlett-like name of ‘Dinosaury’ previously 😆 I stood with Rei and Davies who were being shrill and rowdy pulling faces at their own reflections in the window 😆 Eventually we all sat together and Scarlett, Rei and Davies managed a three way game of paper, rock, scissors.

The park, as always, was fab. The sun shone, the children played, we chatted and drank caffine :). What struck me most was that aside from poor Rei chipping a tooth in a wonky leap from the pirate ship and Em having to intervene as a horrid child with a toy rake managed to irritate Scarlett and Eve in their game and then pin Rei down while brandishing his rake we didn’t have to deal with the children at all. There were no fallings out between them, they mostly paired off into Davies and Rei & Scarlett and Eve couplings, coming together as a foursome every so often and were utterly happy and absorbed in their games. Scarlett and Eve spent ages burying Rose in the sand at one point completely losing her. I was called in to assist and was told ‘in this general area’ when I asked just where she’d been buried. It was JUST like that old AA advert ‘Kevin, where exactly did you bury the car?’ ‘In the sand!’ 😆 😆

Ady rang to say he was in Crawley so would we like him to drive the extra few miles further up and collect us at about 4pm. Given I hadn’t sorted out my ticket dilemma and was likely to have to spend another £15 odd quid to get us home again this was very good news so we arranged to take the tube as south as we could get (Wimbledon seemed most sensible) and meet him there. When told we would be leaving soon Davies and Rei insisted they still needed to save the world and wanted to know if we thought they could do it in 15 minutes. We assured them they could manage it in ten – and they did :). It was a lovely afternoon, excellent company, great conversations, sunshine and happy children :).Thanks lovely Em x

Aside from a slightly daunting encounter with a drunk man on the tube it was straightforward and we met Ady with a big cup of tea for me and a plan to pop into Ikea for the children’s tea – both very gratefully recieved. 🙂 We got home about 830pm in the end and I showered the blackness off the children (along with plenty of sand!) before dispatching them to bed. Yesterday should have been Beavers but Davies had been happy enough to miss it and seems very content not to return so our plan is to complain to the group scout leader and for him to make up some little letters / cards to hand out to the couple of lads there he would like to stay in touch with. So it continues to bubble away undealt with as yet but I do have a plan now.