Marching onwards into March

A photo of some crocuses, taken in March 2006

Whilst it’s been a wet start to 2026 for some, it’s definitely starting to feel more like spring now. As it happens, the photo above of some crocuses was taken 20 years ago, on a little Samsung point and shoot camera that I used to own. Apparently I don’t take many photos of crocuses, or at least, not many that Apple’s Photos app can recognise as such.

I mentioned last month that we’d be organising our ten-year-old’s birthday party. And sure, we did organise it in February, but the actual party will be this month. So we have that to look forward to.

No SFW this year

What we don’t have to look forward to is Sci-Fi Weekender. Normally we head off to Great Yarmouth every March for a great weekend of geekery with friends, but it’s been cancelled this year. Over-running building work at the Vauxhall Holiday Park, where it’s hosted, mean that the event would have had to be scaled down, and it seems like a majority of other attendees decided to skip this year. We’re not out of pocket; we’ve asked for our booking to be rolled over to next year. And we would have been driving down, so we haven’t lost out on advance train tickets. We had word last week that it may be cancelled, and it so I’m hoping that some friends of ours who were planning to take the train managed have been able to claim on their travel insurance.

Still, we’re a bit gutted not to see people and have geeky fun there this year. We may still do something else with the weekend, as we have childcare in place, but we’ll see.

Easter break

Whilst the Easter weekend itself is in April, the school holidays start at the end of this month. That’s because Easter Sunday is two weeks earlier than last year. We usually arrange childcare for our ten-year-old, but we’ll see what they want to do nearer the time.

Depending on the weather, we may manage some more days out this month. Last month, we managed Cannon Hall Farm, but that was about it.

Springing into March

A photo of some spring daffodils at East Riddlesden Hall near Keighley.

Spring is here – probably. A time for getting out and poisoning pigeons in the park. Or not.

Hopefully, the arrival of Spring means that the weather will be nicer, and we can get out and have some more days out. Last month, we only managed a visit to Magna. We’d hoped to go to Nostell, as their half term activities looked good, but we could have only gone last Sunday when the weather wasn’t really conducive to being outside. Now that it’s been saved from closure, we may pop in to the Abbey House Museum at some point as we haven’t been for a while.

The other big planned activity this month is going to Sci-Fi Weekender in a couple of weeks. Once again, we’re going with friends, and though there are a few changes this year, I’m hoping it’ll be another good weekend. It’s just a shame that it’s at the end of such a long and boring drive across the fields of Lincolnshire to get there. On the plus side, it won’t be me doing all the driving this time as Christine will be able to do some of it; she passed her driving test at the end of last year.

Mid-March will also be five years since the UK went into lockdown. I have vivid memories of a day out to St Ives Country Park on Mother’s Day, which happened to be our last full day of freedom. So much has changed since then – I still haven’t worked a full five day week in the office since.