In the August of 2019, I decided to meet my beautiful sister-in-law with her girls in London and do a bit of sightseeing with the kids. My oldest, Tom, was 11 and the youngest, Leo, was 4. Travelling to London on the train seemed the easiest way to get there and I knew the kids would be excited by the novelty of it. They all had their own backpacks with fun activities they wanted to do on the train, a few snacks and a drink. Great fun! The photo above was taken soon after we met up with our lovely family at Buckingham Palace.

By this time, I’d begun to realise my mistake in thinking I could do this on my own! It’s another example of my ‘It’ll be fine’ moments. When we got to London, I bought all the kids day tickets for the tube so they could get themselves through the barriers. However, Leo is left-handed, so at every ticket barrier he tried to go through the wrong gate! I would have to grab him to push him through the right one and make sure he got his ticket back! This happened every time, and you can imagine the other people waiting to get through the barriers weren’t exactly pleased to see me handing out and collecting tickets, pushing kids through and then probably what looked like snatching a child from one of the barriers and shoving them through another.

Anyway, we got to Buckingham Palace and the children all stared through the iron railings. The younger ones couldn’t see very well, so they climbed up, as you can see here. Cute hey?

A few moments after this was taken one of the soldiers in front of the palace starting yelling. We all thought it must be the changing of the guard. But no, he stepped forward and pointed at these beautiful faces and yelled for them to get down and made a show of the massive gun he was carrying! A bit over the top. Not sure Leo was planning a coup!

So we swiftly moved on, trying to assure the children that they weren’t really at risk of being shot for standing on the railings! We cooled off at the fountain as everyone was already a bit hot and bothered! The girls were still smiling but the boys were melting! We tried to get them all enthusiastic about the historic sites but things began to slide from this point on!

We found a phone booth and thought it would be great fun to squeeze all the kids inside! As you can see the kids weren’t impressed, and Leo could only be appeased if he was allowed to hold the phone to his ear!

After a lovely picnic lunch, we said goodbye to the cousins and headed off on our own to the science museum. You can see from the photo that my kids were at the end of their patience for my upbeat optimism that we were having a lovely time! Even Abbie is flagging here!

I was sure the museum was going to be a win because it had to be cooler inside than out. A short tube ride later and a head count through the barriers we arrived, bedraggled and tired at the museum. By this stage, I was doing my best to keep everyone positive! We wandered through the upstairs of the museum, especially stopping to look at all the space exploration exhibits. My upbeatness was keeping everyone moving!

Now everyone had begun to enjoy the water play and were quite chilled. Millie was probably on the verge of a meltdown but had been holding it together. I tried to stay externally calm, while imagining the bomb squad surrounding Leo’s bag somewhere in London, only to find a Nintendo DS and a colouring book. I calmly told the kids we would have to retrace our steps and find the bag. This was breaking point.

Poor Leo had no idea when he’d last had the bag. Tom thought he remembered Leo having it when we arrived at the museum. So with a lot of persuasion and a few tears, I rallied the kids, and we went back through the museum. In the space area, we found the bag in a video booth. No bomb squad, no alarms going off, we had done it.

This is the moment I gave up. I was hot and exhausted and couldn’t muster any enthusiasm to carry on exploring. It was hard work but I managed to get everyone onto the tube.

When we finally got to the train to go home, it was absolutely packed, and so we crammed five people on two seats for a two-hour journey. Needless to say, I didn’t do it again!