Victorian Sunset

Today we went to the Victorian Festival of Christmas down at Portsmouths Historic Dockyard. We set off early so that we could get an appointment to see Father Christmas.

We got to the bus stop only to find out we had just missed one so we decided to walk down the road to the next bus stop in order to generate a bit of warmth, after walking along another three stops and waiting for a further ten minutes a bus turned up.

As I approached the door the driver shook his head at me. When I questioned why, he sternly replied "No buggy, its full". Clearly my appeal of standing in the cold for ages with two children fell on deaf ears as the rude driver simply ignored me.

I appreciate that there is limited buggy space on buses but why can't the drivers be a little friendlier when telling you this, instead of making you want to pull them out of their little power booths and make them babysit as punishment.

So instead of waiting in the cold for thirty minutes we decided to walk there. Luckily it was not busy early, like last year, and we managed to get a good time to see Father Christmas, however amazingly only one adult was allowed per family. One adult per family? So in case this was some plot for Santa to meet women under the mistletoe we decided I would go with Toddler.

It was a nice day out seeing lots of strange things and the little ones seemed to have fun even in the freezing cold. Amazingly it even snowed for a little bit which made it even more festive.

When we visited Father Christmas on board HMS Warrior (as pictured) toddler did get a little upset with all the tacky singing Santas and I got upset with an old man with his middle aged child who barged to the front of the queue of children.

Anyway Toddler ended up enjoying meeting the big man, she told him what she wanted for Christmas (A Blue Scooter) and broke tradition by smiling for a photo with him instead of the floods of tears of previous years.

After a little wait in the cold we got the bus home but at least this time we were allowed on the bus.