Thorpe Park hell & heaven

For those few non Blighty readers Thorpe Park is a meek and mild water theme park, full of rides that are more than inclined to soak you through to your underwear, than scare the pants off you, (as our previous au-pair found out to her cost.)

I prefer it to most other theme parks but rely on Leyla being too small to go on the rides as my get out of long queue for little reward. Don't get me wrong I love a thrill, but as I have gotten older the thrills get less entertaining the more my body suffers. Not for me the G forces of fun, not now anyhow. So having ascertained Leyla was in fact big enough to go on ALL the rides my heart sank and off we went. We were there as the gates opened and amazingly unlike previous visits queues were short and much fun was to be had. We had togged ourselves up appropriately, taken waterproof bags and all was good..... well you know that was not going to last don't you. It would not be me if a series of most unfortunate events did not conspire to ruin my day, although if you make it to the end of the post there was a surprisingly happy ending. I did not get whip lash, no, instead Daisy by 3pm realised she had the wrong bag. She had borrowed an old Just Do It bag from Kitty. The whole bloody theme park was chock full of these identical bags so NEVER take one it can only end in tears. In her bag was her ultra special eczema cream, her Blackberry and Kitty's brand spanking new gilet, a very expensive duck down one. Instead Daiisy stood holding a bag full of wet clothes and a Blackberry, sadly not hers. She ran back to the last ride. No, no bag there. She ran to the lost property to see if someone had realised their mistake. No. She handed the bag in and prayed that the owner would realise their error and come back to swap it before they went home. I felt sick, but it was Kitty's day so told them to enjoy themselves. Instead of leaving early to get home and pack we were now committed to a late leaving time. To cut a very boring story short 7 pm came and went and although the girl retrieved her bag she in fact had not picked Daisy's bag up. I now had a migraine. It was gone 7 and with a heavy heart asked if they had checked the boxes where they threw the bags on the other rides. It transpired that despite working out that the problem started with Leyla collecting the bags on another ride by trying to be helpful, they had not bothered to check if it was still there. We ran back to the one we remeber Leyla being so helpful after and drum roll.....there it was, still in the box where Daisy had thrown it.

Oh, if only that was the end of the story.

I joined the M25 at junction 11 we had to go all the way around to junction 2. By junction 10 flashing signs were telling us, NO, STOP, ABANDON ALL HOPE, GET OFF NOW, in fact they were begging us to leave. The motorway was closed and nothing was moving. I left at junction 10 and after a quick scrabble round reading a map upside down I knew with the heaviest of hearts that I was going to hit the south circular on a Friday night. Hell has no worse punishment than that effing road but on a Friday night..... My head was THUMPING. A frantic phone call from Emin and we realised we were in fact blessed. A lorry had traversed the central reservation and killed a shed load of people. The road was closed both ways and many were stuck there for most of the night in a 30 mile tail back. Despite the hellish journey with a pounding headache we got home in time to pack, sleep and get the train to Cornwall. So Leyla's bag snatch in fact has a happy ending.

One final OMG

KITTY HAS JOB!!!!

Her first interview was with GAP and she got the job. I can't tell you how happy I am and how relived we all are, she had resigned herself to going back to college with a heavy heart. Now she will get training and experience from a great company. Have I not always said how great GAP is?