It took a full hour to get here in the car from Liverpool! Anyway, when we got here, my mum was a little downhearted when she was told to wait for 62 mins in the queue just to check in! When she had finished, Seth, Matilda and Arthur had already gone out into their caravan, and Lillian and Nathan just arrived to start queuing.
Our caravan is huge! When we got into it, we were certain it was much wider than it’s meant to be; for instance, the lounge; it’s even bigger than our own! The beds are ultra comfy with no springs or anything like last time, but unfortunately the cleaners were not very good and there were plenty of grubby surfaces!
After dinner (a bowl of muesli) we went with Seth, Matilda, Arthur, Lillian and also Nathan to the entertainment house to do the Fun-Stars Go! Live activities, mainly for Arthur, who is five 🙂 They had a big disco first, and everyone danced and sang and played Tag. I did request Uptown Top Ranking by Althea and Donna, but they didn’t have it or something so I’ll try again tonight. We D.I.S.C.O.ed around for ages and then let Arthur and Nathe watch the Fun-Stars mainly. There was another disco after that, and then a comedian came on at ten to ten in the pm, but Arthur got very tired so we decided to go back. We then had a lovely sleep in the comfy beds.
Today we went to a walk around Lancaster. We went into Lancaster Cathedral and had a look round, and deciphered some of the Latin on the walls. We also tried several car parks, and only one of them could we actually park in, and then Mummy accidentally paid for two hours and not one, so we had an extra walk around the shops.
Then we went to Morecambe Beach for a splash with our friends. It was a little bit disappointing when we discovered that there wasn’t actually any sea, and only miles upon miles (literally) of sinking sand. However, it was much more fun when I played ‘spa’ with Lillian and the Matildas, and also when Seth invented the ‘Seth Tours’ and took us round to the sinking sand area. Luckily he knew the safe way – I’ll tell you why that was lucky now. It was lucky because once a group of forty odd people were having fun wading about in the sinking sand, and when the tide out and they all walked to go back to the shore, they couldn’t because they were stuck, and the water kept coming right until it covered them up and they drowned.
So you can understand why it was lucky Seth knew the safer way, and he held three ‘Seth Tours’ all in the mud until Dean (their dad) and Nicola (their mum) said the tide was coming out too quickly and it was too dangerous. So the Matildas and I went over to the rocks and started clambering all over them, which was quite fun until we saw the sign that said ‘DO NOT CLIMB ON THE ROCKS FROM NOW ON. THEY ARE UNSTABLE’ and then we quickly got onto the road and ran the whole road down to where the parents had pitched their tent.
After the beach, we went back over to the caravan park and went to Tesco to get our tea (chicken korma). However, the oven in the caravan was, in a polite way, not exactly top-notch, and the curry took way longer than we thought it would. We missed the prize bingo, the mini disco, and the Fun-Stars Go! Live, but then we arrived and met with Lillian, Nathan, Seth and the others just in time for the 60s disco! We danced all night, quite literally, and then watched the 6os performance. The next thing was a thing-that-was-a-bit-like-Poker-but-not-Poker, and it was for adults and it was boring.
So Seth decided to go to the arcade, and when I went in to ask him if he was alright, he said that a group of teenagers had come over and made him put all his money in the slots, and then ran off with his bag of money and his prizes! He went with me and we told Dean, who went over to the security guard and told him. The security guard said he had seen it all on camera and had thought they were all just friends, and when Dean told him they weren’t, he gave Seth a couple of bags of 2ps and an emoji money box 😀
NEXT DAY – DAY FOUR
Today we woke up in the morning (pretty late, so…) and went straight out to the swimming pool. Lillian, Nathan, Seth and their brothers and sisters came soon too, and as soon as the slide opened we all dashed over to it! Here’s a description:
Basically, it was like a huge, freezing cold, metal tower with a long spiral staircase going up and up and up, and at the top you had to ly down with your arms crossed like an Egyptian mummy, and then you slide down this short, dark tunnel, and then… You come out into a large bowl exactly like one of those ones you might find in a library or a charity shop that you put a penny in, and it goes round and round and round and pleep! down the middle. That was exactly what the Space Bowl (which was the name of the slide) was like, and you were the penny, and you went round and round the massive bowl at top speed and SPLASH!!!! into the deep, enormous pool at the foot!
Unfortunately, one of the times I went down, I went scraaaaaape in the swirling bowl, and when I got out and went back and showed Mummy, there was this enormous swollen bump on my back, and I had to lie down on Tilly’s bed for half an hour with an IcePak on it! 🙁 🙁
After lunch, Nicola texted us and said they were going to the splash park, and invited us to come along too! Of course we did go, and at first I tried not to get my hair wet, seeing as I washed it this morning, but then I thought to myself, Come on Lavinia, you’re in a splash park, get over it! So I got everyone to fill up a cup of water and pour it over my head to punish myself for being a spoilsport 😉
We played about for ages on two teams, each team trying to drench the other, but then it got a bit out of hand and everyone started betraying their team, pretending to still be on it but actually being on the other, a bit like spies so they could take place in their meetings and know exactly where they were going to pour three cups of water over my head, and when they were going to trip Seth up and pour water on him while he was lying helpless, and whether or not they should do the same to little Arthur 😉 But yes, it was very fun, and I did get drenched, and when I got back to the caravan I had a lovely cold (!) shower and now I’m all… well, washed.
Later on, after a dinner of my mum’s signature spicy bean wraps, we went to the entertainment again with Nicola’s and Fran’s (Lillian and Nathan’s mum). We got there super early, about seven o’clock, when the Fun-Stars only starts at quarter past eight, and danced for ages! I got them to put on Cold As Ice, by… is it Foreigner? Well anyway, and Mummy said to request Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush, even though it’s not much a dancing song, but it didn’t come on anyhow. Then Fun-Stars Go! Live came on and it was things like ‘Story-time’ and ‘If You Get Lost’ and a load of other boring stuff, until the first volunteering game came on…
Lillian and Arthur were on separate teams, L on Blue and A on Yellow. They brought up their dads, Dave and Dean, and the Fun-Star lady said, ‘Well well well! It’s time to get your dads to show up their inner princess!’ And Dean and Dave looked like they’d just found a dead man on their doorstep. Anyway, Lillian and Arthur were given a load of pink and purple paint, and they had to paint all over their faces, for instance pink circles on their cheeks like little blusher blots, and so on! It was SO hilarious, and Seth and Nicola were filming so as they would NEVER forget that moment!
But the worst was yet to come! They gave Dean a golden ringlet wig and called him Goldilocks, and Dave a long yellow plait with plastic flowers in it, and called him Rapunzel! It was so funny! But as I said, the worst was yet to come..
Then the Fun-Star woman put on ‘Let It Go’ from the Frozen Disney film, and said that Dean had to dance to it and lip-sink it, and then Dave, and then both together! It was SO FUNNY! I was expecting them to sort of stand there and look very embarassed but apparently not! Dean started singing it and making funny gestures and dancing round the stage and meaningfully propping his wig the wrong way round, and Dave sang at full volume while prancing about the stage and pretending to apply his lip-stick and eyeshadow! It was so funny that Nicola and Fran were almost having a heart attack they were laughing so much!
DAY FIVE
Today we lounged about a bit in the morning, and around noon we went off for a day in Blackpool. We were going to go to the Blackpool Tower Dungeons, but we spent so long in the Tower and Circuus Spectacular (both of which I’ll tell you about in a sec), that we did not have enough time to, so we’re going to do it tomorrow.
Anyway – first we went to the Blackpool Tower.
First we went to the Victorian circus! It was absolutely amazing! We weren’t allowed to take any photographs or anything so you can’t see it, but I’ll tell you about all the acts anyway. First there were these two boys from Ethiopia who were doing load upon loads of cool acrobatic stunts, and they beat the world record of 23 forward flips (I’ve forgotten what they’re actually called, but they’re amazingly difficult) by doing 29! Mooky (one of the hosts) decided to count at dundun, dundun, dunun, dunun speed, and counted 30, but they actually did 29. But yes, they beat the world record! It was sooo cool!
One of my favourite acts was the Chinese tight-rope wallker, whose name was clearly complicated, but I seem to think it was Wuang Nan. Anyway, she came on, and started doing loads of amazing stuff on the tight-rope. And then – can you guess what – she got a unicycle, turned it so that the wheel was balancing on the thinnest wire you could ever imagine, and then put her head on the seat so she was upside-down on the unicycle, and then put her hands on the pedals and LITERALLY she cycled up and down the tight-rope, on a unicycle, upside-down! Then, she gave the unicycle to the staff man, took a very short ladder off him, set down the two tiny, wooden feet on the tight-rope so that it was at a horrendously terrifying angle, and then put her hands on the thin rung of the ladder, and at a straight angle to the rope, on the thinnest wire, on the thinnest ladder, and stood herself upside-down on the ladder BY HER HANDS ON A TIGHT-ROPE!!
My other favourite act was, I think, called the ‘Luminous Lions’, and that was because the actors in the act were dressed in almost-a-bit-like-cat costumes which were then painted in pink and yellow luminous paints! Then every last light went away, therefore leaving the whole room black apart from the pink and yellow glowing bodies of the Luminous Lions! Their act was a trapeze-type 0ne, where one of them hung by his legs ages above the ground on a trapeze, and then the others all jumped forward, backwards so they couldn’t see where they were going, and they jumped forward, clasped onto his hands, and then turned three somersaults at least forty-five feet into the air and flipped onto the upper platform! It was SO amazingly astonishingly awesomely cool!
Now, my absolute favourite act ever was when this man came on and started doing pretty cool but pretty boring flips. And what could get better that would make me love the act so much? Guess? Well? No? Alright then, fine: he did the monkey bars upside down by his feet at least fifty feet high in the air, with no mat on anything! BY HIS FEET!! And can you guess what? He slipped! I’m not sure if he did it on purpose or not, but he slipped one foot and he was hanging onto the monkey bar by one toe, and it gave me such a heart attack, I thought he was going to fall so much! He looked like he’d just lost the Olympics when he did that, and I don’t think it was on purpose! But I thought he was gonna FALL and DIE and I thought I was going to have a heart attack!!
Just quickly, there two hosts at the circus, Mooky and Mr Boo. This was one of their funny jokes:
Mr Boo:Where have you been, Mooky?
Mooky:Talking to the dancing girls backstage.
Mr Boo:You – you what?
Mooky [timidly]:Talked to the dancing girls backstage.
Mr Boo:Oh and what did you talk about?
Mooky [quickly]:No.
Anyway, after the Blackpool Tower Circus Spectacular, we all went to the Blackpool Tower Eye, and watched this cool 4D cinema video about something very strange, some weird thing about a boy who imagined he could fly and then… well then that was basically it. Anyway, we went up in the lift, but Nicola was too scared to, and Seth was a bit frightened from how high it was, which I can understand because it WAS pretty high! Anyhow, when we got there, there was this massive glass floor and wall, so it looked like – when you stood on it – you were just falling, falling, or if you wanted, you could be levitating, flying, flying – and it was so cool! We got some awesome pics of us pretending to fall through the covered-up-holes 😉
There were a few more floors, all of which had no walls and just huge, hole-y nets, so that underneath here you can see this picture of me where the wind kinda disagreed with my hair being where it wanted to be.
And then, the lift opened and who arrived? Nicola! Everyone was cheering for her. She said that the man at the bottom offered to take her, just her, so that she could cope better, and whenever she took a nervous peek over her shoulder, he would say, quickly, ‘So!’ And hence distract her from making him go back down again.
When we came out the Tower Eye, as it was called, Fran had to scidaddle, and Nicola’s went on the beach with us for ten or so minutes. We had to go home, and it sounded pretty cool saying, ‘See you at the partaaay!’ Which meant, ‘See you at Fun-Stars for a disco!’
When we did see them (but not Lillian and Nathe, they were at a friend’s who lived nearby) at the ‘partaaay’ we danced around a bit and then disappeared in the arcade with two 2p coins, and came back out again with over three pounds! It was really fun. And, at quarter to ten at night, when all was disappointment because we thought we were going back to bed, Seth, the Matildas, Arthur and I were very excited to hear that actually we were going to the park for a play-about! We swung around and played Tag and so on, but eventually, of course, we did have to go home, and we weren’t happy about it, but we did because we thought of comfy beds and teddy bears.
NEXT DAY – DAY SIX
Today, in the morning, we went to the Blackpool Tower Dungeons! We were… well… pretty scared – no, terrified – but after a while we realised that it was fun fun fun and fine fine fine! There were some creepy bits when the lights went off and then someone was standing in front of you, or air blew through the back of your chair, or little pokey things stabbed through the seat of the chair or something 🙂 It was a bit creepy, but really fun and funny too! One of the actors showed us what all the torturing tools did, and most of them (no, all of them) were pretty gruesome! There was one to pull out your tongue, and also one to chop of the thing that only men have(!).
At the end there was a ride called ‘DROP DEAD’, but Tilly and I were so terrified that we decided to leave it. I’ve been on it before in the London Dungeons; basically the lights go out completely, and then you sit in this long seat thing, and you hover quite high for two minutes or so until you begin to think the ride’s broken, and then it ever so suddenly DROPs you and brings you back up, waits again, then DROPs, and so on.
I’m writing this while sitting in our car in a terrible queue. We left for home at half two and now it’s six in the pm and we’re STILL not home!! 🙁 Well, wish us luck 😉