cor baby that's really free

Dear Marianne,

At the end of term I spent a day working my way through all the things to do in the summer holidays, you know things like "adventure pirate playground" fun and "family days in the Kent countryside" fun and "visit our tiny and pointless nature centre, we have two sheep a poorly bird of prey and my brover went to Flumwell's sanctuary but all he got me woz dis t. shirt fun.
Then, I carefully wrote on the calendar all the free and fun things that were going on in our Town and county over the holidays. Now of course free fun is an oxymoron as the kids will tell you. If something doesn't cost anything it must be shite. Their argument goes roughly like this: Disneyland (hundreds of pounds train + ticket)the most fun, Legoland (£29 ticket) very fun, cinema (£6 ticket) fun, Swimming (£2 ticket) funish, FUN day (free)no fun.

The first free fun thing I took the kids to, (apart from hunt the lost hamster), was down at the pantiles and consisted of beer and Morris Dancers. Of course when it said fun and free it might also have said something about the morris dancing, but I hadn't bothered with the detail. It was free, we have no money, the holidays are six weeks long and I have five children.
So, I dragged Becky away from Pride and Prejudice (the film), prized Stans fingers from his playstation and ripped Archie's mobile from his ear so that they could join me and the two more keen members of the family for some summer funness.

After a slow start which was actually us watching two blokes putting out rows of chairs for something which clearly wasn't going to begin for hours, the Morris dancers appeared. Now, I don't know whether you hold an opinion on Morris dancers but I do; embarrassing english tradition, silly and eccentric in character, performed by people who drink beer in proper glasses and really do wear sandals with socks, always.

So they danced about in their ripped clown suits and hit each other with their sticks, yelped like wild banshees (there was a bird only group - hairy legged lesbians obviously), jingled their bells and generally entertained my children to the point where I have to admit, they were having fun. At which point some twat dressed as a very frightening if totally unrealistic horse came and scared the hell out of the two little ones so that we had to leave. "Its just a man in a sheet" I tried, but by this time they were petrified. I was upset for them but secretly pleased for me, because whilst they had all been dancing and clapping and generally enjoying it, I had been on the verge of self harm for forty minutes. "Whose for the Park?!" I said as positively as I could, no takers. "Chocolate cake and ice-cream?!"; pathetic I know, but works every time.

I have been to two more fun days since, the first of which was niether fun nor free as it turned out. This was billed as a family fun day at The Beacon pub. But it cost £1 for the little ones to go on their fun stuff and the bouncy castle was limited to five minutes of fun, then exactly at five minutes there was a spotty teenager to call them off - nice. The bbq food was awful, burnt pieces of meat with oven chips - yuk, and the rest of the fun stuff on offer, the bull riding and laser clay pigeon shooting was actually for grown ups behaving like children.
The second outing was brilliantly run by Charlton AFC who know a thing or two about charming the young people of Kent into becoming future supporters. The fun things were quality and free and Archie got five games of 5 a side football in an hour. But I still had issues about the fun for the adults which this time didn't exist at all.

I have five more fun and free days penciled in over the next four weeks, so there is a chance that I really will get a day of fun "for all the family". If someone can rustle up something which includes an Italian cafe atmosphere, a bouncy castle, face painting, a football game, girlie shopping and an outdoor playstation then we will all be laughing.

Rx