Mum-e Blog

The drive to Aldeburgh in Suffolk, where we are spending a few days, is only a couple of hours from home, yet the kids spent the whole journey whingeing. This despite a packed picnic of ‘treats’ (breadsticks, homemade gingerbread men, a few crisps, a chocolate crispy cake…) and endless CDs of everything from Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton stories to High School Musical 1, 2 and 3.
Still, now we are here it is blissful, the puppy loves being at the seaside and we are going to spend the day at Rendlesham Forest where there are marked walks and a great playground.
My top tip for making sure they don’t start moaning again that their legs hurt or they are hungry?
Make an I-Spy board. Basically draw a grid, fill it in with pictures (don’t worry if your artistic skills are limited, it only needs very basic drawings) of things they might see. Make some of them easy – leaf, bird, branch, cloud, that kind of thing – and some harder eg stream, pine cone, woodpecker, blackberry. And always have a prize for when they have filled the whole thing in.
I’ve bought them each a Crayola magic ink colouring set in the desperate hope that it might keep them entertained for two hours on the way home at the weekend….

If you haven’t booked tickets for this yet you really should – it’s touring the UK. Brilliantly educational and entertaining for kids and adults – the animatronic dinosaurs are brilliant. I saw it in the States because I was writing a review and can genuinely say it’s a must see. It’s showing at loads of arenas around the country – including the O2 in August.

Today I am presenting a new regular slot on my blog. Every Monday, to start the week, two links to fabulous websites that make my chaotic life a little bit easier – and hopefully you’ll find them useful too. I’m calling the post Magic Monday.

So, here are today’s:

1. www.dayoutwiththekids.co.uk
This is a great site for the summer holidays. Click on a county on the map, choose an age range and then loads of great places for outings come up, all colour coded under headings like Animals and Nature, Museum & Gallery, Waterfun and Play Centre. Click on your choice for more info. A really good range of places – not just the obvious one you’ve already heard of, and really quick and easy to use.

2. www.lakeland.co.uk
For every household gizmo you will ever need and more… I LOVE Lakeland. Who could not want one of these 3-in-1 Pineapple Corer/Slicer/Peelers? I certainly do. Along with an avocado slicer, fizzy drinks bottle stopper, chopper scraper and an apple juicer. And loads of other stuff. Just as fun to browse as it is to buy. And brilliant for presents.

I was invited by the lovely people at O2, who host this blog, to a special cinema screening of their new interactive 3D advert which is showing before some performances of Ice Age 3 – and asked Little Princess One to join me. She was beside herself with excitement and, for once, behaved impeccably, sitting nicely with her comic on the tube, eating loads of sushi at the ‘moving table restaurant’ and then skipping happily beside me through Leicester Square to the Vue Cinema.
There was a game beamed on to the lobby floor by O2 which was great fun – she had to jump on the asteroids (’Wow, this cinema is so cool to have game, Mummy’) and follow a moving space rocket, all very clever.
Here she is, playing it….

Then we went into the cinema armed with 3D glasses. Boy, they have come a long way since those paper ones with red and blue crinkly lenses. These were actually like proper sunglasses – look:

For the ad the audience had to steer a space ship on screen through an asteroid field by waving their arms around. Great fun and very smart – like a giant game of Wii. Then we watched the movie which is really fun – if hugely geologically inaccurate, which is slightly annoying. Still, I can recommend for anyone aged four and upwards.
On the way home I asked LP1 what her favourite part of the evening had been. ‘It has been my best night our ever,’ she yawned. ‘But the best bit was the advert. I loved it. I love O2.’
Oh dear, I fear I am turning her into a little advertising robot.

So, there we were, standing at the check in for our flight to France at Gatwick at 6am. The Little Princesses were, for once, behaving beautifully,  despite being up at 4.15 that morning, and we were discussing what we were going to do once we arrived in Montpellier. Then the woman at check in said it.

“Did you know that children’s passports expire after five years and your daughter’s one needs renewing? You can’t fly with us. Goodbye.”

I am ashamed to say that I was so taken aback and disappointed that I burst into tears at just the same time as the LPs.

There was nothing to do but go straight back home, where Not So Alpha Male disappeared upstairs to make some calls.

When he appeared he announced that we would be going to a VERY smart UK hotel (we’d have to share the double bed with LP1 while LP2 would have a pull out next to us, which wasn’t exactly romantic for our 10th weddding anniversary, but hey ho…)

Then on Wednesday he can renew the passport for LP1 and we’ll head off to somewhere else in France. So it could be a lot worse and we’ve all ended up having a lovely time so far.

But I am so humiliated by the whole episode. How could I not have known? How do other people know that you have to renew a passport for a kid after five years, not ten like an adult? Why do the passport office/airline not warn you about these things? Or am I just, as one friend – now former friend – said, a ‘total clot’?

Saturday

We headed off in the car for a family walk in Wendover Woods (http://tiny.cc/1m1Cg) at the weekend.

It was while we were en route that I realised there are now three of us in this marriage. Me, Not So Alpha Male – and Joanna Lumley. And if it’s not her, the woman on the sat nav certainly sounds ike her. ‘At the end of the road, turn left’, she purrs. ‘At the roundabout take the third exit,’ she says, breathily. Grrrr. I hate her.

And not just because she sounds like a girl on the end of one of those chat lines. It’s mainly because he LOVES her. Way more than he loved me when I did the map reading and directions and actually I am really good at that stuff. (It’s a myth that women are bad with maps. Men just spread that one around because they don’t like us being in charge of anything.)

Not only that, but when Ms Tom Tom gets it wrong – like that day she sent us right into a major traffic jam on the M25 despite her being programmed to react to traffic news – he never shouts at her.  He just makes some comment about how the traffic updates are sometimes a bit delayed. And when occasionally I used to send him down a wrong turning, I got a right earful. AND if I dare to suggest, for one moment, that possibly she is about to make an error and I’d think maybe a different route…’Darling, are you really going to argue with her? Please don’t be a control freak. You must admit she almost always gets it right.’ So I sit, silently, simmering with rage, willing her to get it wrong. Meanwhile the Little Princesses start nagging at me to change the playlist on the iPhone, or to give them a snack, or play I-Spy. And now, of course, I’ve got no choice but to do whatever they ask – after all, it’s hardly like I can say I’m busy reading the map, is it?

Wendover Woods, by the way, is gorgeous – amazing views, great marked trails for walks or cycles, great cafe, fab playground.