LEGOLAND!

Legoland today. So we had fortifying fryup buffets and I selected a large bowl of watermelon chunks, shame it turned out to be red grapefruit.

We wondered why the kettle flex was so short the kettle wouldn't even sit flat, but the hairdryer flex was so long you could walk into the next room and put it in the bath. We left Jof drying her hair and visited Grenfell Park.

Even at the rough end of town, this is an impressive park with 2 ziplines and actual mountains. The whole thing is shaped like a cupcake cup so all the swings are in the flat bit and the periphery is vertiginous.

Legoland is only 5-8 miles away so we paid the £70 bar bill and we were sensibly ready to leave at 0945, for opening time at 10. An hour later, we extricated ourselves from the traffic jam that is Windsor and were directed into Additional Supplementary Car Park E, formerly the home of some disgruntled sheep.

The tickets are complicated and expensive. 2 of us had free tickets from the Sun newspaper offer and the people in front of us in the queue had a 1 child goes free ticket. Thus I was briefly adopted by an Indian family for £20.

Legoland is large and very very crowded due to the lovely weather. Dodgy animatronic creatures twitch and bleat at you from behind every bush. My primary target was Splashworld so we went the long way round (every way in Legoland is the long way) and I got about 30 minutes before the queue built up so much the redcoats turfed us out to give someone else a chance. Every 5 minutes a giant bucket empties itself over the whole complex and that serves only to add impetus to our already frenetic quackling.

At the driving school I had to wait half an hour for Bud to find a drinks stall and bring my shirt back (can't drive shirtless). Then I had to wait for a girl who had crashed and bumped her knee. She went hysterical: the ride was shut down until the first aider removed the screaming hyperventilating gibbering girl and her 2 drops of lost blood in a wheelchair.

I drove well. Then we lost Jof and I joined the boats queue. Tiring of queueing, I left and selected something else the other side of the park to queue for. I joined the Atlantis queue, the digger queue, the train queue and gave up after 5 minutes on each, spurred on by the constant drone of aircraft coming in to land. The Pirates were great, high-energy choreographed fun where they all jumped off the lighthouse many times.

Lunch was hot greasy chicken in a bucket which was a con with only 5 mouthfuls of meat. The Star Wars shop was groovy with starfighters for only £349 and the mini-death star for £274.

I got £50 worth of assorted Lego merchandise and Jof rediscovered us after 2 hours lost and wandering alone in the baking heat. Due to her heatstroke I got another bagful of Lego out of her.

On the way out we completed 7 sides of a square of pleasant country roads before reaching the motorway. I think I've got sunspots.

I do want to go back because our badly-organised visit didn't do the place justice and it's so big and you can't do anything quickly because of the long waits for everything.