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Friday 12 April 2013

Spring Harvest

We went to Spring Harvest.  It was held in Butlin's, Skegness.  It wasn't warm.

Each member of the family experienced it rather differently.  TheRev is to Spring Harvest as Scrooge is to Christmas.  He enjoys bumping into people he knows (and there were some people there that we were deliberately bumping into, too, which was great) but he spends the remainder of the time on the sofa in the chalet, flicking apathetically through the programme planner and making little grunting, snorting noises.

To be absolutely fair to him, we both went down with some flu-like thing which the children were only just shaking off, and so spent most of the week feeling dreadful.  I blessed the fact that there was childcare.  I crawled to some seminars, wrote a poem, and through a feverish haze I experienced Abby Guinness's Word of the Wives monologues (marvellous) Footprints Theatre Company's Fishy Tales (great fun, though I missed a lot of it chasing a baby) Doug Horley (my hero of children's songwriting) and Adrian Plass, who still managed to get a laugh out of me even though I felt as if I was hearing his reading through hot cotton wool.  I also bought far too many books, and managed to conduct a meeting with One Way UK's director largely using sign language, as I had absolutely no voice.

For Abigail, the best thing about the entire week was the fact that there was a giant statue of Bob the Builder between our chalet and our breakfast.  New every morning was the sight of him, and each time he appeared on the horizon, she exclaimed with as much surprise and passion as every time before: "Look!  It Bob the Builder!"  Sometimes she also treated us to the theme tune.

Jeremy had a new shape sorter to keep him occupied in the chalet, and became adept at posting the shapes through the right slots.  He seemed to enjoy the nursery sessions, and the fact that everybody made a fuss of him when I carried him around in my long wrap.  He loved Doug Horley.  And he didn't sleep worth beans.


 A poorly Mummy takes two children to the All Age Celebration
Abigail meets the Compassion elephant (we sponsored a child almost exactly her age, and met Wes Stafford)

All in all, it was not Spring Harvest as we have previously known it, but it was a great family holiday.  Perhaps a tad overpriced considering how much - or rather, how little - we were actually able to get to.  I'd go again.  I doubt TheRev will let me, though!