Amusing Root Vegetable not seen at FW open day.

I missed the FW open day.  Karitas & I cooked up a plan and acted !  We were going.  And then I somehow acquired an eleven year old.  He shall be known by his code-name "Turnip" (after the shape of his head when he was younger).  I phoned Karitas, we chatted it over briefly and then, driven possibly by my own overwhelming optimism, bought another ticket.

In the event, Turnip said he would be ok going to the open day.  I explained what FW was about and he looked a little dubious but was still up for it, even given the knowledge that he would likely be the youngest person there.  "Get in !" I thought - I was still going to the open day; Mrs Z was quite prepared to wave us off.

But in the event, his declaration that he wasn't willing to get up before noon scuppered it.  With the benefit of a few seconds of hindsight - it's possibly a good thing.  Sometimes my nephew and I get on really well and sometimes I just do not 'get him' at all.  So it's possibly good that there were no falling out's this past weekend.  And I suspect that forcing him out of bed five hours early and then putting him in that situation might well have resulted in some degree of truculence.

A win for sense and sensibility; and possibly saved me a few quid too.

An old bit of Warwick Castle (the mound, not the stone work)

What did we do ?  Well, on Saturday we went to Warwick Castle.  Which is not quite a theme park, but is definitely not being run along English Heritage/National Trust lines.  There is quite a lot to keep small people interested.  It's a bit overwhelming to someone brought up on the Norman castles of North Wales; and at £30 per head for tickets including the dungeon, merlin and princess "experiences", it isn't cheap.  But it did keep him out of his i-pad for the whole time we were there.

Turning wicked uncle Z into a frog - Mrs Z does not too unhappy about that.  Harumph.

I did also manage to turn his obsessive gaming to my advantage; that bit at the beginning of Space Marine, where you have to shoot the gretchin the other side of the barrier ?  I've never been able to do that.  X Box on and I explained the conundrum.  Half an hour later and the now tooled up Space Marine Captain was sabotaging the giant artillery shell. He can work the controller and switch between weapons with blinding speed, where it takes me ages.  I may go back into it at some point.  But I'll probably just be out of my depth.