David Currie

809For those out of the country, snow arrived in England last night. We didn’t have as much here as, say, my parents did in Hertfordshire but there was enough of a covering to get Emma excited in the morning. I had to go in to work (fortunately not cycling as I had to pick up a mountain bike for the event tomorrow) but Christine took Emma out in the snow. Unfortunately they timed it just as another flurry of snow arrived and Emma wasn’t particularly amused. Luckily Christine persuaded her to go out in the garden later in the day and they had great fun making footprints in the snow.

I took a couple of hours out of work this afternoon to go along to Emma’s nursery for their Christmas performance. I picked up Christine, Emma and Duncan from a friend of Emma’s birthday party and we drove to the nursery. Christine stayed outside feeding Duncan so, having handed Emma over to the nursery assistants, I had the pleasure of joining the audience of parents on my own.

The children were led in at the front of the room and all obediently sat on their coloured spots on the floor. Their subsequent rendition of various Xmas themed songs wasn’t as bad as you might imagine from a bunch of under-3s. One boy was in particularly fine voice much to the amusement of the audience. Emma was partly obscured from my view by one of the assistants but I could see that, despite having told us most of the words to the songs they were going to sing, she didn’t sing a word. She just had this look on her face as if to say “what are all these children doing?”.

After the singing was over the children were released to their parents and we filed out past Father Christmas. True to her word, Emma wasn’t scared of him this time. She wouldn’t say anything to him though and just stared at him intently. Having been told that he would park his reindeer outside she was a little disappointed to discover that they weren’t there when we left!

806Christine’s cousin was down at the weekend with her family and, having noted the rain on the forecast, we decided to head over to the Blue Reef Aquarium in Portsmouth on Saturday. What we’d failed to realise, until we heard a traffic announcement as we left home, was that the rain was to be accompanied by gale force winds! The M27 was an interesting drive as the car was buffetted about but the seafront at Southsea was quite something else. We arrived just before lunchtime and sat in the aquarium cafe (whose speciality seemed to be that well known Italian dish, panini and chips) watching the waves break over the sea wall. They then proceeded to close the section of road we had just driven along!
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Emma was pretty tired after our day out but, as I had to go in to Winchester anyway to pick up Christine’s cousin, we decided to offer her the opportunity to go and see the torch lit parade and bonfire in Winchester, safe in the knowledge that, in the half hour between the lighting of the bonfire and the start of the fireworks, we could return home and avoid a repeat of Thursday night. Having checked that bonfires don’t go bang, Emma said that she would like to go.
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803Having failed to renew our annual membership of Hillier Gardens (we just tend to do so on our next visit), we noticed with interest an advert for Hampshire County Council’s Culture-all Passport when at Royal Victoria Country Park last weekend. This entitles two adults (at least one of whom must be named on the card) and two children, free entry to any of the Council’s attractions. This includes Hilliers and another local favourite, Manor Farm Country Park, as well as some attractions further afield which we thought might provide for useful distraction e.g. the Milestones Museum in Basingstoke. Perhaps equally important, it gives you free parking at all of the Country Parks owned by the Council.
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Yesterday night we headed along to the firework display at our local school (Hiltingbury). The buggy board we had ordered also arrived earlier in the day. Emma was so excited – she rode on the buggy board the whole way there shouting “We’re going to the fireworks” to anyone who would listen. Christine and I were in a slightly less ecstatic mood having failed to find Christine’s wallet, hoping that she had left it in the post office earlier in the day. We had a bit of a wait before the action started and Emma amused herself with a glo-stick. Emma was up on my shoulders when the fireworks started and the reaction was immediate: sheer terror. She started screaming that she wanted to go home and had to be carried away from the school. Last year, having seen a few fireworks out the bathroom window, Emma kept asking about them for weeks afterwards but it would seem that she’s just not ready for the loud bangs.