Hooray!! It’s my Birthday!! Not a fan to be honest, something about being a year closer to death and all that, but I’m getting over it…and today was a zoo day, so bound to be good.
Lights on, curtains open…’IIIITTTTSSS MORNING!!’…bloody hell, Grayson the drill sergeant is up…yeah yeah we know Gray, but we’ve not had a great night sleep due to Elsa being scared of the dark and insisting on sleeping on our faces all night…never mind, may as well go for a bit of brekkie then.
Love a complimentary breakfast, good ole Holiday Inn…although for some reason Grayson had the idea that kids were only allowed the cereal and refused to eat anything more substantial…well until we filled up a few to go bags to the brim with pastries and muffins…then it was fair game apparently…long story short, 3 bags of food meant to last the four of us for the day…lasted the kids until 12pm…Me and Jo thoroughly enjoyed the ends of the croissants that Alaska neglected and collectively hoovered the muffin crumbs up for dinner…ahhh delicious!
Eventful breakfast, treated to a rendition of Maaaaaaaammmmyyyy Sharrk do do do do doodoo from Alaska and a lengthy Paw Patrol quiz…brilliant, just what I needed to kickstart year 36!
The novelty of robot vacuum cleaners still hasn’t come to the Fletcher household yet, and so when I spotted a little cleaning robot…the excitement was too much…come see this kids, it’s a bloody robot, cleaning (yes yes I know, it’s sad, but all we have to clean our house is an 83 year old woman, maybe it’s time for an upgrade…mags just ain’t been up to standard lately). ‘Quick kids, take a picture with it!’…WTF Jo, we ain’t gonna be THOSE people…oh yes we were…FFS.
Apparently though Elsa felt left out of the robot selfies and corridor chases, and made a dash for freedom…bollocks!!…she makes a break through the corridor, into reception and literally…INTO the sliding doors…THUD!!…she had became one with the door for a split second…bloody idiot dog! Can’t take her anywhere…come on Elsa, back to the room, I’m sure no one saw you make a complete fool of yourself. Oh the shame…made only slightly worse by the little bit of pee that had erupted from her body on impact…literally knocked the kiss out of herself mun…like a bloody Looney Tune character.
Enough of Elsa’s embarrassment though, off to the zoo…and a quick travel with Jaskier (also known as Grayson), giving us a bard worthy breakdown of how our day had gone so far and how it would subsequently go…shit this kid can pump you up…hidden talents…this was only eclipsed by the return journey this evening however, where he gave us a revised version of a few classics from our America trip…I dare not repeat them…copyright breaches and that.
Anyways, dropping Wilie Coyote off to daycare, which in itself was a task to find and then to join the worlds longest zoo queue…yay!!! Birthday for the win!!
Serious the queue for the zoo was mental, almost like everyone else had heard of the not so secret offer of ‘kids go free’ through the summer…bugger!!…seemed to be the theme of the day though…the zoo is massive, and you don’t have much trouble navigating through masses of people until you either want something to eat…or in our case, have a weak bladdered 5 year old, with no pee warning system that needs to toilet…
Tigers, lions, toucans and toilets…oh my!! Flashbacks mun, both me and Gray are still scarred from the Dwarves mine train queue in Florida. Please don’t pee yourself Gray…”I’m busting Dad!!”…ok ok, only 20 people to go, you can do this…for all you currently on the edge of your seat…he made it, hooray!!
Go on then, quick blast in the play area for your hard work Gray…”ooo Dean, it’s looks like you’ve built it”…what a strange way to insult me on my special day, thanks for that Jo…”oh no, I mean it looks good, I like it”…damage is done, but she was right, I do have boss playground building skills.
And so resumed our tour of the zoo, which had now become an enclosure by enclosure breakdown of animals that were either ‘ooo there’s lots of them left’ to ‘aww I’m totally sad that they are endangered’….we all are Gray, but I think the scale of Least concern to Extinct is a more universally accepted scale, good to hear you using this to learn about conservation though bud.
Nice little mill around a bit more of the zoo with Steve Backshall, aka eagle eyes Grayson (the self proclaimed 2022 ‘I Spy’ champion), spotting Gorillas and Rhino hiding in their enclosures, and then gloating how much better he was at spotting animals than Myself and Jordan…nice one kid, maybe you can find the Maned Wolves and Echidna for me, desperate to see them, and the main reason I like visiting Paignton. Nah? Can’t see them?…bloody useless.
Unusual animals are where it’s at for me in zoos, most people like the zebra, giraffe, lions, etc…but I’m in it for the more aggressive animals…the dwarf mongoose! These little buggers look like they’d rip your finger to bits and make you love them more for doing it…I love these things, they are amazing, and Paignton had a mass mob of them.
Bit more pottering around the zoo (it really has some great scenery), and on to Baboon Rock, a place where kids get to admire a Brightly Coloured Baboon Bum, and watch a Baboon play with its Willy…this was literally Grayson’s favourite part of the day…how do I know? Well, he sang about it all the way home…I really must release his greatest hits, it would be a best seller…I mean if Jedward could make it, I have high hopes for Gray.
Hills everywhere here, and pushing and carrying the kids all day had knackered us out, we were only there for 3 hours and were ready to tap out, the zoo had almost beaten this unfit family (I mean, I’m getting into old man territory now). Quick rest stop and a little burlesque show from a Gibbon (they must have heard Grayson’s delight at the baboons and a female Gibbon decided to run flash her boobs at the viewing public…bloody perverts), and we finished our zoo tour in the reptile house.
Ahhh the reptile house, the best place in the zoo to play Spot the Animal…now that was fun, even more so when Alaska insisted on viewing every single animal there…too til though, pointing to a random place and repeatedly saying “look it’s there, can you see it?” Eventually convinces her that she’s seen it an moves on…I only felt a little bad for her…I was knackered 😂
Exit through the gift shop then…time to dodge all the overpriced zoo paraphernalia…like the £8 cups I ended up buying, £5 fridge magnet, £5 bracelet…yep, managed to avoid all that…unfortunately not. Never mind, we haven’t been away for a few weeks.
Few more pressed pennies for the collection, and a reminder from another group of kids to never buy my kids pan pipes for a long journey home, and we were on our way to pick up Elsa for the journey home. By the way, spare a thought for the family who for some reason did think it a good idea to treat their kids to noisy woodwind instruments for their journey home…absolute troopers…or idiots, you decide.
3 hour ish journey home, aforementioned tunes from Eminem’s younger protege…’Skittlez’, aka Grayson Fletcher…and all we had left to deal with was a constant barrage of ‘when will we get to Nanny’s? And ‘ah I hate traffic, I wish it wasn’t here’. Yeah you and me both Kid, won’t be long.
KFC for tea for the new disappointing Terriyaki Burger, a photoshoot for Alaska sporting her new Flamingo Bracelet, and watching Grayson mimicking Animal from the Muppets whilst hammering a chicken burger, and before you know it, the kids were at Nanny’s and we arrived home.
And that was the tale of my birthday zoo Trip. Yay, we had hella fun.
Oh, and was lovely to be surprised with a special birthday gift from the dog…a Hawaiian shirt sporting the face of my favourite poodle…FFS, so this is a thing I guess now…can’t wait for my Elsa themed Christmas Scarf and Glove combo…I love it really 😂
Comments