Time for Sister X to have a spiffing idea this week: Hylands Park. A fabulous, free public space in Chelmsford, home of the Rize Festival (formerly ‘V’) where you can park for free, walk your dog, take a stroll around the delightful Pleasure Gardens, feed ducks on the pond, check out the awesome Adventure Castle playground, book in to Forest School, visit The Stables Café and artist studios and, of course, take a tour (or even get married) at Hylands House itself. There are two entrances – the house entrance, off the A414, or the park entrance on Greenbury Way.
We had a good old walk around the parkland. In fact, I’d go so far as to say we were marching at one point – we’re definitely getting better at the exercise element, especially seeing as my current buggy is not an all terrain model! Sister Y was in need of some love today as she’d had a big mummy fail on the school run when she realised she’d forgotten Non-Uniform Day! Seriously, who holds a non-uniform day on a Thursday? I think it’s a fairly acceptable mistake – these schools should really stick with protocol and not throw these curve balls at us. Life is complicated enough, people!!
Anyway, Sister Y duly consoled, the topic of conversation moved on to that school mum. You know – the one you can’t stand that everyone else seems to love? We all know someone like that. At least, we of the Sisterhood do and, bearing in mind our children all go to different schools, there are at least three of them currently in existence in Essex. My personal grudge with that mum began with a party invitation. Oh the stresses and politics of primary school birthday parties! Let’s just say that there are ways of inviting children to parties so that the all the children (and parents) who aren’t invited won’t know about it and therefore won’t feel excluded and upset. Handing out very conspicuous, hot pink, A5 pieces of card and posting on the year group parent’s Facebook page is not one of them! Enough said.
After our invigorating walk and respective rants about these awful women (we do try hard to maintain solidarity with the rest of womankind but some of them make it very difficult!) we were more than ready for cake at The Stables, a self service – i.e. you can very carefully eye up the cake slices and pick the ever so slightly larger one! – café in a sweet little courtyard. Of course, being a new joint, I had to check out their carrot cake which was gluten free and, with a pot of tea which easily gave 2 cups, came to £4.75. A little dingy in the farthest corners but lots of space for the buggy and plenty of high chairs for the teeny tot who happily enjoyed spreading a malted milk biscuit all over herself whilst we tucked in. The Sisters both went for coffee and walnut which they heartily enjoyed. We were all in agreement though – Wilkin & Sons do definitely have the edge on the cakes so far.
The Sisterhood of the Long Boobs 