Yesterday, I travelled to Whipsnade Zoo, with my dad driving me as we followed my brother driving his family. Amazingly, my dad kept up with him 99% of the way. My sibling was literally JUST ahead of us. I capitalised ‘just’ and used the word ‘literally’ to emphasise how impressive that was. The journey lasted over an hour! The roads were constantly busy! There were signs to follow! My word. A lesser person would have constantly beeped at people so they moved out of the way, and incompetent drivers who played Destruction Derby on the Playstation too much would have shunted them. I’ve never seen drivers do THAT before, though I have seen people who I think could in the right situation. Soon after parking in the zoo, we all saw some monkeys. Monkeys? In England? Very strange. Having said that, I kinda preferred the ice cream I would purchase after waking to a massive hill view, BUT what’s the better memory? Seeing the monkeys or eating the snack? Probably the former. Memory is a funny thing.
‘How far away was the horizon in the hill view’ you say? My dad estimated it to be about 20 miles. 20 miles of super scenic countryside, almost all around? Excellent stuff. Out of curiosity I’ve had for many years now, (I could never find aircraft taking things to the max on Youtube) I asked my dad how long it would take a jet fighter going full speed to travel from where we were to as far as we could see. My dad said it would be easy to work out, but he could never give me an answer. Maybe he was pretending he had dementia which he has done before. Many times in fact. Many miles away, there was also a fair bit of smoke coming from maybe a building or grass, or something. No one could work out what it was. A small missile strike maybe? If so, the Russians have gone truly mad.
Soon after that stuff, we all saw some scary rhinos. Like the monkeys, the novelty wore off after a few seconds, but definitely worth the walk. Then we saw two giraffes! Those animals were interesting as some of my family members thought they were more or less exactly the same height, others thought there was a big difference. It’s certainly an optical illusion I don’t understand. I don’t want to make anyone sound stupid, but my theory is that the ‘smaller’ one was just further away. Not long after that, we all went to a ‘children’s’ play area (I was tempted to use the slide as it was very big), where my niece spent AGES doing activities I was too far away to see. All I know is it must have been amazing. (Either that or she was hanging around to annoy everyone, which is possible). Sometimes she was with my brother, other times with my sister in law.
At the time, my sister in law asked me if I weigh myself as I’ve been consistently losing weight. I do. Maybe I weigh myself at home or at the gym? Nope. Neither. So where do I weigh myself? Actually I way myself every time I visit a mental health centre for a checkup, but I didn’t want to say that, so I avoided the question. The conversation I had with my brother was even worse. I brought up the idea of us going to a local fair next month, but he will be on holiday at the time. The fair was cancelled the last two years because of the pandemic and now THIS! :S After that business, we rambled to a bird show. We basically missed all of it, but it was just birds flying. We could see them as we walked towards the area, and whilst flying IS impressive when you think about it, it’s not so much when you see birds every day outside your window. Did the fact exotic birds were being demonstrated up the interest? Na.
The pigs were also undramatic, if not more so. Shortly after that, we walked to an aquarium, where a crocodile seemed to be sharing a tank with some fish. Maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me, because that sounds mental to me. For whatever reason, (I guess I just wasn’t paying attention) I thought the nearby butterfly area being discussed earlier was absolutely filled with the things flying freely, but it turns out there were just a few in cages which made far more sense. You don’t want people accidentally eating the things. So yeah. Not completely sure why I thought that. I asked my dad if the special butterfly climate we experienced was the same as a jungle’s and he said ‘probably’. Was that him faking insanity? I guess I’ll never know. Unless I ask him. Which I won’t - too awkward.
As we were walking back towards the car park, my brother pointed out that we had walked a little under 10,000 steps. I worked that out to be (screw what my dad thinks) about 4 miles. The people around me looked surprised I worked that out, which hurt. Never mind, on the way back home my dad followed my brother just as much!! No road rage at any point! At one point, I saw on my dad’s Satnav a place called Holywell was nearby, not to be confused with Joe Stump’s band HolyHell. Imagine a whole town where people rock out all the time, whilst ripping off Yngwie Malmsteen! I saw someone selling tomatoes on a dual carriageway, which was weird; a pointless sign warning of aeroplanes up above which was almost as weird (but not quite); AND an EVH numberplate for I think the 4th time in my life! That was the day out, basically! Bye!