Half term training

I have had a few nights out in the last week. One was to a parents evening and the other two were work-related. Living the dream. On Saturday I relaxed by spending four hours in a traffic jam with four children. I call it training for half term. The trip started well. Everyone was in high spirits. I had heard reports on the radio that the motorway was closed going north, but it sounded as if it was all going to open up around 9-ish. In an organisational tour de force, I managed to get all four children up and dressed and ready to go early on a Saturday morning after a short pause to celebrate the loss of daughter two's second tooth [her first in the UK and hence the first for tooth fairy Tamara with whom she is in regular correspondence. She now wants pictures of the entire family of 14 fairies - why, oh why, did I say she has seven brothers and seven sisters? There is only one human-type fairy on Google images, plus Julie Andrews and that American footballer bloke]. Anyhow, we were en route, with my mum on board to boot and headed for a festival in Cambridge.

My partner asked if we wanted to avoid the motorway. I rashly said the backlog was bound to have cleared up by now since the alternative took twice as long. We passed signs saying it was still closed. "They never update the signs straight away," I said confidently. Uh oh, as the baby would say as we rounded a corner and hit the jam from hell. After about an hour or two we were headed up towards somewhere called Puckeridge. There was a huge tailback. I could see the air ambulance in the distance. The baby was getting flustered. No amount of singing the Peppa Pig theme song seemed to work. An hour and a half later and the whole car was beginning to feel decidedly tense.

Daughter three, ever planning ahead, had brought an emergency bag of Haribo so she was fine, but daughter two, who is known for her diva-ish tendencies, was beginning to express slight hunger pangs. There appear to be no shops or cafes on the route to Puckeridge and I now know that route rather too well. We were moving at around five inches per five minutes. WIthin seconds, daughter two's slight hunger pangs had elevated to total hysteria. Not only was she going to die of hunger if no food was located NOW but she needed the toilet. In my haste to leave the house I had not brought my usual emergency biscuit pack. People coming the other way were signalling for us to turn around. After four hours of sitting in traffic we finally decided to abandon our trip and headed to a park and pub. The afternoon improved significantly after that.

I am now working on the half term plan [how on earth did half term happen so quickly?], which makes it sound like there is some sort of strategic thinking that has gone into it and it is not a last-minute cobbling together of the usual favours and burning of the midnight oil.