Today was not a good day by all accounts, it was SUPPOSED to be a fun day – at least that was my intention. I had been invited to a blog event being hosted by Johnsons at Maggie & Rose in Kensington. We have been there a few times before and Little Bean loved it, so I decided to swap her days around at nursery so that she could join Beanie Boy and myself for a little road trip.
The plan was to leave by 9.30am so that we could arrive in plenty of time to go for a little walk around Kensington, grab some lunch and then head off to the event. BUT I was also mindful of the fact that I had got my dates mixed up and had invited friends around for a meal in the evening so I had to make sure that the house was spit spot (we don’t want people to think I’m a rubbish housewife!). So at 11am, I finally loaded the children into the car to begin our journey a little later than anticipated. After a quick pit stop at Hubby’s work to drop off his wallet which he had left at home (he was buying the food for tea) we set off on our way. The children behaved like the perfect stepford children and fell asleep leaving me to enjoy the music and the beautiful weather, until erm, hang on a minute, what’s happened to the sat nav? Yes that’s right, I forgot to charge it up so it stopped working! Not to worry I thought, I could use the Sat Nav on my phone, oh no I can’t actually, it’s lost data connection. Oh well, I’ve driven this route before I’ll just go from memory then bang, hold ups as we entered London there was a pile up on Barnet Way and two ambucopters in attendance and so the queues began.
A little further into London and the traffic eased up until I joined the North Circular and then began moving at snails pace, the children woke up and the clock began ticking the time away until I realised that instead of arriving early I was now going to be lucky to even make it on time. The children began to cry because they were hungry/needed a wee/were bored – please delete as applicable and in the increasing volume I took a wrong turning at a roundabout and headed off in the wrong direction. I too began to cry as I was now going to be over half an hour late for an hour long function! Little Bean asked me “Mummy, do you just want to turn around and go home?”. “Yes” I replied, “oh but Mummy I haven’t had my face painted yet?” Little Bean whimpered.
A few distressed phone calls (handsfree of course) to Hubby later and he had managed to call ahead to tell them I was ‘lost in London’ but still hopefully heading in the right direction and we arrived at our destination 45 minutes late!!! A new record for me! The lovely ladies at Johnson at delayed proceedings and the event then carried on as normal (I will tell you all about that separately).
The journey home was pretty much as disastrous, a journey which would normally take me a little over 2 hours took nearly 4. I was frazzled to say the least and I felt like I had wasted a day of my children’s lives, I apologised to them for a rubbish day and said that I had been a rubbish Mummy to which Little Bean replied “you’re never a rubbish Mummy, you are the best Mummy ever” and just like that the bad day disappeared. Thank heaven for little girls . . .