image credit: Simon Jacobs
Three days of school and it already feels like half term was an age ago. But it did happen, the kids did disappear for most it and I managed to squeeze just one Day of Fun with them. Our destination was the Rave-A-Roo launch party at the Ministry of Sound. We were hoping to see our friends Big Fish Little Fish in their takeover slot but I got a little confused about where the main room was and so we missed it. Boo! Instead, we amused ourselves in the bar area, with neon clay modelling and an inflatable thing that blow out jets of air so you could make a ball hover. Ooh, magic-y.
I was solo with both kids so didn’t manage to get much in the way of photos. My hands were kinda busy grabbing onto marauding children. But look at the quality photography I did manage when we eventually found the main room:
In case you can’t tell (and you probably can’t), this was Go!Go! Go! of Nick Jr fame. Their glittery costumes and wild moves wowed the kids and we all had a bit of a boogie, all the while careful to obey the Ministry signs that told us not to dance on the speakers. Sadly, I think my speaker-dancing days are long gone. I might have done that on my 25th birthday, but my 35th was much more about sitting around and drinking tea. Still, this was rock n roll, right? Going to a superclub in the middle of the afternoon with some kids and an inflatable flamingo or two? Plus, Reuben was excited to see the word “Roo” pretty much everywhere he looked. Rave on!
The kids were keen to find the soft play area and we headed back through the bar to the “Baby Box”, where there was a giant ball pit-slash-bouncy castle. They could entertain themselves quite happily in there and Roo barely even stepped on any smaller children. He did almost fall on one while scaling the wall, but that’s the risk you take with extreme-toddler-rave-sports.
It was pretty hard to peel them away but the party was finishing soon so, like hardcore clubbers, they were dragged out into the unforgiving daylight, clutching their glowsticks and complaining that they could keep going all day if they wanted to. I sensed that they still had energy to run off, so we swapped the glamorous surrounds of the Ministry of Sound for a scrubby park behind the Elephant roundabout:
Like the nearby roundabout, it had a huge and inexplicable silver feature in it, which Reuben obviously wanted to climb:
While Eva was busy saying “Giddy up, Fishy!”
And they both enjoyed a snuggle on the climbing frame, though all of us were unsure about why there were random items of clothing draped around it. Sometimes it’s better not to ask. Especially in Elephant & Castle.
Oh, and there was a nice wooden assault course bit too:
After that, Roo needed the loo and it started to rain and it all went a bit downhill but let’s leave it there…an afternoon of raving and playing. Pity they had to go back to school. Well, kinda…
