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.