The Four Little Seymours have just returned from their first ever festival – Fuzzyfest 2017! They have all gone to school this morning tattooed up to the hilt, with hair that smells of campfires and heads full of the memories of a fabulous weekend.
With our current housing situation, any opportunity to get away for the weekend is met with a kind of relief. The cramped conditions of The Shed were exchanged for a wide open field, with bunting-adorned bell tents dotted about in amongst the long grass, interlinked by mown pathways and tealight markers that illuminated at dusk and twinkled to the sound of the crickets and grasshoppers calling in the undergrowth.
Big Seymour – despite the endless list of jobs he felt he should be doing to crack on with The Funny Little Bungalow, came along too, and relaxed for a change. It took him a few hours to do so – after all, the tiles have arrived. But an enforced rest was a bonus and allowed him to dig out his Festival Jumper and play with a blow torch he unearthed from his van, which came in handy as I forgot the camping kettle.
The occasion that enabled the Four Little Seymours to break the cycle of renovating, renovating, renovating was a new event entitled Fuzzyfest, a festival organised under the guise of a birthday, but which actually turned out to be a surprise wedding reception for some good friends of ours. They had spent months planning, and gathered friends and family together to make the announcement that they’d married in secret a week earlier. There’s nothing The Four Little Seymours like more than a celebration, and when they discovered that the party was also a wedding reception, they were beside themselves – so many reasons were there to be joyful!
The venue for this birthday/wedding festival was an idyllic place not far from The Funny Little Bungalow called The Mac’s Farm, a free-range, organic chicken farm, where the hens live in five-star luxury and produce the most amazing eggs. In addition to this, there are also quirky camping facilities, a communal marquee we partied the night away in, a pop-up bar (“The Mac Shack”) and endless verdant space to roam in.
The Four Little Seymours could not have had a better time. They spent hours wheeling each other around the mown grass freeways in the wheelbarrows supplied to transport camping kits from car to tent. They found a fallen tree and used it as a climbing frame, and they discovered wildlife! Little Seymour Number Two came running towards the campfire with a toad at one point, and I’m sure I heard a whole host of owls in the nearby trees at night.
The Big Wedding Secret couldn’t have been pulled off without the help of the farm’s owners, Susie Mac and her husband, Danny, who drove the surprise bride up to the marquee in a trailer to meet her stunned family and friends. Susie was visibly emotional as she plied all the guests with champagne, relieved that secret was out! Their hospitality was second-to-none.
It was with a tinge of sadness that the Four Little Seymours returned to reality this morning. They wanted to live at The Mac’s Farm forever. The Funny Little Bungalow will be more appealing to return to one day than it is now (what with it not having a roof, and all), and who wouldn’t enjoy spending time with friends in a place where the marshmallows are free-flowing and chicken selfies are positively encouraged?
Never mind – they all have their tattoos and wristbands to remember the occasion – Little Seymour Number Two even came home with a set of plastic shot glasses as a souvenir, so she’s happy, the weirdo. They’re now stashed in a corner of The Shed, with bags of leftover popcorn and glow sticks, wrapped in a Dora The Explorer blanket, just to make our shed-living experience even more cluttered and interesting.
Mini Seymour was in her element when she found a nearly full tube of Pringles in the bin and ate them all just before we left (it was a festival – please don’t judge me!) And Boy Seymour discovered that Deano Mac, the Mac family’s pop-up bar tender, doubles as a new generation Steve Irwin, and has a shed full of rescued reptiles on the farm, which he opens up to show people from time to time. Boy wanted me to get my diary out then and there to book us in – he’s so incredibly keen!
So, there hasn’t been much work done at The Funny Little Bungalow this weekend, but sometimes a rest is more important. Big Seymour didn’t have the whole weekend off relaxing, though. He did pop home at one point to try to fix Minty, my blue car, which gave him the opportunity to dig out his storm kettle. This went down very well around the camp fire when he returned on Saturday night – creating a cup of tea with that thing is nothing short of a science lesson, and always impresses a gathered crowd.
Now, here we are, back to reality of living in The Shed, with clothes everywhere as usual, the Four Little Seymours squabbling on their shelf at night, plus now the bonus problem of a plague of annoying flying insects to boot. Lovely.
If it all gets too much though, I’ve decided I’m moving to Mac’s Farm. I’m sure a bell tent would be just as warm as The Shed in Winter. They have more toilet options than we do. And views of Ditchling Beacon.
Plus, they have chickens. I like chickens.
For information on The Mac’s Farm, please click here.
For Deano’s Snake Shack, please click here.
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