2 Father Christmases

Fish fingers and waffle for breakfast, because that's what I asked for. In fact, I only asked for 1 fish finger so be grateful that I ate any waffle whatsoever, that's all I'm saying.

The promise today was a new park, spotted on satellite images and located in Portchester. Portchester Community Centre is slightly dilapidated but has a wealth of outside facilities. It has 2 tennis courts and a basketball court, all dilapidated. It has a decent walking-park with footpaths and a folly (very dilapidated). There is a Petanque terrain, recently re-gravelled. Is Petanque a growing sport? It turns out there is a local club who throw their French Boules regularly.

The swingpark itself is a medium, I suppose, with a larger-than-average pyramid of ropes, some good climbing frames, 3 rotating things and a see-saw.

But without doubt the star of the show is the spinning platter, it goes quite fast if you do scooting-action kicks on it and we all had a go, although I did fall directly into a puddle because all 6 year-olds gravitate towards puddles. The turntable game was rejuvenated when Bud found a clapped-out tennis ball in the wastelands formerly known as tennis courts. It was mostly hairless, having had only 17 previous careful canine owners, but when you threw it onto the spinning platter, it bounced and rolled and fell into the puddle. That made it wet and it then drew lovely spirals on the rubber matting and we played "SpinBall" for ages. Just goes to show you don't need expensive stuff to have a good time.

In giant Tesco I got 2 Lego specialist figurines - you can't see who's in the packet until you buy it and open it, luck of the draw, could be anyone. That's why I got 2 Father Christmases.
Later: bonfire and fireworks and halloween games at the JoniBobs house. They had taken over (temporarily) our traditional fest, and they hosted it with their usual efficiency.

We all dressed up in our halloween costumes and BensMum organised many games and so forth, we had apple bobbing, fancy dress voting, quiz time, tying yourself to your father, wrapping up the mummies in toilet roll etc. I won more Lego figurines, none of which were Father Christmas.
There were a couple of persistent howlers, none of whom were girls.
We danced to Oppa Gangnam Style 4 times in a row and watched the fireworks. Part way through the display we actually got bored and went back inside, leaving the adults to get on with beer and bombs.
Meanwhile, Grandma and Grandad were snowed in.