“Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.”

Its been shut down at Gifts from the Pirates HQ this week, the boys were off school/Nursery and i wanted to give them my undivided attention so ive not been on the internet all week, no blogging, no social media and it has been bliss. Now time for all the catching up posts, starting with last weekend. A bank holiday of rain to start with, pretty much what we have come to expect when we've got plans for the beach and fun in the sun. On Friday night after checking the Metoffice and realising that grim weather was looming we decided to head to Bristol for Vegfest. It was a great chance for Mrs M to network and get pics for work and for us boys to binge on vegan cakes.

The drive down was a nightmare, should have taken us 2hrs, took us 3 1/2, by the time we arrived the rain was thrashing down, the only parking space I could find was in a giant puddle and the whole place was looking pretty gloomy. The one bonus though was it was lunch time. The boys were just happy to get out the car and walk about. Its the first time id been to Bristol and despite the rain and the fact that everything seemed so grey it seemed like a really nice place. I wish we had known we were going sooner as i would have loved to have made arrangements to see my friend Jane.

 With Opeie having so many Allergies/intolerances these Vegan festivals are great for picking up things that we can't always get hold of and fantastic for buying things we use daily in bulk. The food is always lush too which is great. I am not vegan myself but i don't eat meat or dairy for health reasons, it can be a pain for us as a family to eat out so these sort of events make days out for us a little easier as we don't have to spend the morning preparing food.

Everywhere smelt of lovely food and the place was full of products we love as a family, It was such a shame that the weather was so awful as it really put a dampener on the day. When you don't have children you can forget about what the weather is doing but you worry more with kids. The boys didn't let the weather get them down, there was cake everywhere and they even managed to flirt with some ladies, the smooth talkers...

We filled our tummies and listened to some really inspirational words while scoffing our grub, the festival gave us a great chance to meet some of the people that Mrs M works with, it was nice to put faces to the names and they all seemed really friendly. There was no holding up for the weather though and because of it the boys didn't really want to be walking around in the rain so eventually we headed back in the direction of the car. We had parked right next to a place that had exhibitions on for children so we made the most of it being indoors and out of the rain.

We had booked a table at a vegan restaurant for tea but just couldn't find the place so after an annoying 40 minutes walking around following our iphone to an incorrect postcode we called it a day on Bristol. On the drive home we decided to swing by Wholefoods in Cheltenham for a quick bite as it was getting on and the troops were getting hungry. Despite the bad weather we had a great time and we're all looking forward to the next day of binge eating vegan festival.