The Country Show

Well today, at last, the sun seemed to break through what has been a truly wintery week.  What a difference a little bit of sunshine makes. Today was the Hadleigh Show, an event I look forward to every year. In a moment of ambitious optimism we decided to all go, hoping for few tantrums and meltdowns and  as little rain as possible!

It started well, until H spied the Australian leather hats and decided that he couldn't live without one - and any suggestion otherwise met with screaming and sobbing. We doggedly persevered with promises of hats for good behaviour and enjoyed the sunshine, ponies (my daughter informed me"girls don't ride horses Mummy")  and laughed at the Dog Agility Team whilst keeping an eye open for the most promising coffee stand for essential caffeine top-ups to steady the nerves. 

Queueing for lunch required more paper bags than we could muster, so lacking invisibility or at least limited visibility we gritted our teeth and stoically reminded H of the promised hat if he managed to wait with at least attempted patience. Someone please remind me next time to obtain a menu from the burger van in advance to allow him to make his choice from a clearly set out list of choices though, since interpreting a chalkboard list whilst waiting in line was never going to work.

The twins enjoyed sitting in the fire engine, always a highlight of the day for them. This year though A had more in mind than pretending to drive and managed to start the computer up! A few clicks on the mouse and he'd reconfigured the nav-com, and the engine was destined for Pontefract. Swift intervention from Richard prevented trouble but A was really very disappointed! ( I think he had designs on following in Fireman Sam's footsteps, he's always had a penchant for fire engines. ) K's wish for the day was to see some baby piglets though and in this we failed to deliver but she did concede the cows were "quite nice". Fortunately Richard stopped short of pointing out the nearest we got to baby pigs were the bacon rolls at the burger van since we had only just managed to stop H getting progressively more frustrated as he struggled with the concept of eating meat whilst admiring the cute animals on display! The highlight of my day was getting caught in the Joules tent when the Heaven's opened, and I was forced to spend fifteen minutes browsing.... and spending more than I ought to. Well, it was obviously Fate intervening and it would have been rude not to!

Eventually, we congratulated ourselves on achieving a family outing relatively unscathed and bought the coveted hat. I must admit it really suits him - and he is now wearing it asleep in bed!!