I’ve been avoiding the outdoors somewhat of late since we’ve been having unseasonably hot weather and I’m really not a hot weather person. My first summer in the UK just over 8 years ago now was largely spent, lying on a bed in a darkened room with the fan going at full blast plaintively bemoaning the heat in a manner to rival the very best heroine of �Puccini’s.
I can’t get away with that any more since Amelia just won’t tolerate that kind of nonsense. Today as the temperature/air pressure hadn’t given me a combination heat/sinus headache we set out towards Mill Lane to feed the ducks some of the dried bread mummy had managed to avoid eating* a few days prior.
After a brief stop in the middle of town to 1) chat to a friend of mine from my Am Dram days 2) check out a clothing sale, we arrived at the little park area where the Ivel has a shallow remains of former Mill pond to divest ourselves of rather dry bread and improve Amelia’s throwing arm.
There is a little bit of steep bank to the “pond” and we carefully stood there while I held Amelia, the bread and the iPhone and fed the ducks. We were quite engrossed in this when we suddenly found ourselves nearly nose to beak with a family of swans! The two parents and 3 semi-adolesant cygnets – still grey fluff but not that much smaller than Mum and Dad. Cue a backwards scramble up the bank just in case these swans were not like the ones back in Tymon Park I’d known who would literally stick their head in your pocket and nuzzle you.
(The inane commentary is me, of course, succumbing to the very mummy habit of running and audio commentary on *everything* for the benefit of my child’s language development. So not only does it annoy me but I loathe my �accent.)
We continued the feeding them and then headed on to the playground where we bumped into some mums we knew from playgroup of old, one of whom had actually tried phoning me earlier in the day to meet up! We then had a very pleasant impromptu play date and the 4 little ones had a lot of fun running about.
Time sped by and before we knew it it was time to head home for lunch…
* I’m really trying to get back on the diet wagon and bread is an evil tempter.
