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Well, I’m quite the erratic blogger, eh? Post when I can be bothered and all that. Well, I’m resolving to change that. From this day forward I shall write something in this blogspace, even if it’s just a cool word or a news story that tickled my fancy.

This, then will be a the much-awaited tale of Skeggy Part Deux!

As it’s been a while since I lasted posted, the details have gone a bit fuzzy. I’ll try to remember what I can.

We went on loads of rides while we were there. Well, G and I rode lots of rides while NE stayed firmly on the ground. If G hadn’t been bothered, then I wouldn’t have gone myself, but I’m glad that he got a chance to go on the rides that he could. It’s all new to him and that’s cool. He wasn’t tall enough to go on some of the rougher rides and by this I think that Butlins tries to gauge how old children are by their height. However, G is quite tall and he qualified for quite an energetic ride that had my stomach bucking and dropping.

Most of the time we rode on the dodge-em’s and the carousel. More sane rides. I must make the record clear that I’m not afraid of going on these rides, but I don’t enjoy the butterfly-filled stomach that they give you. In my youth I took on all the big rides, but these days I have nothing to prove. That is… until G qualifies for all the big rides. Then, guess who will have to go on all of them with him. It’ll be me!

The highlight for me as far as rides went was the go-karts (if you can call that a ride) These were quite fast and if not for the fact that I had my foot half-on the brake for most of the first lap, I think I would have been in with a chance of winning. I was fearless in the corners, but afterwards G was a little bit bruised from the G-forces. I also might have bumped NE’s best friend’s partner into the wall… WOOT!

Another favourite past-time for G was playing arcade games. He didn’t play nearly as many as he wanted to. They’re quite expensive and we spent £20 – 30 on them while we were there as it was. They’re £1 a go and he’d have gladly played them for hours and hours, but as it was we played a few and we did some of the penny machines, but he wasn’t overly fond of them…

One morning we went very early, around 8 or 9am in order to give NE and her mum a chance to do something together. Well, this outing worked to our advantage on one of the little carnival games in the Skyline pavilion. The horse races are a tough game where you are pitted against 10 or twelve other people trying to roll balls up into slots that give make your horse move a certain number of “steps.” If you win, then you get a ticket and a certain number of tickets gets you stuffed animals. Win-win for Butlins with all the people paying… Unless you get there early enough that no one is there yet! It was just G and me, racking up the tickets. Toward the end a teen girl joined in, but I pwned her easily enough and we walked away with a couple of small, stuffed animals; a spider and a dog, which G named Webby and Woof, respectively.

Nearly every day of our stay in Butlins, there was a showing of the vaunted Skyline Gang, a singing, dancing, child-oriented act that was Butlins’ own creation. The act, as we saw it, consisted of Mimi, the yellow-clad shallow, self-absorbed one, Pip, the purple rock chick with attitude, Sprout, the green, goofy one, Candy, the pink, happy ditzy one, and Dude, the blue cool, skater-boi one. Which was all well and good and they were cheesy, but a decent diversion whenever we went into the Skyline pavilion. However, the situation changed… I was looking in the gift shop and they had various Skyline Gang merchandise for sale. They even had figurines of all six Skyline Gang characters… Six?? Green, pink, yellow, blue, and purple. That makes five! There was a little dread-locked figurine in RED available for sale, called Bud. Where was Bud, I asked aloud and to my family. They were just as intrigued about the mystery. At least for the first few minutes. Maybe he’d been killed off or killed by the Butlins Mafia

At the next Skyline Gang performance, I was tempted to shout out “Where’s BUD?!?” but of course I didn’t because I’m not a loon. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place as I was waiting for our pizza one night. They had a TV in the waiting area that was tuned to the Skyline Channel, the Butlins event channel. Lo and behold the FULL Skyline Gang was shone in all it’s semi-glory. There was a paunchy-muscular Bud in his full crimson regalia, being a bit dopey. By this time I’d come to the conclusion that Bud was on strike for more money and his own dressing room, but that theory was shredded by an semi-interesting occurrence… One day while watching the Skyline Gang, I noticed something and if you were my wife, NE, then right now you’d be amazed and she was duly amazed. I noticed that Candy didn’t look the same as before! They had swapped in a new person for Candy, which shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. So, the characters having any leverage was out the window. The next day Sprout was changed out and then it all became moot. Near the end of our stay, Bud showed up and we were treated to the Skyline Gang at the height of it’s powers and synchronicity! Viva la BUD!