Wednesday, 20th February 2013

There are some days where you just feel that the whole of the world is designed to cause you some level of failure. Laws regarding large numbers would deem this collision of events inevitable, and chaos theory would likely indicate that the smallest element was the cause as a tumble effect happened. I could even look back and trace several cause lines myself resulting in blame ultimately lying with me, mum, Leigh or the Norman invaders of 1066.

But the actual truth is there was no blame, just a series of unfortunate circumstances that led to a less than happy day out.

Where were you going?

We discovered that Alton Towers had free entry for children during half term, the weather forecast was light cloud and sunshine and Leigh and the kids would be available, so off to Alton Towers we went.

We woke early, collected Grandma, and hit the Motorway at 07:39.

At 08:23 the first of the days collisions of causality happened as we got a flat in moderately heavy traffic on the M6, as detailed elsewhere on this blog. This set us back about 90-110 minutes as we needed to get the tyre fixed, but by 10:30-ish we were back on the M6.

11:35 we got to Alton Towers, Ben seemed in a slightly odd mood but we attributed this to the delays and issues, he seemed too upset at minor things which should have been a warning sign but we all ignored it thinking it would pass.

The Rot Sets In

Ben’s weird mood had interesting elements, he was happy when on the rides, but totally distraught at the smallest thing, he even cried because we agreed to take him on a ride!

Added to this the cloud did not dissipate with no patches on sunshine, it seemed to be grey all day. The wind had changed direction and had an icy touch that cut to the bone and both of the kids were developing a severe case of tetchyness towards being cold and the wind chilling them.

We went to the soft play as Ben had become totally distraught, he wasn’t even playing the most basic of favoured games. We couldn’t make words out that he was trying to say as he was crying so much. In the end all I could do was to give him a cuddle, and he instantly went to sleep on me. It was clear that he wasn’t feeling well, his head felt warm and his nose was now pouring goo.

When Ben awoke he went on the soft play where they discriminate based on size. This meant our two year old was put in the play area with six year olds, I understand the need to distinguish play based on some metric, but size is a bad one. Some children are tall, some short, so there were three year olds in with one year olds and two year olds in with six. There should be age bands, and I think we will have to complain to the Park as Ben was trampled by very big kids, not by malice.

Needless to say this made him more upset, we did the best to keep him amused, took them on more rides and played singing and dancing, but it was apparent that both the kids were being chipper for us.

Journey’s End

We left at 16:30 and headed home, we obviously hit heavy traffic -1and the roads were slightly treacherous resulting in less than happy adults. But, again not too bad, just another minor event on our trail of mediocre woes.

Ben has managed to once again get a small fever and is suffering from a cold, Elliott is really unimpressed by the cold, and next time we go to a theme park we will have to carry things in backpacks to keep the kids amused in the queues.

Value for Money

One would think that this represented a poor time in terms of value for money, thirty pounds of fuel, one hundred and thirty for new tyres and a lot of time spent waiting around with cold children and adults.

But, that would be a surface reading. I enjoyed being out with my family, they had good times when the mood took them, the day was long but filled with things, even the breakdown was a learning experience and an exercise in minor crisis management.

Also, when he wanted comfort my son wanted his daddy to hold him and felt so comforted by being cuddled by me that he went to sleep, that’s got to be a win.

“You live, you learn, you lose, you learn”