Friday. Eleven in the morning and we're now about two hours behind our schedule.
The plan was to drive down to London and arrive there mid afternoon. But we've not even packed the car. In fact - Sarah and Fintan are coat shopping. Eventually we set off about one o'clock. We set off with half a tonne of random clothes, enough calpol to sink a meth addict, enough fruit pastels, fruit shoots, chocolate buttons to put even the fittest athlete into a diabetic coma and an apple (a rather tired looking apple but this is my one nod to healthy eating and a clean conscience).
The kids sit in the back - wedged between a dinosaur pillow and a Dr Who pillow. We have many hours of pillow wrangling ahead of us. Though we do not know this yet. The Dinosaur pillow is a popular commodity amongst the rugrat generation.
We turn right out of the house and hit our first traffic jam. Crap. This is not good. Thinking quick and nimble on our feet - we overrule the satnav and detour past the jam of doom. An hour and a half later - we are actually further from our destination than when we started. How they hell is that actually possible?
The M6 has a forty mile traffic jam. Forty bleedin' bloody miles we crawl along - listening to Dinosaur Kings on the portable DVD player until I actually catch Sarah and I debating the lyrics to Dinosaur Kings. Turns out I've been singing the wrong theme tune for months now.
Six hours later (Yep that's right - it's actually quicker to fly to New York than drive Chester to the capital!). Six hours later we are on the world's must useless ring road. The M25 should be rechristened as the DZ1 (Deadzone one). This is where cars go to rust and die. And we have joined them! The entire car contemplates a new life - a new life lived within the confines of a very small non-mobile but highly expensive metal box. Cabin Fever has set in. We calculate that our journey has given us an average speed of 27.1 miles an hour. Holy crap! There are bycycles that go faster!
We call San and liz every once in a while to let them know that we still plan on making it to London and their house some time in the next Millennium. They prepare wine and beer and a fireworks display for our eventual arrival.
Halleluiah! We made it! The kids run around the house like mini beserkers - "We have legs! We have legs! We can run! We are free!" they cry and proceed to rip up the joint with their new buddies. Toy dinosaurs rain down from heaven. Fintan cannot believe his luck. Another house with a small boy who has a similar dinosaur obsession!
The next day we are up at the crack of dawn and it's a military operation to get the two families out the door and on the tube by 9am. This is a feat of massive skill, courage and planning combined with a tactical smattering of dire threat (if you don't have your shoes on in the next three seconds we are going back to Chester!).
And lo - after dragging buggy and kids up and down three sets of escalators and at least six flights of steps (oh to be disabled in London - crowds - no lifts - more crowds...arghhhh!) we arrive at the motherlode. THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM.
Fintan momentarily loses the ability to speak. He is beyond excitement. "Is this where the dinosaurs live?"
"Yep Fintan. And Dexter the monkey and Larry the NightGuard and the biggest dinosaurs in the world." It's always good to give them some context.
The kids stare in awe at the Diplodocus in the atrium. And Declan spends the rest of the day pointing at every dinosaur and gurgling the word "diplodo?!"
Our mates Paddy and Siobhan meet us and spend the next three hours as "parent backstops". This is great. We now have an extra two pairs of eyes to help spot our kids in the crowd when they inevitably wander off. Paddy soon puts this into action and grabs "the kid in the green t-shirt - he's yours isn't he Tom?" only to realise it's someone else's kid he is coralling towards our buggy. This would normally be fine - but at six foot three with long sprawling hair down past his shoulders and dressed in black jeans, black t-shirt and a black leather waistcoat - there is the danger that he will be mistaken for a heavy metal ninja loose in the museum.
Later - after the blue whale (which should be renamed big f*ck-off giant whale really). After we visit the "Big F*ck-off giant whale" we head to the Darwin centre and the "Cocoon". Which is actually pretty cool. It is within the gleaming crisp white Cocoon that Sarah tells me that Declan's bum is an absolute mess and we must change him at once. No time to find a toilet outside the cocoon. Liz and I make a protective exclusion zone with our buggies as we stand looking ever so conspicuous besides a mosquito DNA interactive exhibit.
It's like a scene in an operating theatre and Sarah's the kick ass surgeon.
"Clean nappy." Her hand waves behind her.
"Check." I hand it to her.
"Cream..cream now! He's wriggling!"
"Cream - check!"
"Take the dirty nappy now...now..he's moving...he's moving...don't drop it..."
"Oh sh*t!" I say.
"You didn't?!" sarah says.
"I did." And there it sits. A big dollop of Declan's poo sitting inside the clean crisp white future cocoon of the Darwin centre. We crease up laughing. I make a grab for the offending item and squirrel it away in a plastic bag that I then forget about. We walk around the museum and Hyde park with it dangling from the buggy handle for the next two hours before I finally work out where the whiff is coming from.
Later that day - we meet up with more mates and sink an ocean's worth of wine that evening. We debate the Mulberry tree in the backgarden and consider whether mulberry's are good for anything other than tarts. Jam maybe? Fintan falls into a potty of urine later that night (that's another long story!) and we trek back Sunday with trepidation and fear in our hearts. But four and a half hours later we are home. We are alive and we've just had the best weekend ever. Seriously. What a jam-packed mega weekend - in every which way you can reckon!
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