Jonesfest

Last year we got new decking made in our garden and I managed to acquire a sound system for my comedy night, and when you put them together with a big mosaic I've made, it sort of makes the perfect little stage for hosting a tiny festival in your garden. 

Hosting a festival in you garden is one of those things that I wish was normal. When I've told people about it sometimes they've asked "why?" and I really want to respond "why not? Why aren't you? Why isn't everyone?" Like imagine how good it would be if everyone you know put on a festival every year or 2. Imagine that it was just the standard thing you did, and occasionally you could opt out if you wanted to, but people would stop you to ask why. 

I think the same about slides in houses. I wish it was standard when fitting a staircase for it to be half stairs (for going up) and then half slide. And if you really wanted only stairs without a slide you had to make a point of it and fill in a form and pay a bit extra. That's the kind of world I want to live in.

Dan claims he did not consent to this festival (I didn't - Dan) and as an introvert found it a bit more of a challenge. There definitely were some conversations about it though and if he was on facebook he would have seen an invite and the itinerary! (Without me you'd never have spelt itinerary correctly - Dan).

It was originally planned for June, but obviously that didn't happen and then it was really hard to work out whether we should still do it, as the advice is constantly changing and people's views on meet ups change a lot too. In the end we did a massively cut down version of what I originally planned. I had planned a night of music with face painting and hair braiding for the kids, a night of comedy, a live podcast recording, a Jenga tournament, a clothes swap, weaving and knitting workshops, a ukulele strum along and a few other things. All of those thing didn't happen but we did do 5 fun things.

Day one: a bike ride picnic, where I taught the kids rally 123 (you might call it 40 40 home or something else). It's like a cross between hide and seek and Tig (which you might call "tag" or "it"). Anyway the point of this story is that I got outrun by a 7 year old. Sad times. My friend Steve poured salt on the wound by asking me if I let him win, no I didn't he genuinely was faster than me!

Day one was also kids baking, we made cheesecake and gingerbread.

In the evening of day one my lovely friend from uni days Josh came to stay, and on day 2 he put on 2 circus skills workshops on day 2. 

Me and Josh in our student days just hanging out on stilts.

It was a lot of fun. I learnt that there's some circus things I can only do with an angry face and Dan discovered a secret talent for hula hooping.

 

Day 3 was breeze block sculpture, which is one of my favourite things you can do with a single breeze block. If you're looking to sculpt something and your budget is £1.20 I would highly recommend a thermolite breeze block. The true cost though is £1.20, a trip to L13 and a bit of embarrassment. It's slightly embarrassing just being a woman in a builders merchants, you always just feel so aware that you don't look like a builder the whole time. I once got asked out by someone there which further adds the feeling you have that women never enter these places. If I worked in marketing at B&Q I would propose this as their USP:

"Want to not feel completely self conscious while looking round DIY stuff? Don't mind paying double for the privilege? Come to B&Q where we have women, and the ability to browse without having to state exactly what you want in imperial measurements."

So I went to the builders merchants to buy 5 breeze blocks. It was a rainy day but I specifically wanted dry breeze blocks, you can't sculpt wet ones. I made the builder man get some out that were 5 layers down, just to add the the awkwardness of being a woman, bringing my kids and only wanting 5 blocks. Anyway it was all worth it. None of these are finished yet but I think they all had fun.

The finale of Jonesfest was Drama games led by the brilliant Steph. There were 3 families as well as us, all with kids ages 1-8 and considering some people didn't even want to say their names at first, she did an excellent job of gently bringing us out of our shells. At the end one of the kids was begging her to do more. 

I particularly enjoyed an improvised quick-fire game where someone says "what are you doing?" and you had to come up with an action such as "reading a book" or "mowing the lawn." Percy came up with "killing a cow". I asked him later about it and apparently it was the first thing that came into his head. This led me and Dan to come up with the actions "taking my son to counselling" and "resuscitating a cow".

It was a super fun weekend and I can't wait to start planning Jonesfest 2021! you're invited.

This week feels like the last week of this bizarre season of a pandemic and having the kids 24/7. Today was Eric's nursery trial, he'll be doing 3 days a week and Percy will be starting year 1 on Monday.  I'm going to have some child free time at last!! I'm pretty excited about all the things I could do, but that's a whole other blog post which I'll write soon. Well done for surviving life this far everyone. xx