Spooky Trail - Priory Farm

So yesterday, by way of celebrating Halloween, we decided to take Thomas to Priory Farm to walk their seasonally themed "Spooky Trail" -

- made all the more spooky by the huge fields of dead sunflowers left from the summer -

- populated by absolutely hundreds of Himalayan Parakeets greedily gulping down the leftover seeds (occasionally being spooked and exploding into a green cloud above our heads - much to Thomas' amazement) and a carpet of Guinea Hen below picking over what the Parakeets dropped...

Climbing the (extremely muddy and slippery) hill -

- stopping briefly to admire the view -

- before playing in the musical maze -

- (which involved banging lots of gongs) -

- got scared by some giant spiders hanging under the high hide -

- and fired a giant arrow down the hill -

- trying not to kill any other visitors (or rampaging wildlife) -

- then we slid down the other side of the hill, dodging skeletons, through the orchard and pumpkin patch -

- and round the lake -

- and then back home for roast lamb with all the trimmings... ;)

Baby Thomas' first Christmas

What an incredible first Christmas for Thomas, absolutely surrounded by friends and family, showered with lovely presents (especially by his mum), so here are just a very few (of the millions of) pictures we took (to share some of the magic with you) -

Getting some of the presents ready, which involved ceramic paint, Thomas' foot, a lot of very tickly brushes and many, many smudged footprints...

A visit to Christmas Tree Land at Priory Farm in Nutfield, despite the fact that we already had our (still alive) tree from last year (now about twice the size) back in from the garden...(rather a good investment)!


Thomas *loved* the decorations, suddenly the boring old living room was alive with exciting new electrically powered/choking objects to try and hit and place in his mouth...

Being good at Christingle (while watching out for cocktail sticks and accidental headbutts)...

Trying out his Christmas hat... ;)

Wrapped up warm in the car seat...

Stocking full on Christmas morning...



...and gifts under the tree aplenty!

Even more impressive when all the wrapping was off... ;)

Loads more pictures here (including lots of family ones, which some of you have been asking for)... ;)

Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas Decorations

So we've made a *start* on the Christmas decorations -

- Flyingpops popped up into the loft on Saturday to put a load of summer things (like the big fan) up into the loft, and bring a lot of winter things (like the Christmas decorations) down...I busied myself stringing the lights around the front of the house while she tidied up the front garden -

- although we have agreed that we are going to be doing things a little low key this year for the simple reason that we are spending Christmas day and Boxing day away at the respective sets of parents and then spending the rest of the break down in Cornwall (so there didn't seem much point in really going to town)...

- and this includes the tree - we decided to go green and buy a living one (after taking advice from the staff at Priory Farm) -

- (it's also a bit of a waste of money to spend £50, as we normally do, if we're not going to be around to enjoy it)...we had a little look around Christmas Tree Land anyway (as it is jolly festive)-

- but actually more people seemed to have come along to ride the train than actually buy any trees -

- anyway, we picked our little tree out...because it is alive and there is no danger of needle dropping we were able to go for a traditional spruce pine (with that perfect Christmas Tree shape) rather than the oddly squat and twisted non-drop ones that are popular at the moment...

It's out in the garden at the moment (where it can live inbetween Christmases from now on), I think we'll get around to actually decorating it next weekend (although it might look a little odd with the usual 200 light set smothering it)...so that might have to change!

Lingfield Country Show 2008

So a bit of an update on the weekend, which we spent extremely pleasantly camping and exhibiting at the Lingfield country show (which is actually situated up the road on the A22 just outside Blindley Heath, not in Lingfield itself)...Flyingpops packed up Colin the Camper during the preceeding week with her collection and all the various bits and bobs we were going to need to go with it so on Friday night the plan was that we both get on an early train out of London and set straight off, however (as with all the best laid plans), things didn't go 100% smoothly...I managed to get out of the office okay, but when I got down to the Jubilee line it was absolutely *rammed* with people, I ended up having to go the wrong way one stop (from Canary Wharf to North Greenwich) as two trains came and went completely packed full of people and no-one was getting on...this, while being much quicker than waiting in the queue, did still delay me by about ten minutes, meaning I missed the train out of London Bridge that I had been planning on catching...Flyingpops was rather miffed as that one slip would mean about an hour's delay changing at East Croydon (and by this stage she was already sat impatiently at Redhill in Colin the Camper with the engine running, and now in a big huff)...Anyway, we changed the plan slightly, and met up at Oxted (which was actually only about 10 minutes up the road from our destination, and only about 20 minutes away for both of us by respective modes of transport)...finally pulling onto site (and started getting set up) just past seven, so not actually all that bad - From London to dusk in a Surrey field in an hour and a half... ;)

Once everything was ship-shape, Flyingpops made a spot of supper (cheese and onion toastie in our amazing new double skillet - which basically mimics an oven, but can sit on top of the camp cooker - apparently Flyingpops mum managed to do a full roast beef and roast potato dinner on the day before we arrived - which is simply staggering, but that's another story)...Anyway, that night we decided (after a few drinks with R&A at their tent) to take a bit of a walk around some of the stalls (not many were open though) -

- and the fun fair (which was completely open) -





- and then collapsed into exhausted sleep...next morning Flyingpops put the finishing touches to her display -


- in sporadic rain, and then we went to watch Alan take his Scammell around the arena (in our waterproof clothing)...

My folks arrived mid-morning bringing some better weather with them and we spent a very pleasant time nosing around all the stalls -






- (very nearly being temped enough to buy a gosling to fatten up for Christmas, but I think the cats that live next door would have made short work of it) -

- and then feasted on traditional German sausages for lunch -

- that evening we spent up at the beer tent with the other exhibitors and traders (and a lot of LED-covered GMC Vans which I singularly failed to take a decent picture of, lacking a tripod)...I was actually a bit of a lightweight, calling it a night comparatively early...

Next morning I had the pleasure of joining Uncle Alan in his Scammell for it's trip around the arena -

- thankfully I was (as a result) under cover for the only real rain of the whole weekend -



- we packed up with everything dry (thank goodness) and made it home early enough for evening baths to wash away the country before coming back into town for the week... ;)

Next show is in about 3 weeks time... ;)