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We’d sold it to the kids partly on the fact that they’d be able to fly drones. That’s what the website said, though I thought it might be some kind of simulation. As it turned out it was quite a basic video game where you were I charge of a drone flying over a landscape so were just moving a cursor around a map. It took us til the end of the experience to realise we had flown a drone. But hey, never mind, thinking about it it wouldn’t be practical or economic to have 5 year olds flying drones around a museum. And the RAF museum is free (donations welcome and given) so maybe you can’t expect too much. The majority of the interactive displays were out of order, but it was cool to see so many aircraft and bombs up close, though I couldn’t help thinking I’d have been better off bringing Al Murray here, rather than my kids. They had fun and we got to go on a simulator of (I think) a Typhoon aircraft which jolted us around a bit (and you had to pay for that). It was being personed by a slightly grumpy woman who snapped slightly at our kids as we queued and they were pushing each other around a bit. I think she was trying to help, though they were only playing, but it still seemed a little inappropriate. She’d also let a family with older kids in ahead of us, saying they’d pre-booked, even though we were about to go in. If she didn’t want little kids pushing each other in the queue then it might have been worth making them wait five minutes instead.
The other staff were more friendly and patient and this woman was only slightly grumpy.
It’s still an impressive museum though with a lot of history and fun things to do and a pretty decent (if pricy) cafe. If you like looking at planes this is the place for you. And we’d done something with our Sunday rather than sitting around waiting for death.
I then had another cycle ride up to the rec with Phoebe and we played football for quite a long time. I was pretty knackered after two days of full on exercise, but managed to more or less keep up the energy. Phoebe has been nervous about taking her hand off the handlebars to signal, but she practised on the grass at the rec and mastered it straight away. Her confidence, though occasionally brittle, is impressive and later we’d zoom along a bumpy track by the horse fields and she showed no fear. I watched her go, bursting with pride and with love and felt that life doesn’t get much better.
It became clear tonight that our Saniflo toilet was not fixed. It was still making the random grinding noise. The engineer had warned this was possible and that I might have to call a plumber (because as you’ll recall those are two different jobs). It still made me surprisingly depressed though and that life is just an awful cavalcade of disappointments and admin. I tried to remember how happy the bike ride had made me, but I could only focus on this annoying glitch and my (no actually the engineer’s) failure.
I thought I’d done the necessary work to get this sorted, (by which I mean, emailed a man who could do it for me, but it still felt like an achievement) but the toilet still haunts us. Is this a good enough reason to move house?
