Dan's Party

On Saturday night, I led a children's event to celebrate the arrival of our nightingales at Paxton Pits. It was overbooked and two un-booked families turned up as well. 30 children were accompanied by 40 adults, but we coped because we had enough volunteers to lead four groups, make tea and generally help out.

This week I will be working a lot of evenings doing similar activities for grown ups.

On Sunday we hired a bouncy castle, as we do each year, to celebrate Dan's birthday. Because he is 14 now, we have to have a LARGE castle which can take the punishment of adults and teenagers having a pillow fight; which is more or less what happened, for a whole day. The castle was so big it only just fitted in the garden and completely blocked the back half off.

The theme was "Dr Who", but only the Lambton's took it seriously (see photo, right); VERY seriously. They mutated their daughter Harriet into a turtle and then had their son Alex re-programmed to be a Cyberman. Margaret really just needed a wig and a bit of plastic surgery to make her into the Doctor's glamorous assistant, while Nigel needed nothing but a pair of overalls to cover his curly tail. The bouncy castle people didn't have a Dr Who one, so they sent us a Harry Potter castle, which we cleverly modified with the help of some silver Cyberman masks.

The party was also attended by the Stevensons from Bath, some of Dan's school friends, some neighbours and Nick, who came home from college. We all had a great time, especially Dan.

Look for the pictures in our Photobucket pages.

The weather was perfect on Sunday, with just the threat of a shower. Bank Holiday Monday was even better with blue skies all day.