Sentry

I wouldn't want to commit myself to the claim of being able to sex a Meerkat, but I think this is the Materfamilias of the tribe at All Things Wild, checking the surrounding trees and skies for danger. S/he was standing on the top of an odd little viewing hide in the middle of their enclosure, which you have to access via a tunnel from the path. I'm too old for underground tunnels (and I'd have said that R was as well, if I hadn't seen him accompany his grandson around the indoor soft play course this morning), but the Boy Wonder popped in and out several times at the end of our visit - which was especially nice to see, because ten minutes after our arrival he'd announced that he was cold, didn't like it, and wanted to go home. I managed to coax him a little further into the park by saying that I 'just' wanted to see the Meerkats, and then the American Beavers, and then could we just find the aviary, and...

"You SAID that the beavers would be the last thing. And we went to the beavers, and NOW I WANT TO GO HOME."

I sighed heavily, accepted defeat, and set off for the exit - but it turned out that I'd quit too readily. On the way out he suddenly became fascinated by the models of sharks in the marine area, and needed to have all of those explained. And then he remembered the soft play place, but wanted to do the big children's section rather than the baby bit, and would Granddad please come in with him? So they went climbing and crawling around this large structure, while I fetched drinks from the café and then dodged about trying to get some photos of R at play to amuse the Offspring.

And then it turned out that we needed to go back into the park because the Boy hadn't yet been on the big children's outdoor play equipment, so out we went, and in the end I got some really nice photos of him (if you ignore the fact that he was extruding snot the colour of sage and the consistency of molasses) beaming at his granddad as they played together on the seesaw. I'm not sure which of them was having more fun, but only the shorter one had to be actually bribed back to the car with chocolate Hobnobs.

Back at home the menfolk built an especially good marble run while I made the Boy some lunch, and then we coaxed him back into the car and set off to deliver him back to his mother. Five minutes into the journey he was sound asleep, and he barely stirred in the car park in Monmouth when he was transferred from my car to L's. We heard later that he'd slept the rest of the way home, and I suspect that Granddad would probably have done the same thing if he and I hadn't spent the return trip listening to an especially good book on Audible*. We stopped at the Broadway Tower café to debrief and decompress over some well-earned coffee and cake, then went home and tackled the tidying up before collapsing on the sofa with a bottle of red wine and the rest of the Hobnobs. In about three weeks we'll be doing it all again, and I can hardly wait.

*The Crocodile Hunter by Gerald Seymour - highly recommended.