I believe I can fly...

I made rather a large faux pas this week.

You'll remember how amazing I was at keeping the secret from the husband for almost a year - the one where he was going to New York and not Prague?  Well, another secret had been foisted upon me on the 16th October this year, but this one involved the four children.

You see, I love the pantomime and since the children have been old enough to say 'no thank you' or 'not bloody likely', we haven't been at all.  Trawling the internet on the night of the 16th October, the husband suddenly looked up and said, 'Tell the kids that they have to keep the 29th December free.  I've booked the panto, but don't tell them where we're going'.  Now this wasn't your local, am-dram panto, with fading X Factor star and bad effects, but Peter Pan with Bradley Walsh and Martin Kemp (swoon...) in it.  Between us, we decided that it would be a bit of a hoot not to tell the children where they were going, simply for the reason that if they did know, then they would refuse to come with us.

Since then, we have been bombarded with questions as to where we were taking them.  Because we'd suggested that each of them could bring a partner, for some reason, they presumed we were taking them dancing.  This eventually got whittled down to darts on Christmas Eve when every other suggestion had been discarded.  In fact, I'm slightly ashamed to confess that I swore on my life that it wasn't the pantomime.

So on Boxing Day, with Christmas firmly put to bed, I thought that it might be an idea to work out the route to the venue, and find a restaurant which would seat twelve. Two and a half hours this took me, but showing the itinerary to the husband, he was suitably impressed.  I'd converted some Tesco Clubcard vouchers to help with the Ask Italian lunch bill, and had even included a short walk through the Christmas Market by London Bridge for us all.

And then on Wednesday night at around 9.00, the penny dropped.  We weren't going to the O2 arena at all, but Wembley Arena.  This would be the venue on the opposite side to London...  I must have aged around ten years in that minute as I started panicking about re arranging everything and everybody.

Suddenly, things started to make sense, like why the O2 has no Block D1, and why there were no spaces left in the surrounding restaurants. 

This time it took over four hours to sort out, mainly trying to find a restaurant close by which would take all twelve of us at one sitting.  One restaurant was very helpful, offering two tables with a twenty minute overlap, but eventually I found one.  Naturally, there is no Ask Italian near Wembley Arena, so my vouchers will live to fight another day.

But what about the kids' reactions?  To say that they were thrilled when they found out where we going would be over-egging the pudding slightly.  Resigned might be a better word.  Not prepared to sit through one more 'Oh yes he did' comments, son number one fled to Berlin with Little Miss Tiny when he found out where we were going, so we are dragging Mr and Mrs W along with us instead.

I did look up who would have been on at the O2 had we tipped up there with our (wrong) tickets.  It was The Foo Fighters.

The husband looked a little wistful when I told him.

Not for long though, after I gave him one of my withering looks...