Bordering on the contagious

So, we are now back (but not unpacked) from our first Melrose MuddlePuddle camp. We didn’t fancy doing the whole trip in one go, so we Stepped off the Path with Jan, Jonathan, M, C and J. Lovely company, lovely food – including Jan’s magic trick of producing more tins of scrummy cake than appeared to fit in the cupboards, nice cats, dry stone walls, shaggy cows, an impressive computer-filled office overflowing into the airing cupboard and a suspension-testing drive (home to the shaggy cows).

The music-playing pack of chewing gum and FM transmitter worked well enough, particularly when we realised that turning off the radio’s RDS would stop it trying to be too helpful. There was occasional interference from local stations, but just bumping the frequency up or down by a little usually sorted it. The battery lasted nowhere near as long as we were expecting, so we were glad we’d brought some spares and a charger. We’re solidly working our way through the Roald Dahl canon – Simon Callow reading the Twits and Geoffrey Palmer reading BFG were probably the best so far.

Melrose itself didn’t start well as K and I were both sick in the night, so we quarantined the whole family as no-one wanted a repeat of the nasty pass-the-vomit-bug of previous Melroses. Fortunately we had a room to ourselves and had brought the laptop with us (obvious thing to pack when youth hostelling 😉 ) so I had the very pleasant experience of snoozing on my bunk listening to the children laugh at something (The Incredibles) that I knew was completely suitable for them. We read books and played with plasticine and when the bouncing off the walls got too bad fortunately there had been no repeat performances and the weather was nice, so we headed out (avoiding others) for swings and a walk. We got a bathroom to ourselves for the day, just outside our room, which was a consolation, and all tummies were feeling robust enough to end a day of plain bread and water by enjoying some of the Beans lovely cooking for tea (courtesy of Merry’s room service 🙂 ).

The next day was K’s birthday. We went back to plan A (celebrate on the day) rather than the plan B cooked up when we were poorly (postpone 2 days). So, cake baking and decorating (with help from J and L), J making some posters to let everyone know about the party (including a mysterious request for party-goers to bring a spare pair of clean socks) and preparation for pass the parcel. Katy wrapped lots and lots, and J wanted to help with the music. Laptop to the rescue again, and we chose some music together. Unfortunately at the party itself it didn’t go as planned. My laptop took aaaaages to boot up, I tried to get the MP3 player to start before all the usual start-up crud had finished and as a result it took even longer. The natives were sat in a ring, the parcel wasn’t being passed and they were beginning to get restless. We declined the offer of singing, but the kiddy-keyboard thing which I think belonged to the Beans came to the rescue with one of its pre-cooked tunes. Eventually the MP3 player was ready but even at full volume could not compete with a roomful of excited children. I fast-forwarded to the noisiest track we’d chosen, that I’d thought probably too loud, and this was only just loud enough.

Despite these technical difficulties it went OK, and then we had a properly loud and frantic game of Tidy Your Room and the mystery of the extra socks was solved. Through to the other room for cake and other nibbles (see Flickr).

The only other fixed things were a trip to Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh and swimming in Galashiels. Dynamic Earth was nearly thwarted by poor signs in the City Centre – the SatNav crew got there on time and the rest of us had a bonus tour of the streets around Holyrood with complimentary extra stress. It was almost very good – lots of good content in a nice setting, but just too full-on. The exhibits competed with each other in flashing and/or volume, rather than building on each other. The soft play area was great, and L impressed us with her confidence on the climbing wall.

Swimming was also shortened by poor signs, but still very enjoyable and featured nice staff and interesting rocket pack style floats.

Apart from that there was lots of children playing somewhere or here (doing Fimo, playdough, Hama, dinosaur or boat building…), lots of parents chatting, and it was very nice.

The trip back was broken in York and godparently fun was had. Lots of playing with train sets and bubbles (including some nice bubble mountains by J). More yummy food and lovely company, and for once not being late with presents for my godson 🙂

Today was a very good family service at church which included doing sign-language actions to one of the hymns, and then a mini birthday party at the Grad Pad with K’s godmother Hannah – someone I ought to make an effort to see more. Unpacking still looms, and work tomorrow :).