Cornish pasty for breakfast

Well it seemed like a good idea. In the end I didn't like the filling so moved on to the more normal cocktail sausages/meatball/blueberry combo.

This morning's trip was to B+Q for 8ft bamboo canes: these will be used to hold up my giant sunflowers. Of course Bud forgot to buy the twine needed to actually tie up the plants, this is because he is only as clever as a parsnip and so only a bit cleverer than me. This meant another trip to the shops where we met Flynn from my class, seen here admiring my pressup technique.

Then we took 2 buses to gymnastics, this journey was slowed down somewhat by a drunk man that crashed into the side of the bus on his bike.

 

After a quick meal at home we set off to the pub: the prominently advertised Beer Festival with bouncy castle, face painting and so forth at the Old House at Home, Milton. This has something for everyone so when ElizabethsDad brought it to our attention we all signed up straight away.

We got to the pub at 4pm as agreed. The large back garden was completely empty except for a lonely man at the BBQ, one girl (daughter of Hayley the Bonnie Bouncing Barmaid) and some empty swings. We feared we had the wrong day, or indeed, the wrong pub (it's happened before). Nobody had a painted face and there was no castle (administrative error means it won't be here until tomorrow) and in fact no customers. We planned to finish the pint and slink off home leaving a cryptic message on the blackboard so that any Puddlers arriving later would know the score.

But as we languished with only 1 plastic sword and a stiff wind to keep us company, Ben arrived to save the day. We set to swinging and arguing over the sword. Then the JoniBobs and Elizabeth got there, followed by Erin and we were a team once more.

We all bought a ball with brightly coloured toy from the dispensing machine and the beer flowed. The sheer number of us kids and our owners who had clearly showed up for the bouncy castle started to tug at the heartstrings of the landlord (Welsh) and he obviously got a bit shouty on the phone to the castle people because the rumours of imminent castledom spread. We spotted some kids up the sign attached to a tree and attacked their treehouse en masse. We soon displaced them and it became our pirate ship, shame about the dogpoo scattered liberally thereabouts.

Then we gave the BBQ man something to do and it was sausagetime all round. Johnny went round smacking the botties of every adult (some kind of group punishment policy, but richly deserved) but then he lost a tooth and got mightily upset that the fairy wouldn't pay up if he was no longer in possession of said tooth. But Bud knows the golden rule (if you've lost it, you're sitting on it) and plus he's good at finding small shiny objects so he picked it out of the long grass to much relief.

Then the unthinkable happened, not before time, thanks. The men hurriedly installed the castle while we all monitored their progress. They'd barely stood up to go before we were all on it and we became a blurred mass of 10 kids. Then Bud started throwing us onto it. JoniBobsDad saw that and raised him. From then on a rotating pair of adults did the 1,2,3 double-handed throw.

Unbeknownst to us, ElizabethsDad had found the face painting kit (Tesco bag of those little pens you can use to draw in the bath) and he did some glasses on Beth. Then Johnny wanted a red ensign and Bud volunteered. This is where it all went wrong. For while he was kneeling down drawing on Johnny, he was a sitting duck for us and the rest of the pens. Led by the evil daughter of Hayley the Bouncy Bra-less Barwench, we covered his head in a dazzling array of lines, dots, scribbles and leprotic patches.

He was too engrossed in doing a flag for Johnny to notice and also he was on his second pint of "Devil's Device" cider (8½%) so couldn't stop us anyway. He had a loose shirt on as well so, having covered his head, we moved onwards and downwards (2 of us actually got in there with him) and gave him green nipples and body-scribbles, even through his generous chest hair.

After a while the unpainted adults called time at the bar and we wandered home, turning heads as we went. Cue some serious scrubbing in the bathroom.