I must go down to the sea again

So I was talking to a mother that I met in the street the other day. We were saying how tired our children had been before the Easter holiday; how ready they were to just relax. We were saying we hadn't done much at all with the lazy days, and how that was just what everyone needed.

"On one day," I said, "The Lattes watched Mamma Mia two-and-a-half times through."

She looked at me. She said something about day trips. I realised we were not having the same conversation at all.

And so it was that the next day, the one day that Mr Coffee was using the car, I decided that we should all get on a train and go to the beach. It wasn't far! It would be fun! Fun, that is, after I had stopped hyperventilating on the landing because I didn't know where the sunhats were. Fun, if you discount the fact that the buckets that were meant to go with the spades were actually in the garden full of spent fireworks from last November. Fun, if you like trying to push a wheelchair whilst carrying a rucksack, a pair of crutches and a bag full of sandwiches. Fun, after I had gone out into the world and shouted "If we stop every minute to look at your foot we will never catch this train" so loudly that a woman in a parked car wound her window up.

But we made it, in the end, and were soon sitting on the beach enjoying our picnic. Luckily for me, Joseph Heler had sent me a delicious parcel full of free cheese, and I was finding that their White Cheshire cheese with ham and a bit of Uncle Roy's cherry sauce that my mother had brought back from holiday was a very fine sandwich indeed.

Well, it was until a child threw some sand in it.

We couldn't get very far onto the beach because you can't go very far with a wheelchair on sand before the wheels stop going round. And then you have to stay quite close to where you abandoned it, because though surely no human being would steal a child's wheelchair you would be extremely b*ggered if they did, and you really don't feel like taking the risk.

It all just added to the excitement, because we were so far from the actual sea that we lost sight of where Littlest was paddling every five minutes. These little adrenalin rushes where we thought we had lost her kept Eldest and I on our toes. Eldest went for a bit of a paddle but not much of a one, because I had all our valuables stuffed into my pockets so I couldn't leap right into the water if she stumbled and began to drown.

(I took a book! How ridiculous was that? As if I thought I was going to get a rest!)

Still, seawater was experienced. A bucket of candyfloss was annihilated. A tick was placed in the box marked 'Day trips', and another step towards a successful Easter was made.

(Don't forget I'm giving away marshmallows and aprons on the last post! There's still time to enter.)