Gotta start somewhere…

and maybe backfill later 😉

K was on Cub camp from Fri evening to Sun afternoon.
There was a sports and arts festival day today at a localish country park (fairly local to our old church, so we went there first) – we started with a junk percussion making workshop to make shakers for use in the Samba workshop and procession later. After that J and L did an inflatable assault course while A bounced on a rather smaller castle, then L and A queued for trampolines while J played tennis and Bob went off to collect K. There were four trampolines and the family in front of us had two girls waiting to go on, as did I, so we were counting carefully to see how many turns we had to wait and whether both would get on at the same time. It soon became clear that all four girls would be in the same turn… until that turn came and the irritating child behind, whose parents had been encouraging him to go and do something else, let them wait in his place, hurry up etc etc, pushed forward making the four a five. I sent L to the end trampoline and helped A onto the nearest one, making loudish comments about how lucky we were that they would both be on at the same time, there were four of us and so forth, but clearly I was too subtle, because when I looked round L was by my side in tears 🙁 Irritating boy had pushed past her and taken her place. I looked round for his parents and there they were, having walked round the trampolines to the one he was on, helping him do up the netting. The man in charge was clearly not bothered and there didn’t seem much point in making a big fuss, so I consoled myself with the thought that presumably they were that desperate to get him on in a hurry because it was something he really wanted to do and then they had to go and consoled L with the promise that I would not let anyone else but L get on A’s trampoline when she got off. Then watched grumpily as irritating boy spent almost the whole time posing for his irritating parents to take pictures of him sprawling in an irritating way on the trampoline, with only a few jumps in the whole session :rant: Still, the girls enjoyed it anyway, eventually, and it gave J time to come back from tennis and find us, so we were able to go on together to the next thing – face-painting queue for the girls and the youth club bus for J, then actual face painting for the girls and a samba horn-making session for J, who unfortunately waited very patiently only to get to the front of the queue (it involved using sharp objects and filing edges so was mostly being done for them) just as the man doing it was asked to pack away and get onto his stilts. We memorised the instructions so we can have a go at home 😉
Samba workshop then, with an excellent band, including a boy J recognised as One of the Big Ones from music school, who had been doing their own workshop beforehand, plus us with lots of shakers and a few vuvuzela style horns. We were joined by some dancers and stiltwalkers and also a very cool robot/puppet which took 5 or 6 operators to control it, but danced with the main operator as it was strapped to his stomach, so when he shook his hips it did too 🙂 We processed round the park, and Bob and K were easily able to find us so K could join in too. Oh, and who should we see at the end of the procession but, yep, irritating boy – not in a hurry at all then 👿
A was disappointed not to have more time with the sports stuff, but the others were ready for home by then (A had cheated by being in a carrier!) so we headed back for tea and unpacking of Cubs stuff, plus delivery of forgotten Cub camp stuff 🙄 by kind leader…

Tomorrow is the first day of Oliver workshops – 9 o’clock start but I’ve no idea what traffic will be like so we’ll need to leave here early – better get to bed, I think!