I booked tickets for UK Aware ages ago as it looked like a show the kids and I would enjoy. They’ve been to several big shows, accompanying Ady and I to some of the big NEC trade shows way back when they were still pushchair age along with Eco Build and the Car Show more recently. I did set my alarm and woke but only to turn it off rather than press snooze so I woke again with a start just before 8am and we had a mad rushing around half an hour getting dressed, making and packing a picnic and grabbing breakfast to go for the kids. We managed it though and were on Lancing station platform with tickets bought by 830am which I thought was pretty impressive. The casualty was my first cup of tea of the day though and sadly there was no buffet cart on the train :(.
We missed our connecting train (I suspected we might, we only had something like a minute and it was at Clapham Junction on platform 3 when we pulled in to platform 13 or something similar so virtually no chance). It was cold on the platform waiting and I debated going to get a cup of tea from the kiosk as we had about a 20 minute wait but Scarlett wanted to do some guerilla gardening and had brought several of her seed bombs as the woman who ran the workshop told us she’d thrown them off train windows onto wasteland. Scarlett wasn’t sure about throwing things off trains but she did find homes for a couple of her seedbombs today on miserable bits of train stations. It’ll be good to revisit them next year and see if a carpet of wildflowers have sprung up :).
We got our next train and were at Olympia by about 11am. My overall impressions of UK Aware were that it was far smaller, less well patronised by both exhibitors and visitors than I’d been expecting. There is still rather too much of a commercialist slant to it given it’s eco credentials and that far from the usual feeling at these events of not having seen half of what was there we managed to wander round about 4 times and do everything on offer. It was a good day out though and both Davies and Scarlett said they really enjoyed it, we all learnt something new and had a nice ‘just the three of us’ time so I’m glad we went. 🙂
We talked to people on various stands – I particularly liked Eco Creative Art (website still under construction) who had chairs, benches, a standard lamp and more made from old newspapers, a pair of shoes made from old maps and some toys made from water bottles. I liked inspiredtimemagazine and talked to Ecomodo
, 10:10 (where I bought a tag) and various others.
We spent lots of time at the Global Action Plan stand where we did quizzed about what appliances use most energy, Davies raced two cars round a track, one loaded up with luggage to see which was quicker and used less fuel, Scarlett balanced cows, lambs, pigs and chickens to see which animals have the most and least environmental impact to farm for food. We all had a go at cycling to run things by pedal power and later on we returned there to make newspaper origami plant pots and tetrapak wallets.
We watched Professor Kayoss and the Save the World club show and then decamped to sit outside the cafe upstairs with our picnic having nipped in to buy a takeaway cup of tea for me. At last :). We looked down at all the things happening below to plot what else we wanted to do and returned to do the arts and crafts. I got distracted by the Onya stand as I’ve been coveting one of the rucksacks for a while and they were half price at the show. One of the Global Action staff came around and asked Davies and Scarlett to go off with her to do some crafts so I said I’d catch them up and also chatted to a woman about eczema cream too on my way to them.
I wanted to check out the recycled clothes area as it had been really quiet earlier – there was a clothes swap (which was still really quiet), an upcycle area where you could customise things you’d swapped and the Morsbag stall which lured me in with sewing machines and funky fabric. The kids wanted to go off so having extracted a promise they’d stay together, not leave the building and come back to me I said they could go and set about making my bag. I chose a fab dark red material, cut out the pieces, ironed them and then waited for my go on the sewing machine, where under guidance I sewed it altogether :). Really pleased with it :).
Davies and Scarlett had gone off to the second showing of the Professor Kayoss show and I got there just as a poor adult was cycling to pedal power it – I had been the one to have to do it earlier in the day so it was nice to see what it did from the front view. I felt we’d comprehensively done all on offer at the show by then, so it being nearly 4pm and later than I’d expected to be leaving we headed off for the station.
The journey home was fine, about an hour altogether waiting on platforms but we were home by just after 630pm. Ady was dealing with a family crisis (his mother and brother had fallen out and Chris needed some big brotherly advice and support. Sometimes I wonder if Ady is harsh on his mother not seeing her at all and then I hear about the way she has treated Chris and realise she is a nutter and we really really don’t need her in our lives). I ran the kids a bath while they had a speedy dinner and we were just about to start reading stories when Ady arrived home.
I read about 10 minutes worth of ‘I was a rat’ and then the kids went off to bed, I had a very long soak in the bath to wash London and trains off and cooked dinner. Am very pleased indeed to have reached my target goal for my swim sponsorship tomorrow – thank you so much to all of you who have sponsored me xxx.