I have a cunning idea...

It is the school holidays. We're standing in a queue. Children fidget. Watches are checked. It is like a visit to the Post Office. People tut under their breath. Eyes flash suspiciously at would-be queue-jumpers. Someone close by – possibly the dandruff-flecked bloke standing just in front, or perhaps the 5-year-old inquisitor inside my own head – utters the immortal words 'are we nearly there yet?'

As is predictably the case, we are not. We wait. We shuffle. We wait some more. And then at last, bingo, the clock strikes ten. Oh goody, I think as 'Cashier Number 4!' cavorts loudly through my thoughts. I wonder if perhaps the sunshine is going to my head, or maybe I really am now losing my marbles… but I have no time to ponder further as B grasps my hand and drags me forth. The doors to the Science Museum are ceremonially opened. We make our way gratefully in.

I've only had the kids standing out here for, ooh, ten minutes. But that'll be nine minutes and thirty seconds too long in their books. I am an obsessive early bird. My watch is set 5 minutes fast – I know it is, but it comforts me to pretend I don't. If I'm on my way to an appointment and get stuck in traffic, I practically wet myself. And I have been known to arrive an entire 24 hours early at the school gates at the start of a new term, boys scrubbed-up and in freshly laundered uniform, only to find the gates locked and the teachers still lounging about at home. Oops, er sorry, doing whatever it is they do on an INSET day.

So, with a trip to the Science Museum's new Wallace and Gromit exhibition planned for the Easter holidays, I'd counted on arriving good and early to beat the crowds. Cracking idea! Except of course by pitching up before the museum actually opened I'd landed us slap-bang in the middle of a stationary queue. Still, it's the early (and probably Turbo-Matic) bird that catches the worm as our Anti-Pesto friends might say, and anyway, now the doors are opened it's onwards and upwards time.

We surge in, take the lift to the second floor and step out. We're big W&G fans. I am looking forward to this. First, however, we need to get past the bloke on the Welcome Desk. We advance towards him confidently. We have pre-booked our timed-entry slots on the Internet. We have our home-printed tickets on the ready. It should be seamless. It is not. The guy is flapping bits of paper, trying to find our names and tick us off before we can progress further. I am thinking, surely an exhibition about inventing stuff should've had an e-Ticket Tastic Scanomatic Checking-in Device? But maybe this is all part of getting you into the right mind set. 'If I was doing this, I would invent a ...'

The chap apologises, fumbles some more before alighting on 3 of our names somewhere on page 4 and waving us all through. We pull a lever which calls forth the familiar dulcet tones of Peter Sallis. We answer a ringing phone in a traditional red telephone box. We negotiate the next guy wielding a checklist on several bits of paper, walk up the 62 West Wallaby Street garden path, passing a token garden gnome on the way, and then we're in.

Sometimes I like to imagine myself as a bit of an inventor not unlike our cheese-loving friend and his clever canine mate. I could be the next Mrs Anyway Up Cup. I'm thinking of Plant Pot Cover-Uppers to stop small children grabbing and eating fistfuls of soil. Or kids' Glove-Putter-Onerers, that at the flick of a switch trigger a woollen finger-stretching device that makes slipping them on an easy and seamless task. Or how about Sound-Effect Target-Practice Floaters to encourage a lad to aim when mastering stand-up wees? You'd bung a ball in the loo made to look like the face of your favourite CBeebies baddie – eg Robbie Rotten off Lazy Town – and when the jet hits, it yells. You could make grown-up variations with Dad's least-favourite politician, D-List celebrity or crummy pop star. You could make one with Adam Ant and if you hit it, it plays 'Stand and Deliver' ... actually, surely that exists already somewhere out there?

Anyway, back at the Science Museum and we're progressing well. We've seen the Telly-scope, the Shopper 13 and the Thinking Cap machine. The kids are in bliss. I'm a bit surprised, however, by a couple of the exhibits already being temporarily out of service, not least the running-out marker pens meant for writing your own inventions on a glass wall of ideas. Surely, it's time to call in all 21st Century scientists to invent a pen that doesn't run out except when the kids have it poised anywhere near the sofa/my clothes/my face etc?

But none of this matters to the kids, because they are well and truly enchanted. They are mesmerised by the Techno-trousers. They adore the Karaoke Shower-cubicle which films you singing along to your favourite track (even though admittedly the camera's pointing somewhere at J's scalp level so we can only see from his hair-line up jigging along to his cute but sketchy rendition of Mamma Mia). They love the ball-throwing game. They're mad about the slide. Oh, and then of course there's the all-important shop at the end to finish off with.

It is, for them at least, school holiday heaven. Except that I can't help wondering if I could've achieved the same result had I decided to just pop down the local Post Office instead. For startlingly less than the cost of a self-printed ticket for a family of five, we could've had an approximation of the same experience a mere stone's throw away from home.

Let me think. There'd be the queue of course. And a fashionably-challenged person standing in it, quite clearly in the Wrong Trousers. CCTV above your heads in which to watch yourself acting the fool and admire the top of your barnet. Discarded rubber bands and adhesive stamp-backing to ball-up and chuck around. A parcel chute to whiz squealingly down. Oh, and the chance to buy surely the best children's entertainment ever invented at the end, in the shop. Bubble Wrap of course at a snip from £2.34 a roll...

This post was written by Charlotte Moerman, aka The Buggy Blogger, where she pens the perils and pleasures of bringing up three boys under the age of six. She's now morphed from blogger to published author with the publication of Instructions not Included. Happily, she still finds time in between rearranging displays in Borders and feverishly checking her status on Amazon to write the occasional blog post.

Photo credit: gaetanlee

Comments

[A Modern Mother]

Hhhmmm, the Post Office or a museum ....never thought of it that way!