Interesting Facts

The Badger Moot 2012 – Part Two: Halloween

Thursday 8th November 2012Monday 12th November 2012Baggie

So welcome to part two of my first two part update. If you have missed part one please click here.

For the first time in nine years the Badger Moot occured over Halloween. Every year we do a little something for the kids for Halloween, usually involving a piñata in a suitably Halloweeny form, this year, however, we went one step further and had our second fancy dress night of the week.

The Manor house is spooky enough and we quite often try to freak each other out with tales of unexplained noises or movements out of the corner of your eye. It definitely has a history and I am sure it could tell many a tale. Adam, Lucy, Steve and Zöe had volunteered to organise the party and food and dress the house with Halloween decorations. To allow them time to get everything ready we all headed out of the house and into the Dorset countryside.

We headed first to Bridport to collect a few minor items to add to our costumes and then we were going to head further down the coast. However the October weather had other ideas and the heavens opened. It wasn’t the fact that it was raining, it wasn’t the fact that it begun hailing, it was the fact that it was hitting you horizontally. So we took shelter in the car and since there appeared to be no break in the clouds we just took a drive down the coast road towards Abbotsbury to watch the power of the sea crashing into the shore from the safety and dry of the car. That killed a little bit of time but eventually we had to head back to the manor to dry off and get ready for the evening.

Banned from the kitchen and lounge we headed to our room to don our costumes. Éowyn and Amélie both had a choice of two costumes, a witch outfit and a ghost costume. Éowyn wanted to be a witch (well a witch princess to be precise) but Amélie refused to dress up. ‘No witchy thank-you.‘ So we asked her if she wanted to be a ghost. ‘No ghosty, thank-you.‘ So she was the only one who was not in costume for the evening, however she did take a shine to Finley’s axe and spend most of the evening dragging it around – which is slightly worrying.

Once suitably attired we headed to the television room to wait for the grand unveiling of the party. It did not disappoint. A lot of effort had gone into the decoration but the pièce de résistance was the skull and plastic limb bones surrounding a baking tray of ribs and sausages. Yes the main meal was presented to look like a corpse but it sure did taste good. The decorations and cannibalistic gastronomy was enhanced by the spooky Halloween sound effects playing on an iPod.

Once the meal was finished it was time for the annual piñata and the delights that it held inside. The children, as always, were very good in taking turns to bash hell out of the cardboard and papier-mâiché Frankenstein (‘s monster to be specific. Victor Frankenstein was the name of the scientist, Adam was the name of the monster – but you all knew that, right?). As always it took a while until it finally yielded the sweets inside which were then placed in a big pile to share evenly between them all.

It was a great night and fun was had by all and thus I decided to make this a two part update to do justice to the effort that everyone put into their costumes and the sterling work that Adam, Lucy, Steve and Zöe put in to spookify the Manor house and hopefully the photos below give you a little bit of the flavour of the evening.

Peace and Love

Baggie

Happy Halloween

Enter… If you dare

House rules

Welcome to dinner

I recommend the ribs

Scary kids

It’s a little unhygenic

Who’s for dinner?

I have something in my teeth

Are you OK Sis?

Feeling a little pale

Got a splitting headache

What a lovely couple

Haven’t had time to do my face today

It’s my natural colour

Hexenbiest

I’ll get you my pretty!

Behind you

Aarrgghhh!

Excuse me…

Someone’s hiding

And that is where the treasure is buried

Even undead have to put their feet up

The balloons are scary too

The Cousins

Behind you!

The Ghost of Finley

The great summer continues

Monday 16th July 2012Tuesday 17th July 2012Baggie

The relentless pace of 2012 continues unabated and as if to prove it we have already completed the second week of July. What has happened to the first half of the year? More importantly what has happened the summer of 2012, there certainly will not be any Bryan Adams’ songs about this summer. We have just experienced the wettest 2nd quarter on record (and July already has had its quota of rain – in less than an hour in some places of the UK) aided by a June that was the wettest and second dullest on record and it was also one second longer than we were expecting. This leap second was added onto the end of June without any pomp and ceremony and they would have got away with it too if it wasn’t for the pesky servers running a number of famous websites that got all upset about it and fell over.

Nevertheless we Brits had something to cheer about this July and that was for the first time in 74 years there was Brit in the final of the men’s single final at Wimbledon. Andy Murray defeated Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to become the last man since Bunny Austin in 1938 to grace the men’s single final at SW19. Unfortunately Andy Murray has had the misfortune to have been born at the same time at one of the greatest tennis players of all time in Roger Federer who took this year’s Wimbledon crown (for a record equalling 7th time) and at the same time broke the record for the most number of weeks at the top of the ATP rankings (287), so although Murray took the first set, Federer proved his class taking the next three. In this diamond jubilee year we Brits did have reason to celebrate at Wimbledon which has somewhat been overshadowed by Andy Murray’s achievement and that was for the first time in 76 years we had a winner in the men’s doubles. Jonathan Marry (and his doubles partner Frederick Neilsen) were wildcard entries but upset many big names along the way to become Wimbledon champions. One aside of all this was the fact that the last man to lose to a Brit in the semi-final of Wimbledon’s men’s singles competition was German Henner Henkel who subsequently died at the Battle of Stalingrad. My favourite Wimbledon related fact.

So what has been happening in the World of the Bagnalls? To be frank it has been relatively sedate with the School holidays rapidly approaching and life continuing in its usual form. However Éowyn is once again feeling that end of term blues that she seems to suffer. Not sure why she suffers such but as the term approaches its end she seems to tire more easily and gets, let’s be nice here, grumpy. The teachers at her pre-school may not be so generous, if asked they may say downright naughty. She will not suffer fools gladly and will refuse to do things that she does not want to do, which includes listening to her teachers. She also comes home feeling very tired and often falls asleep on the sofa when she gets home.

The term time for her gymnastics class is also drawing to a close. Éowyn has a love/hate relationship with the gymnastics class. She really enjoys the class and will happily talk about it and quite happily walk to the gym and get changed into her shorts and t-shirt but as the students line up to enter the hall she begin to freak out and crying that she does want to go to gym. This is one of the times that you have to be strong as a parent and basically lead her into the hall and hand over to the teacher before quickly closing the door. Apparently the crying doesn’t last long and she quite happily joins in the class and is very happy afterwards it is just the 3o seconds or so before she goes in.

Not sure if this tiredness is adding to the general mood of both our daughters but the last couple of weeks has seen an increase in feistiness between them. They seem to be winding each other (and thus us) up a treat. I think it is probably a combination of Éowyn’s tiredness and Amélie’s growing awareness and generally finding her own personality and no longer playing second fiddle to her older sibling. Éowyn is having to come to terms with the fact that Amélie will not just do the things that Éowyn wants her to do and that Amélie is not one of her dolls and has her own wants and desires and Éowyn is not going to tell her what to do.

Amélie is rapidly catching up with her elder sister. She confidently counts up to 10 (and on occasion 15!), knows her colours (sometimes) and recites her alphabet (in the form of the alphabet song). Her vocabulary is increasing by the day and repeats words without hesitation including more colourful language that her sister tells her to say. Some things will probably never change. Amélie is much more polite than her big sister and will always say ‘thank-you‘ and ‘please‘. She also drinks like a fish and will easily drink over half a dozen cups a day. She will down her cup and then walk over to your with her cup in one hand demanding ‘drink!‘ somewhat reminiscent of Father Jack from the sitcom Father Ted. As long as she doesn’t repeat some of his more colourful phrases!

Amélie is also becoming a bit of a climber and you have to keep an eye on her because she still doesn’t have the balance to get herself out of the trouble she keeps finding herself in. She will also wander off and come back dressed in Éowyn’s, Lucinda’s or my shoes and a hat before waving at you and saying ‘Good-bye‘. All the time she smiles at you with that cheeky smile of her’s and somehow gets away with it. She is also still a little swiper. Things will go missing and you know that Amélie has taken it somewhere, but she will not tell you where it is. Again, she looks at you with those eyes and gives you that smile and you have lost!

Éowyn has always sucked her thumb. When she was a baby this was an advantage for she never had a dummy and so we never suffered from lost dummy syndrome in the middle of the night. We learned about this when Amélie took to a dummy, probably because of the pain she was suffering from her Cow’s Milk Protein Intolerance. Amélie however spontaneously gave up her dummy at about the age of nine months and hasn’t looked back. Éowyn however has never stopped sucking her thumb. We have attempted reward charts and encouragement and even telling her off but to no avail. Therefore we have resorted to chemical means. We have started coating her thumb in a foul tasting chemical that is usually used to stop people biting their nails. It is beginning to work but we are allowing her suck her thumb at night and we have forgotten on a couple of occasions to coat her thumb and she absent-mindedly will revert to sucking her thumb. It is a habit and it is hard to break so we have to get into the habit of stopping it. The battle has begun, let us see how long it takes to win.

Éowyn has one other habit that at some point will need to be broken but we are more relaxed about this one. She is afraid to sleep at night without a light on. She has a night light and it is on every night, however as all lights are won’t to do, occasionally the bulbs blow. This happened the other night and a terrified Éowyn awoke screaming ‘I can’t see, I can’t see!‘ To be awoke in the middle of the night for any reason is disturbing enough; when it is your little child crying it is very disturbing and when it is because she has gone blind it is terrifying. However as the reason side of the brain kicks in you realise what has happened and five minutes later normality has returned and all is well with the world.

I will leave you there as I have waffled enough and there are 27 photos for you to enjoy (although many of them are of a 2012 Summer walk, i.e. with raincoats and welly boots!).

Peace and Love

Baggie

And fold this over

Fold this flap down

Surprise!

Cat-girl

What’s that bright light?

Wistful look

Time to mow the lawn Dad

Another photo by Éowyn

Appropriate clothing

Is this summer?

A family outing

Here we are!

Mommy and Amélie

Off to find new puddles

Wait for me

Short cut, through the puddles

Welly clad!

Mommy, Amélie and Monkey

Mommy, Amélie and Monkey in a puddle

This is a good one!

It has started to rain

I only have little legs!

Splash!

Look at this one Sis!

Puddle reflections

This is a deep one

Another puddle reflection

Bagnalls abroad

Tuesday 29th May 2012Tuesday 29th May 2012Baggie

I was doing so well with updating this website and then May befell this corner of the internet. Regular readers may be wondering what has happened, ‘has he got bored?’; ‘has he run out of gas?’ or ‘has nothing happened?’. Quite the contrary my dear readers, we have been away, on holiday, vacating (if that is a word). The football seasons have finished, live programming is slowing (not quite gone away but definitely reducing) and so we decided to take advantage of this hiatus in my busy work life and head off for the sun as a family.

We only booked the holiday last month (Friday the 13th for any of you friggatriskaidekaphobics among you) and were due to fly out on Lucinda’s birthday from Gatwick airport. We upgraded to more sociable flight times (0730 instead of 0430) but still decided to book a hotel near Gatwick just to avoid unnecessary fuss on the morning, it is hard enough to get yourself packed a ready that early in a morning without the additional hassle of attempting to get two sleepy youngsters ready too! So with suitcase packed and Lucinda’s presents and cards packed we headed to Gatwick on the Thursday night bound for Tenerife the next morning.

In the build up to our holiday the weather in the UK had been atrocious: the wettest April since records began, night frosts in May (Snow in Scotland and in parts of the Midlands!) and generally cold, dark, damp days. So, with the magic of the internet at our fingertips, we searched for long range weather forecasts for Tenerife. Tenerife, (for those of you that don’t know is the largest of the Canary islands – more geography later) and the Canary islands as a whole, were experiencing a heatwave at the beginning of May with temperatures of around 40°C (104°F in old money) but the long range forecasts that we could find were predicting thunderstorms and rain for the majority of our holiday. ‘Just our luck’ we thought and we became a little despondent. We have a knack of taking the rain with us on holiday (Barbados, Italy, Kent), which is good in some ways as we are both fair skinned and easily burn but wet and windy weather is not conducive to a happy holiday, especially with two little ones (then again neither would 40°C temperatures either).

This was also going to be Amélie’s first flight (and only Éowyn’s third!) beating her sister by exactly a week for the bragging rights of who was first to fly (although both flew as foetuses) by virtue of being 598 days old as opposed to Éowyn’s 605. So it was with a little trepidation that we headed off to the airport at Oh my god it is early o’clock. Just what you want on your birthday. We checked in and went through security and on to the plane pretty painlessly (without any of the trips to the toilet that accompanied Éowyn’s first flight!). It was a full flight with very little leg room on our chartered 737, however with Éowyn now requiring a seat of her own it was nice that we had a row of three seats to ourselves. Both girls were excellent on the plane especially considering it is a long flight (4 hours 20 minutes on the way there) without any onboard entertainment (thank Steve Jobs for the iPad!). With a certain amount of counterintuitiveness (is that a word?) we actually think that a longer haul flight maybe easy purely down to the fact that the children can be entertained for hours with a film or cartoons on a small seat mounted screen. Hopefully we will test this theory soon.

An hour coach journey greeted us on arrival in Tenerife, as did 22°C and overcast skies. It is Lucinda and my first experience with a package holiday (usually we book everything separately and hope for the best) and it does take the worry out of many things. You literally arrive at the airport and follow the signs, however it does mean that a big group of you all arrive at the hotel at the same time and so at the end of an exhausting trip it takes another 40 minutes or so before you get to the front of the check-in queue and finally get the keycard to your apartment, all the time while attempting to keep two children in view (extremely difficult when they run in opposite directions – imagine herding cats). The other benefit of a package holiday is that you have a rep who can help sort out issues and we called upon our rep almost immediately. Check-in was relatively painless until we tried to confirm that there was a cot (for Amélie in the room). There was no cot and there were no cots available until tomorrow. Not what you want to hear after 12 hours of journeying. Thankfully that problem was handed over to the rep and by 1800 we had a cot in our room in plenty of time for Amélie’s bedtime.

Before we even arrived in Tenerife there were two things that I wanted to do while we were there: a) visit Loro Parque and b) visit Mount Teide. We only had a week so two big trips were all that we thought we could reasonably manage and still have time to relax. So the next morning we booked the trips via the reps and again decided to embrace this package lark rather than hire a car (and car seats) and head off under our own steam as we would usually do.

We also checked out the kids club and the crèche, so that Mum and Dad could have a little me time too! Unfortunately I think this was one of the few disappointments on the holiday. Éowyn loved the idea of going to Kids club (or holiday school as she called it) but had a bad experience on her first day when one of the boys screwed up her drawing (which was bad enough) but that was compounded by one of the adults in charge dismissing the importance of that to Éowyn by merely giving her another piece of paper and throwing her screwed up drawing in the bin. We only managed to convince her to go once more (I had to stay with her for 25 minutes before she felt settled) and although she seemed to enjoy it, she didn’t want to go again.

Amélie was the same. The crèche was not free and we had decided to pre-book 3 sessions when we booked the holiday as it was cheaper to do so. However, when we arrived there just because you had booked didn’t mean that there was a space available for you. Spaces at the crèche were limited to only 6 (which is good) but these got booked up very quickly and the time slots didn’t seem to marry with the hours we had booked and were thus owed. We had booked 3 two hour sessions but the timeslots available were either one hour or 90 minutes and trying to juggle when Amélie could actually go with the hours we were owned got very complicated. Nevertheless we managed to book the correct number of slots for the hours we were owed and all seemed hunky-dory. However Amélie had other ideas and did not want to go to the crèche. This is not like her at all. Éowyn is often shy and takes a while to accept new surroundings, Amélie just charges straight in there and settles herself in without a care. Not this time. Maybe because we were in a strange place and then she was being left in a strange place but there were tears everytime we left her, which was not pleasant.

Éowyn did however make one friend by the pool and girl of about the same age as herself called Brooke. She constantly looked out for her and was so excited whenever she saw her whether that was by the pool or in the restaurant, but unfortunately they didn’t get to play with each other everyday because of trips that we had both booked.

We booked two trips while we were in Tenerife and the first was on the Monday and at 0740 we headed out on a coach to Loro Parque. Loro in Spanish means parrot and that is how Loro Parque was initially conceived as a reserve for parrots but it now has a diverse number of animals (and plants – the orchids particularly interested Lucinda) and is probably the biggest attraction in the whole of the Canary Islands. The zoo still has the most diverse collection of parrots in the world (not the most as a Mr. Antonio de Dios of Birds International in the Phillippines has the largest collection of parrots in the world – over 10,000) but also has chimpanzees, gorillas, tigers, jaguars, sea lions, dolphins (the largest dolphin show pool in Europe) and is only the second place in Europe to have orcas (killer whales to you and me). It has the longest shark tunnel in Europe and the world’s largest indoor penguin exhibition. Loro Parque has set up a foundation and most of its profits go back into conservation projects. Have I sold it to you yet?

The zoo is wonderfully laid out but the main attractions are the shows. We only managed to see the sea lion, dolphin and orca shows (we missed the parrot show) but thoroughly enjoyed them all and the only disappointment of the whole day was the fact that the penguin exhibit is being expanded and so was closed. There was a small enclosure with some Humboldt penguins in but that was it. Damn you Loro Parque we will now have to come back and visit you again! There are plenty of photos on the Flickr page if you are interested.

Our other organised day out was to visit Mount Teide. The Canary Islands are volcanic in origin and lie off the west coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean. Tenerife is the biggest of the islands and is dominated by the volcano Mount Teide, the highest point in all of Spain (in fact it is the World’s third largest volcano after Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on Hawaii’s Big island). The area around Mount Teide has been given national park status and is a World Heritage Site. Teide is currently dormant (which is good) and last erupted in 1909 however the area around the volcano is bleak and mostly barren giving it an appearance similar to many of the planets that Captain Kirk visited and either ended up fighting or falling in love with an alien that dwelt there. The only strange being that we saw was a man dressed up like one of the original inhabitants of Tenerife, the Guanches.

The trip was entitled ‘A Jeep Safari’ and so in convoy we headed with other tourists around the national park stopping at various sites to get a close up look of the terrain. This included walking through a lava tube and through the pine forest that surrounds the caldera. Unfortunately we didn’t go to the summit of Mount Teide (in fact we didn’t ascend the final 5,000 feet!). The road ends at 7,730 feet and from there the quickest way to up the volcano is via cable car, however unless you arrive particularly early the queues for the ride can be four hours long! But even the cable car itself doesn’t go to the top the final 660 feet requires special permission the park office in Santa Cruz and it is limited to a maximum of 150 per day. There is a 6 hour hike that would have avoided the queues for the cable car but we decided to be content with the view from the road.

Before we returned to the hotel we stopped for lunch at the camel park where there was a camel ride included as part of the trip. Health and safety hasn’t really arrived in Tenerife and the Bagnalls sat precariously either side of a seesaw-like bench strapped between the camel’s humps with only a small strap to stop you falling the 8 feet or so to the gravel below. Lucinda sat with Amélie on her lap and I sat with Éowyn on mine both holding onto the camel with one hand and our wards with the other. It seemed a very long 20 minutes!

Our only other excursions were the half kilometre trip down to the beach. Down being the operative word as the hotel was up quite a steep slope from the beach, which was an effort on the way down and an even greater effort on the way back up. Being a volcanic island the sand is black volcanic sand and heats up extremely well, it is highly recommended to wear flip flops or sandals and it is rather hot under foot.

The hotel was excellent and being all inclusive took away the worry of a) finding somwhere to eat b) finding something for the kids to eat. This is only the third time Lucinda and I have been all-inclusive and we have to say that this was by far the best for choice and quality of food (and wine and beer). So much so we have both put on half a stone (7lbs/ 3 kgs) in the week we were away – ah well, back on the diet! The weather, too, was kind without so much as a hint of rain. The hottest it peaked was 33°C but was mainly in the mid to late 20’s which is perfect for us and apart from being overcast on the first couple of days it was blue skies all the way.

So, as you can probably tell, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and our only regret was that we didn’t book 10 days! But this is turning into an epic (I think it is the longest entry I have made thus far) so I will stop there and for those of you that haven’t fallen asleep I have included a few of the 1,000 or so photos that we took, there are many more on the flickr site.

Peace and Love

Baggie