One word? When seven would do…

We were all up early this morning as we were off to London. A while back a leaflet had come through the door with the free paper advertising the Pops in the Park concerts from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Crystal Palace Bowl. One of the advertised events was a free Noisy Kids concert so once we knew we couldn’t make Jan and Jonathan’s this weekend I phoned up for tickets – day out in London, to see an amazing orchestra and totally within our budget :).

It was advertised that there would be 2000 free parking spaces on a first come first served basis so although the dreadful weather was likely to put lots of people off we decided to get an early start and were on the road by 9am. It was a really easy run up there, we found it pretty easily despite not having a full postcode to stick into the satnav, drove straight into a parking space and joined the small crowd making their way to the event. We’d taken camping chairs, waterproofs, umbrellas and a picnic and as one of the first families to arrive set ourselves up right infront of the barrier with umbrellas propped on our chairs keeping us dry and cosy. The weather really was crap and meant numbers were in the 100s rather than the 1000s I’m sure would have turned out on a sunny day, which was a shame because it was a fab venue and a very interactive concert which greater numbers would only have helped the atmosphere of. The RPO were on a stage with a big lily pond infront between the grass and the stage. We could easily spot a harp, violins, cellos (‘so that’s what they mean in HighSchoolMusical’ :lol:), double bass, trumpets, trombones, french horn so even though we were sitting for a good half an hour before it started there was plenty to look at and chat about. It rained on and off throughout but that was fine, we had our umbrellas – Ady lent one of them to a family sitting behind us who had nothing to shelter them from the weather and we were fine squished under two massive golf umbrellas.

The presenter was excellent – really talked to the audience, had the musicians dressing up in funny props and chose five children from the audience to come up on the stage, gave them a baton each, draped them in the conductors tail coat and had them each conduct an instrument to create a new intro to the Harry Potter music. I thought Davies might have wanted to do that but he sat really low in his chair when they were asking for volunteers :lol:. They played the William Tell Overture (which made me teary – bloody hormones :lol:), Festival March from Aladdin, Ride of the Valkyries, Firebird finale, Harry Potter theme, Simpsons theme and finished off with Superman theme. The audience joined in with a song he taught us, loads of movements, clapping, ooohing and so on and all the instruments were introduced and singled out. Davies and Scarlett really enjoyed it and I thought it was excellent :). A really good event.

It had finally stopped raining so we dropped the chairs, umbrellas and picnic stuff back to the car and had a walk round Crystal Palace Park. Looking at the website we only managed to see a small area of what there was there actually as we found The Maze and then spent a mad half hour trying to get the craziest self timer shots, with cameras set up front and back and us running towards the camera in a quiet tree filled corner. Having completely worn out Davies and Scarlett who were still not recovered from our mad week we then headed for home.

Ady cooked dinner while the children settled down to watch a film and I painted some big cardboard boxes with a first coat of blue paint. Ady’s bringing me some more home tomorrow so I can fashion a tardis for Davies’ party. Having already picked up some cheap party bag bits I was trying to decide the most original idea for the bags themselves and managed to make up some little tardis boxes. I need some more blue paper though – and to tot up the actual expected guests – so I can work out how many more I need to make. Davies came and did some drawing too, doing an excellent picture of a flying rooster, a hen sitting in her henhouse watching a special chicken tv while laying and an invention to get the eggs to the house without having to go out to the henhouse if it’s raining, all powered by water mill. We’ve all been talking lots lately about different life styles and all seem to be hankering after a similar type of set up. We need to see quite where the latest venture at Ady’s work takes him before making any rash decisions but we said we’d give our current financial situation 2 years which we are rapidly approaching and whilst it has in many ways proved much easier than we feared it is also a sort of half life between our old way of living with all the downsides of that, and a more frugal and simple existance without any of the real joys of that lifestyle. No idea really what will happen in the coming year or so, but I can definitely say we won’t still be sat here doing the same thing as we are now this time next year.

The children had a bath and then we all had dinner – roast beef. Child of Our Time was on and so Davies (and Scarlett although she wasn’t paying much attention) got to watch it for the first time. Ady and I started watching it just as we were expecting Davies and although the children on it are a fair few months older than him it has been very interesting watching them grow up alongside him and the different parallels those children and Davies have gone down as they’ve gotten older. I thought last year that we were mostly closely equated to the farmers in our parenting style and thought that even more this year with their very hands off relaxed approach to child rearing, with plenty of scope for their daughter to take on responsibility but no pressure from them. She seems to be rising to the challenge of that expectation very well and I again thought that Davies is probably most similar to that child in terms of his attitude too. Interesting to see her pop to the local shop on errands just as we are starting to let Davies do compared to the children who seemed so much younger and immature in comparison. Interesting programme that – I think so every year.

Tomorrow I have various bits I need to get done, emails to answer, phonecalls to return and more party planning to be getting on with. Hopefully we’ll catch up with Lucy and The Rs at some point and then the rest of the week is spoken for again already with various meet ups with friends and working. Ady’s been spending some time watching shopping channels which amused me, no doubt picking up tips for selling and getting an orange tan, manicured nails and a fine line in meaningless drivel to fill time 😆 I can’t help fretting he may morph into that bloke Bridget Jones’ mum ran off with if I don’t keep a handle on him ;).