A Trip To The Dr Who Exhibition

It's actually a real challenge to come up with new places to go and things to do which please all my three kids at the same time. Although as the smallest one is still only fifteen months old what I really mean is things that please the eleven and nine year old and to which the toddler can be dragged along without much grief.

Therefore I was congratulating myself in anticipation of our visit to the Dr Who Exhibition in Cardiff this week - since Dr Who is probably the one show on TV that we all drop everything to watch. How could the kids not be impressed? However nothing in my life ever goes that smoothly, I should have known, and I draw a lesson from it to lower my expectations of my impending wedding day.

The idea itself was a good one, and lovely fiance reckoned the journey would take about an hour and a half in the car - if timed to coincide with the morning nap time of the small one this would work well. But we unfortunately didn't take into account the fact that there seem to be roadworks on every motorway in the country at any given time, and thus large portions of the M4 in both directions were cordoned off with bollards for no apparent reason, as we counted no workmen whatsoever during the entire journey. The built-in satnav in lovely fiance's car tried to calculate a new route 'to avoid delays', however I find it so hard to trust the thing when the road at the time of the announcement is clear and virtually empty. And so you continue past the junction and hit the queue a mile or so later, cursing yourself for not relying on the robot, who in our car is known as 'Lara' after Lara Croft Tomb Raider, don't ask me why.

We eventually arrived at the Dr Who exhibition, which proved to be really good, full of costumes, memorabilia and buttons to press for interactive moments. The kids loved it. Unfortunately it also turned out to be really small, something not mentioned on the website. You would be hard-pressed to get more than an hour out of it, I feel. We managed to fill up another couple of hours by wandering a bit aimlessly around Cardiff Bay, occasionally pointing out one of the Torchwood locations and taking photos of each other. And then we had pizza at Bella Italia before heading home. Ever the optimist, lovely fiance stated that the road had seemed pretty clear in the direction of home, however he was quickly proven wrong and we spent a further two and a half hours in the car. During this time, the best-behaved child in the car was the toddler. The older two whiled away the time by bickering and then degenerating into a more physical playfight game which brought out the hostility in me and eventually forced even lovely fiance, the most mild-mannered person in the universe, to demand peace and quiet. I made my usual threat to remove the scart cable from son's playstation 3, and calm quickly followed.

Despondent at the failure of what I had thought a dead cert for parental points, I have resolved to take them all swimming next time - the only surefire crowd pleaser, but which unfortunately requires me to wear a swimsuit in a public place, something I detest doing. However the following day, with the memory of the horror car journey beginning to dull, elder daughter gave me a cuddle and said the day before had been great and the exhibition was 'so fun'. And I heard them both telling a friend about it enthusiastically. So all is not lost, and maybe any family time spent venturing outside the box is always worthwhile.