in which quite a lot of fun and not a lot of sleep is had by all
So, Friday/Saturday was the Guide sleepover (though they seem to view it as a stay-awake competition)
Friday night was slightly more disorganised than we wished, meaning that as we had to be in Weston to see the Weston Gang Show by 7:30, we left the washing up till we got back.
The gang show was great though - lots of scene changes and singing and dances and all quite a good standard, though they could have done with more mikes to the singers in some of the songs cos they were a bit hard to hear, but since they were all quite well known songs it wasn't that much of a problem.
I hadn't been to a gang show before, but this one was kind of a cross between a musical and a pantomime (you get to boo at the baddies, but there's no dame to throw sweets at you, still quite a lot of cross-dressing going on which may have been due to the lack of adult male cast members)
The Plot, in case you're interested
A group of Scouts and Guides, and two random American children, on a trip to the waxwork museum, get bored and wander off and accidentally get locked inside for the night. The American parents also get locked in while looking for them.
And then...
the waxworks come ALIVE! (a useful way to have all kinds of implausible combinations of characters including Henry VIII and wives, Baden-Powell with Guides and Scouts through the years, Red Indians, Egyptians (I think), Pirates, and Merlin and the Boy Arthur (Merlin being the one with the magic to make them all come alive!)
In the mean time...
Bank Robbers(in traditional stripy jumpers) enter the museum in order to break through the cellars to the bank next door. The children and waxworks hear their plotting, and attempt to foil them, only resulting in the capture of one of the Guides by the robbers
INTERVAL
The bank robbers break through the wall into the bank, and knock out most of the security guards (one gets away), and open the safe to be engulfed by dancing money bags, one of which they capture. The policemen who are summoned by the escaping guard don't believe a word of it, so Merlin uses his magic to defeat the robbers, who get tied up by ghosts, the moneybag & Guide released, and the waxwork of the Queen sentences the robbers to be a permanent waxwork exhibit in the museum, before giving the children medals.
(Pausing every five minutes for a song, of course.)
So after the show and washing up and hot chocolate and making the newest Guide's promise, we attempt to make them all be quiet to me & J can sleep, which is successful around midnight ish, but the lovely morning sunlight means they are all awake at about 6am anyway.
Which is good because then we have time to have breakfast and make lunch and wash up and pack up and get everything out of the hall and into the shed before 9am, so that we can get to Swindon to go ice skating for a reasonable time. ice skating quite fun, apart from the falling over, then to the other side of Swindon for lunch and the swimming pool which is a fun pool with wave machines and slides and things like that (though of course I can't see but that wasn't too much of a problem really).
Then out and back to nailsea to get them all back to parents (we even got nearly all of the stuff back with the right girl, bar one sleeping bag), and one of the parents was nice enough to give me a lift home, so I could have a cup of tea and some banoffee pie before L* and her parents picked me up so we could go to Weston (again!) for some dinner before Beth's concert.
I was recognised in Bottellino's by the head waiter-guy from going to the Nailsea branch. Not sure if I'm memorable or just go there too often (not VERY often but sometimes we'll go for lunch from work if it's somebody's birthday is when I usually go).
Concert (which was the school's annual concert, with Beth's mass being the whole of the second half)was really good - a very high standard but i think Churchill school specialises in music. There were nearly as many different ensembles as we had in our whole county when I went to school (Symphony orchestra, a big and a little gospel choir, jazz ensemble, brass ensemble and concert band). We were sitting by the percussion which was quite fascinating - you have to be quite good at silently moving from the glockenspiel to the snare drum to the gong back to the cymbals, if that's a typical example. I never really noticed the percussion before, they're usually hidden at the back I think, but the amount of different instruments you get to play is quite large.
The mass was lovely - I'm not a very good music critic but what I really liked was you could hear what the choir were singing (having the words in the program was useful on account of most of them being Latin words). But the (instrumental) music was great too.
Apparently they recorded it so I'm going to see if I can get hold of a copy if they sell it.
And now I'm quite glad I don't really have plans for today although I did wake up fairly early for someone who was falling asleep most of yesterday evening.
Friday night was slightly more disorganised than we wished, meaning that as we had to be in Weston to see the Weston Gang Show by 7:30, we left the washing up till we got back.
The gang show was great though - lots of scene changes and singing and dances and all quite a good standard, though they could have done with more mikes to the singers in some of the songs cos they were a bit hard to hear, but since they were all quite well known songs it wasn't that much of a problem.
I hadn't been to a gang show before, but this one was kind of a cross between a musical and a pantomime (you get to boo at the baddies, but there's no dame to throw sweets at you, still quite a lot of cross-dressing going on which may have been due to the lack of adult male cast members)
The Plot, in case you're interested
A group of Scouts and Guides, and two random American children, on a trip to the waxwork museum, get bored and wander off and accidentally get locked inside for the night. The American parents also get locked in while looking for them.
And then...
the waxworks come ALIVE! (a useful way to have all kinds of implausible combinations of characters including Henry VIII and wives, Baden-Powell with Guides and Scouts through the years, Red Indians, Egyptians (I think), Pirates, and Merlin and the Boy Arthur (Merlin being the one with the magic to make them all come alive!)
In the mean time...
Bank Robbers(in traditional stripy jumpers) enter the museum in order to break through the cellars to the bank next door. The children and waxworks hear their plotting, and attempt to foil them, only resulting in the capture of one of the Guides by the robbers
INTERVAL
The bank robbers break through the wall into the bank, and knock out most of the security guards (one gets away), and open the safe to be engulfed by dancing money bags, one of which they capture. The policemen who are summoned by the escaping guard don't believe a word of it, so Merlin uses his magic to defeat the robbers, who get tied up by ghosts, the moneybag & Guide released, and the waxwork of the Queen sentences the robbers to be a permanent waxwork exhibit in the museum, before giving the children medals.
(Pausing every five minutes for a song, of course.)
So after the show and washing up and hot chocolate and making the newest Guide's promise, we attempt to make them all be quiet to me & J can sleep, which is successful around midnight ish, but the lovely morning sunlight means they are all awake at about 6am anyway.
Which is good because then we have time to have breakfast and make lunch and wash up and pack up and get everything out of the hall and into the shed before 9am, so that we can get to Swindon to go ice skating for a reasonable time. ice skating quite fun, apart from the falling over, then to the other side of Swindon for lunch and the swimming pool which is a fun pool with wave machines and slides and things like that (though of course I can't see but that wasn't too much of a problem really).
Then out and back to nailsea to get them all back to parents (we even got nearly all of the stuff back with the right girl, bar one sleeping bag), and one of the parents was nice enough to give me a lift home, so I could have a cup of tea and some banoffee pie before L* and her parents picked me up so we could go to Weston (again!) for some dinner before Beth's concert.
I was recognised in Bottellino's by the head waiter-guy from going to the Nailsea branch. Not sure if I'm memorable or just go there too often (not VERY often but sometimes we'll go for lunch from work if it's somebody's birthday is when I usually go).
Concert (which was the school's annual concert, with Beth's mass being the whole of the second half)was really good - a very high standard but i think Churchill school specialises in music. There were nearly as many different ensembles as we had in our whole county when I went to school (Symphony orchestra, a big and a little gospel choir, jazz ensemble, brass ensemble and concert band). We were sitting by the percussion which was quite fascinating - you have to be quite good at silently moving from the glockenspiel to the snare drum to the gong back to the cymbals, if that's a typical example. I never really noticed the percussion before, they're usually hidden at the back I think, but the amount of different instruments you get to play is quite large.
The mass was lovely - I'm not a very good music critic but what I really liked was you could hear what the choir were singing (having the words in the program was useful on account of most of them being Latin words). But the (instrumental) music was great too.
Apparently they recorded it so I'm going to see if I can get hold of a copy if they sell it.
And now I'm quite glad I don't really have plans for today although I did wake up fairly early for someone who was falling asleep most of yesterday evening.