threatening to eye and nose

Maybe we smell a little odd to penguins too but at least we don't coat ourselves in fish innards, shite all over our feet then roll around in more fish innards and shite before standing round in the morning sun to let it all dry off and start to smell really bad. At least the underwater viewing platform allows them to be seen at their best. Unfortunately there is no equivalent to the underwater viewing gallery which would render the busloads of obese schemies towing obese crisp-munching schemie childrens round the zoo similarly visually palatable. Some of them came with a sort of bonus schemie granny who would hobble along reading out everything on the information boards in an overloud fag-roughened croak. Almost as bad as the museum on a busy day but mitigated by the lack of echo, except in the enclosed viewing chamber bits. "See look at that lion that's eating somehin has at kilt that aye?" "Whit's thaaat? At's a deer bit at sais at's no a deer bit at's goat hoarns ken."

Also. For the LAST TIME. It is NOT a monkey. It is an ape.

Still, it gets them out of the chippie.

The ostensible purpose of the visit was to examine the weddinging facilities as compared to Plan A in Ayr. It's nice enough without being horribly fancy but the Ayr version is slightly shabbier, more relaxed, slightly cheaper, more flexible foodwise, less cramped and has many more trees and rivers in the vicinity and thus wins. I was expecting to be escorted back to the entrance gate after the appointment with the wedding-organising-woman but she had another appointment immediately after ours so we were left to make our own leisurely way off the premises (taking in most of the rest of the park) over the course of two and an half hours.

As the eleven-o'clock appointment-time is Nicky's usual weekend getting-up time we'd caught the bus over but I was (rarely) slightly thankful for it on the return journey if only for the severe struggle we would have faced attempting to walk in the opposite direction to the sixty thousand people heading westwards from the town centre for some sort of sports game at Murrayfield leaving a trail of beer bottles in their wake. I passed a few clumps of fans on the return journey later in the evening but couldn't work out who they were supporting and whether or not their team had won. At least there weren't any visible fightings.