Thrills Galore ....

As it was vaguely sunny on Sunday (Which for a UK Bank Holiday weekend is unheard of, so you make the most of it) we all went to Clacton for the afternoon. Clacton is your typical English seaside town, full of theme pubs, tacky shops for tourists, ice cream sellers, limited parking, people you cross the road to avoid, and a pier ...

The girls love the pier and its rides, (Though I did notice how all the prices have shot up in the space of a couple of weeks. Recession? What recession?) but Bethany appears to have shrunk in the past couple of weeks as the rides she was on in February she is now too small for.

Charlotte went on the Waltzer (She's in the blue blur in the photo at the top of the blog), and Bethany had to make do with a kiddie roller-coaster.

Charlotte then went on 'The Whiplash' with her Uncle Matt, whilst I took B on the dodgems. Over the years I've noticed two sorts of dodgem cars; either they have a steering wheel in the centre of the dashboard, or it's positioned car like in front of one of the seats. These dodgems had a central wheel, which meant Bethany could steer, and steer she did. Initially she took a liking to the side walls as she kept driving towards to them only to veer away at the last minute, but she soon got the hang of driving around and dodging - well I say that, she did have a mission though ... As soon as we started, a somewhat overweight boy rammed his car into ours and with a sarcastic 'sorry' drove off. I thought Bethany had ignored him as she was excited about driving, but I was wrong! She soon spotted that the boy was stuck in a corner where he'd crashes into another car, so aimed our car at his and rammed him straight in the side! With a cheery 'Sorry!' she had reversed and was off again!

Once off the pier we walked back to the car via the beach, taking the opportunity to throw stones into the sea and watching a small rescue boat go off and rescue someone.

So other than the dive that is Clacton and iPod Touch filling (Or 'Charlotte's Touch Pod' as Bethany calls it), what else happened over the bank holiday weekend?

Saturday was spent looking at a Westfield sports car with my father-in-law and brother-in-law, (We've talked him out of that one as it was tight fitting for me let alone him, and the father-in-law couldn't reach the gear stick!) and then watching Ipswich lose in the afternoon. The Ipswich manager looked a very forlorn figure walking off at the end of the match, especially after having 18,000 singing how they want him out.

Yesterday was Mia's birthday, and coupled with Easter this meant the diet was blown for the weekend. Last night Mia and I had a chinese take-away, and I also ate an entire 'Dairy Milk' easter egg - I've not looked at the scales, but this week will mainly consist of soup and apples for my meals.

And today it's back to work. Still 4 day week which makes it just about bearable .. But, 6 weeks tomorrow and we're off on holiday, which is nice - just got to lose that extra 1/2 stone between now and then.