forever is a very long time
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The more observant among you might have noticed that there’s quite a bit of snow about.
Sledges are now a rare item. Fortunately I found a large plastic tray big enough to hold both our Daughters in the shed. A quick attack with the drill and some rope from the car and we had ourselves a sledge!
I offered to pull Chloe but she declined due to hip worries however she did offer to pull me (very) briefly.
A few months ago I entered a Nokia competition to win a Finnish Christmas for my hometown which consisted of snow, reindeer, food, drink, an open fire, some craft bits and pieces and possibly more. It was a little odd as Norwich was considered a “Northern” city but I went and voted anyway. And then forgot all about it.
On Wednesday afternoon my mobile rang but I couldn’t take the call as I was talking to someone at work. I Googled the number (natch) and found it was a PR company in London. Odd. On Thursday they rang again and I discovered that Norwich had won the Finnish Christmas event and it was due to take place on Sunday at Earlham Park. I was asked if I wanted to attend and if I wanted to go for the 2pm event or the 7pm event. The girls still both have an afternoon nap so I opted for the latter. Plus I reasoned the faux-snow would look better in the dark. The guy on the phone told me to bring ID to show I was indeed Mr Manka-Taylor, ignoring the fact that all my ID is in my old name of course, and that it’d be on for 2 and half hours.
So, Sunday rolls around, we promise the girls snow and food and maybe other things (since I’m not 100% sure of what will be on offer) wrap up warm and head to Earlham Park car park. Which is mostly empty apart from an enormous puddle. “That’s odd,” we wonder, “where is everyone? Where are the signs? Is it cancelled?” We dutifully trek down the road to the park itself and find it deserted and full of puddles for me, the only member of our party not in boots, to stand in. No sign of anything Christmas/Finnish/Nokia related at all. At this point we both question if I took the details down correctly whilst attempting to tell the girls that this particular slice of Christmas may indeed be cancelled and get us all back to the car. Coats/hats/scarves/gloves come off and we get back in the still warm car and decide to drive down past the UEA Sportspark to see if there’s anything there. We go past, see some tents then realise it is indeed happening after all. Signs might have been helpful. I pull over, drop everyone off, park and return. There’s a number of large tee-pee style tents, some small christmas trees covered with fake snow and Christmas music playing. Hooray!
We walk to the entrance, the security man says “Hang on one moment,” and goes inside. He returns followed shortly by a lady who comes to greet us and tell us that she’s very sorry but the evening event is for over 18’s only. Great! Seems that the invites were handled by A. N. Other area/company and neglected to tell people this quite important information. This does now kind of explain why I needed my ID other than to prove who I was. Grrr. We are “allowed” in the tent with the snow whereupon Bee and Miri have great fun picking up the snow, throwing it and falling over an awful lot. The girls are offered gingerbread biscuits, given a bag of chocolate coins but the reindeer and crafts etc. had all gone by that point. As it happens another family arrived slightly before us with the same situation too, they were also somewhat irked by the lack of information given to them.
All in all we were very disappointed, fortunately we hadn’t promised the girls all that would be happening so they weren’t too upset by the lack of entertainment or the short time we stayed there however both Chloe and I knew what was supposed to be on offer and were very pissed off at the mess. The people there were quite apologetic and it certainly wasn’t their fault but that doesn’t exactly fix things. We were told that they’ll contact me and send something to us in the post by way of an apology for the cock up so we’ll have to see what happens. Perhaps it’ll be an N900.
Saturday we drove to Bourne (not Jason) for the wedding of my arch nemesis namesake. We stayed at Foxwood House, just up the road from Bourne in Cawthorpe. We also got to go in the luxury of the new car. More exciting than those things combined is that we did it all without children in tow having shipped them off to my parents for the night so we could live wild and free like the relative youngsters we are. Well, Chloe’s relatively young, I’m almost 30 
. But anyway, we set off for an 80 mile trip leaving our girls behind. It was strange not having them yammering away in the car on the way there, we got to have adult conversation and everything!
We arrived at the B&B, unpacked and, whilst wondering what we could do for lunch, were brought some lovely ham rolls and a pot of fresh tea which was very nice indeed. The B&B was lovely, clean and tidy and had a good homely feel to it. A quick shower and we were off to the wedding.
The wedding went well, despite the constant drizzle that only lifted after half the photos had been taken. Typical. During the meal we were seated opposite a lovely couple with three children so spent much of the evening talking to them about children and movies and the like. More adult conversation! By half 9 we were flagging somewhat so headed back to the B&B for a lovely uninterrupted night of sleep in a super-comfortable bed. Apart from waking up at in the early morning and not knowing what time it actually was due to the clock change and only having electronic potentially auto-adjusting clocks to hand. Damn technology!
We headed down for breakfast at 8.30 having been primed for a full English. What we weren’t expecting though was cereal, toast, then a full English all followed up with a strawberry yoghurt accompanied by more fresh tea and orange juice. It was very, very tasty and we abandoned our plans to go for a Sunday lunch after that. We were also a tad full afterwards so elected to go for a walk round the nearby woods before setting off for home.
A short detour to Asda on the way home and then we stopped for tea at my parents and collected our girls who were somewhat frazzled after the clock change and the change in routine.
And that was that. Will we do it again? Maybe, I can’t see us running off round the country every weekend just yet though.
Tags: out&about
Ely
And so we come to an end with a trip to our usual meeting spot for Chloe’s family at Ely. We walked around enjoying the sunshine, the girls went on the park, we had a meal at Prezzo’s, we found a geocache and then returned home.
Tomorrow I’m back to work and leave the Fortnight of Fun™ behind. I’ve had a wonderful time off and am very glad we decided not to go away. For one it saved us money but also got us out and about enjoying Norfolk’s attractions with very little stress and worry over what to do/where to go. The weather was excellent for the first week and somewhat rubbish the second but we still managed to have a good time, even if it did mean changing our plans.
So long Fortnight of Fun™ I’ll miss you.
House Viewings and a Wedding
Apparently we’re thinking of moving. Yes, I was surprised too. Chloe’s been looking at houses on and off over the past month and suddenly we’re actually arranging viewings and valuations and all that jazz. Yikes!
So, we headed back fairly early from Topcroft for two house viewings. The first was literally 1 minute’s walk from where we are now, it was nice but had a small, small garden and I remain unconvinced for now.
The second was lovely. It’s a three year old new build with three floors, loads of space, a lovely secluded garden and a park 30 seconds away. However it’s in Old Catton and thus is more than double the distance out of the city we are now and thus leaves us conflicted due to Chloe’s non-driving status. It also had a slightly small master bedroom, despite the en-suite.
However we haven’t got our house on the market yet and don’t actually have any idea of our budget, we’re getting our house valued tomorrow (and again on Tuesday) and need to speak to our IFA to see what mortgage we could afford. Let’s see what happens shall we?
After a brief trip to the city for Chloe to have a job interview we got ourselves ready for Chloe’s friend Laura’s wedding reception which was great: chocolate fountain, cake, muffins, pizza, curry, chilli, a bouncy castle, lovely garden and gorgeous decorations:
Tags: out&about
Dinosaur Adventure Park
At last! The weather didn’t look brilliant but this was pretty much our last chance to go before I head back to work on Monday so we took the bull by the horns and ripped it’s head off. Or something.
A picnic was packed and off we headed. Bee and Miri have a rough idea about dinosaurs, or “dizosaurs” as Mirabelle calls them, but didn’t quite get that they weren’t real leading to a few moments of Bee being scared as we walked round the Dinosaur trail. On encountering a small velociraptor style dino in a cage that we were showing Bee wasn’t real by putting our fingers in its mouth Chloe and I had to restrain ourselves from pretending it had bitten us. Fortunately our willpower and good sense beat the humour. A rare occasion.
The girls had a great time, they loved the slides/assault course/trampoline element along with collecting all the dinosaur stamps and running about the farm where they made friends with some “chippins” and some lambs and where we saw a peacock terrorising some goats. “Check out this fucking peacock”:
After making friends with the dinosaurs:
We headed to Topcroft to stay at my parents for the night. The girls went down very easily as they were exhausted from all the running around and Chloe and I watched The Incredible Hulk (not bad but not great. There was too much unexplained characterisation, especially from Tim Roth’s character. I preferred the Ang Lee Hulk so would give this one 3/5).
Tags: out&about