Pat, Maia and I went down to Covent Garden to meet up with Aunty Jellybean on Saturday afternoon. Maia loves going on trains, but was less sure about the crush of people who also decided that Covent Garden on a Saturday was a good idea. Gen instantly endeared herself to Maia by giving her a colourful, and fabulously noisy, tambourine to keep her occupied. Oddly, our reaction was slightly less keen...
After a while chatting to the various Bahamians who tipped up, we decided to go and see if we could seek out some street performers to show Maia. We found a lady singing opera very loudly, and a couple of performers who had a Charlie Chaplin/mime/balloon manipulator thing going on. She wasn't desperately impressed.
However, all that changed when we discovered the carousel. Our timing was perfect, as the last go round was coming to an end, so Pat and Maia hopped onto the first available horse, paid their pound and cheered as they started to go round. Maia waved enthusiastically each time she spun round to where I was standing, and had a great time. When they dismounted, I noticed that her horse was called Lewis. As Lewis at the Funny Farm is 'her favourite', she thought this was fabulous, and remarked on it quite a few times.
Sunday was a bit of a grey day, and as is rapidly becoming tradition, we decided to take Maia to a zoo. The (rather optimistically named) Paradise Wildlife Park in Broxbourne was our choice.
I am sure in the summertime the Paradise Wildlife Park is a pretty inviting place to be, but on a cold winter Sunday, it is actually ever-so-slightly sinister. It was very quiet, as most people were sensibly doing Inside Things. We saw a parrot display where the parrots outnumbered the audience, and at times wondered if we were the only people in there.
However, all this did mean we had no competition for the best spots to view all the animals up close and pretty personal.
There are lots of cats at PWP, lions, tigers, cheetahs, ocelots - you name it, they've got it - and they are displayed in large enclosures with glass viewing windows cut into the cage. When we came to the cheetah enclosure, two of the cats were right up against the window cleaning each other. Maia was just tall enough to stand by herself and see through the glass, and as soon as she arrived the cheetahs looked right at her, and sniffed at her through the glass. She thought this was truly wonderful.
We disturbed a bundle of meercats and showed them our bestest meercat impressions, then ruined all the good feeling generated by screeching like eagles so we could watch them scatter. We saw lions being fed ex-bunnies (full of life lessons, these trips) and got snorted at by a camel. After some hot chocolate, a ride on a fire engine and a plate of chips, it was time to go home.
On the way home, Maia decided that the lions were her favourite. Closely followed by the monkeys. And the meercats...
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