James Proclaims!

Prior to becoming a parent, I had no idea what ‘soft play’ was. Indeed for quite some time after becoming a parent I was only really notionally aware of ‘soft play’. I knew it was a thing but mainly it was a thing that happened to other parents. Occasionally Mrs Proclaims mentioned taking Little Proclaims to a soft play centre, but my interest was rarely piqued beyond a perfunctory level of curiosity, which was pitched at the level required to fulfil marital obligations but was never at a high enough level for me to glean any meaningful knowledge about the activity itself.

When I was a father of one child, I mainly fulfilled my paternal duties by taking Little Proclaims to activities that Mrs Proclaims had little to no interest in, such as swimming, to the play park or to outdoor spaces where Little Proclaims could run around uninhibited.

Being a parent of two children, with a nearly 4-year age gap, has changed things a little, particularly since Mini Proclaims has become mobile. Keeping one child safe in a large outdoor space is very much within my skillset, but keeping two children safe, particularly when they operate at different speeds is more challenging.

And so in October 2023 I tentatively experimented with soft play. And I haven’t looked back. It’s not especially cheap, but as a way of entertaining and (crucially) exhausting my offspring, it really does provide a one-size-fits-all solution. Over the Christmas holidays, I took my daughters to our local soft-play centre no less than six times in a fortnight. And while I generally found it excruciatingly dull, neither Little nor Mini Proclaims showed any signs that they were becoming bored of the experience.

Post Christmas it has been harder to find the time, because I work during the week and Little Proclaims is not lacking in other activities on the weekends (see last week’s post for example). But this weekend we were away, in Eastbourne, celebrating a milestone birthday with our extended family. It was a fun-filled but fairly intense weekend – when Little Proclaims gets together with her cousins, a very real chaos ensues. Mini Proclaims rather does her own thing, but generally makes the most of being the centre of attention of her adoring relatives. By the time Sunday morning rolled around, a lot of energy had been expended, but it seemed like there was still plenty left in the tank. For the kids. The adults, to a person, while all in agreement that it had been a delightful weekend, were quite ready to return to normality and basque in pleasant memories.

It was felt that the young’uns could do with one last hurrah. A local soft-play centre was mooted. Along with extensive cushioned child-friendly fun it purported to offer a parent friendly cafe. And so to soft play we headed. And as far as that went, it was a success. All children burned off their post-party highs in an hour of brightly coloured foamy fun and accompanying adults enjoyed a much needed caffeine injection. But Eastbourne soft play was different to Reading soft play in that the car park was not free. This is perfectly reasonable. Our local Reading soft play is in a leisure centre with adequate parking and no other nearby attractions. Eastbourne soft play is on the sea front. It’s fairly customary to expect to pay for parking if you park along the sea front in a coastal town. And in fairness, the car park charges were pretty reasonable.

So far so good. I had no complaints.

Until I tried to pay for parking.

Because in 2024 I generally operate in a fairly ‘cashless’ existence. Most things can be paid for by card these days, and it’s generally more convenient to do so. I can even buy a coffee in work on my debit card and I work in a state-maintained secondary school, which are hardly institutions renowned for their cutting edge approach to anything.

Most car parks I use on a regular basis offer the facility to pay via credit or debit card. Indeed many offer a ‘contactless’ approach to such payments. But occasionally one does come across a car park which insists on payment using cash. And not just cash, in fact, but specifically coins. I never have coins on my person so this is always a problem. However, such places do often offer an alternative of sorts.

Which is the ‘parking app’.

I don’t mind an ‘app’. I was not exactly an early adopter of the smart phone but the technology has insinuated its way into my life over the years and now, like many people, I am a slave to my devices. But the parking app seems a fairly unnecessary invention. I wouldn’t object to the concept in itself, but as I am able to use a multitude of parking facilities without ever having to resort to the app, it’s hard to see it as anything other than an inconvenience. And when I do find myself needing to download a parking app, it never seems to be the same app. I’m all for open and fair competition in the market place but there seems to be a veritable plethora of companies operating in this field. Which generally means that when I do need to avail myself of their services, I find myself needing to set up a new account every time. Which makes the whole process rather time-consuming. Assuming I can even get a signal on my phone to download the app in the first place. Which I often can’t as the issue only ever seems to crop up in remote coastal towns where mobile phone signals are often a rare commodity.

Eastbourne, however, though coastal, did offer a fairly robust signal so I was able to download the app. And go through the lengthy process of setting up a new account. Only to find out (once I’d entered the ‘verification’ code that had to be sent to me in order to complete the set-up) that I apparently had used this app at least once in my life before and therefore was directed to log in to my existing account. I attempted to do this, guessing my previously used password far too easily (I am a fraudster’s dream when it comes to account passwords, if only I had an identity worth stealing). Once I’d entered my second verification code of the morning, it transpired that when I had last used the app I had done so with a different car. Which dates my last usage to over two years ago, but it could have been longer. Anyway the app did not like my current car’s registration number and so suggested that I could not proceed further but could, if I wished to pay for parking that day, delete my old account and set up a new one, much as I had attempted to do at the outset. A third attempt (and verification code) later, I finally had paid for parking. It was not, as advertised, a more convenient way of doing things. The whole process took ten minutes, which I think is at least nine minutes longer than it should take to pay for parking. It was cold. I had soft-play bound children with me who were not entirely understanding about why daddy was taking so long to get them inside to the joys of ball pits, slides and squishy things. And for the privilege of using the parking app, I also had to pay 30p more than if I’d had cash on my person.

I think it’s fair to say I was not an ‘appy customer.