Championsheeps Live at Whipsnade Zoo

Over half term I journeyed down to Whipsnade Zoo (it's near Luton) to work on a crazy but oh so awesome family event put on by a bunch of lovely people at SGA Productions in association with Aardman for Shaun the Sheep's Championsheeps. Trying to describe this event is quite a challenge but I shall try my very best. There were 6 different games that were adaptations to games that you would find at your average village fate/school sports day. We had a Naughty Pig Sack Race where the sacks had piggy bodies painted onto them and the contestants had to wear pig masks whilst people standing at the sides were encouraged to throw "fluffy poo" at them. We also had a coconut shy type welly wangling competition where people had to try to knock the farmer's heads off the scarecrows (pictured below).

There was also an egg and spoon race where you had a lot of chickens sat on baskets and you had to find chicks and eggs underneath the hens and distribute them into various coops and other baskets. We also had "sheep hopper" games and and cabbage throwing games and giant sheep rolling games and plasticine modelling and aerobics classes where we had to dance around like loons to S Club 7 for 15 minutes every hour. We were there for 10 days in total, including the weekends and Jubilee bank holidays. It rained lots and there were gale force winds and the giant inflatable sheep nearly blew away and we had to clear up animal dug from the roaming animals who had been trying out our race track during the night. On the other hand I essentially got paid to have a lot of fun. I love working with kiddies and there were certainly loads of them about.

I decided to hire a car for the duration of the job because I thought better of trying to navigate public transport during weekends/bank holidays. This I discovered was a very good idea. For those of you who don't know me personally, I haven't driven a car for four years due to mainly not having enough money to fund a car of my own. I'm not going to lie to you, before I picked up my little Peugeot 107 I was petrified. I was concerned about forgetting which pedals do what and navigating roundabouts and overtaking on duel carriageways during rush hour. When the man at the car hire place at Luton airport handed over the keys I walked out to the car thinking "why on earth did he just do that????" and I spent a good 10 minutes checking the mirrors were all pointing in the right place before setting off. It turns out however that the cliché "it's just like riding a bike" is actually true...albeit a rather large bike with four wheels, a roof and a motor.  By the end of the contract I was seriously tempted to drive back to Manchester in it.

So that's what I have been up to since the last time I posted. It has been a mad whirlwind of a ride and I would do it all again in a heartbeat!