Shacks and Bricks

This week saw the devil transfer from the kids to me so I ended up stuck in bed Thursday and Friday. Having dragged the kids away last weekend I felt I had no excuse, so we packed our bags again this weekend, this time off to Windsor.

First stop (from what I remember through the haze of the fever) was Windsor Castle. The castle dates back to William the Conqueror in 1066. What a great name that is. It just would not be the same if he was known as ‘William the nice guy’. It is interesting that the Queen uses the castle as her weekend retreat. Now I am not saying that the castle is not a nice little weekender and I wouldn’t say no to the old shack but if I had a choice there would be lots of other places I would go to get away from it all.

The next day, with the fever dropping to a nice tropical 40 deg, we went of to Legoland. I think the name explains what it is but for the avoidance of doubt, it is a huge theme park with things made from little yellow, red and blue bricks. It was amazing what could be built – everything from the intricacies of London Eye through to a full soccer game - crowd and all. Also a huge number of rides which the kids had a great time on. Now I know you all know what these little things look like and how much they hurt when you accidentally stand on one but did you know:

• A 2 X 4 LEGO brick measures 16mm by 32mm by 9.6mm high.


• The distance from stud centre to stud centre is 8mm.


• There are 52 Lego bricks for each person on Earth.


• If all Lego sets sold in the last 10 years were placed end to end they could reach from London to Perth in Australia (but I didn’t ask them which way they would go).


• A Lego brick is measured to the 2/1000th of a millimetre


• Six 2 X 4 LEGO bricks of the same colour can be combined in 102,981,500 different ways – go on give it a go!

So another good weekend and hopefully the devil enjoyed the trip as well. Lets just hope he is not invited next time as we are off to France on the 22nd June.