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For our afternoon Saturday outing we were going to
Knebworth House to see the dinosaurs . There was some debate with my daughter about whether these would be real or statues. My guess was statues. She hoped so too.
But our quest to discover was thwarted because Knebworth House is closed under late March. We’d come very close to disaster as we drove up the road to the house when the driver of a car coming out of the nearby hotel didn’t seem to think it was important to look to see if anything was coming and pulled out in front of us. But I had time to sound my horn and swerve around it. To think that my family might have perished visiting a tourist attraction that wasn’t even open. And worse still, gone to our graves not knowing if the dinosaurs were real or statues.
I mean you’d think that Knebworth would have made more of it if the dinosaurs were real, but it’d be great if they hadn’t realised. Or were just keeping it secret because they didn’t want to make too much of a fuss. I mean these guys are closed in March, so who knows?
So we improvised and drove around looking for something else, following a sign that tantalisingly said “Tourist Attractions” to see what Stevenage had to offer. Leaving a roundabout, another car almost pulled in front of us as the driver attempted to get in front of the cars waiting to get on. Christ knows what he was thinking, but I managed to avoid another collision. I am not saying Stevenage is full of idiots or that my family is part of some Final Destination curse.
We ended up at Fairylands Valley Park. It was windy and cold and I wasn’t sure there was going to be much to do. But there’s an excellent playground there and loads of ducks and other wildfowl and we had a lot of fun. My record with my own kids in playgrounds is not great and today was no exception. I let my son go on one of the big kid swings without the enclosed seat. He seemed to be doing fine, but I bumped into someone we knew and was talking to them. “Oh, I’d better get behind Ernie just in case,” I said, but just as I did, he let go of the swing and fell off backwards and on to his head. I think something like that would kill an adult, but kids seem to bounce and though he cried a bit, he was fine. Child one would have been taken to hospital just in case if something like this happened, but Ernie seemed OK and we’re more blasé now and we just carried on. Though I wondered if those two bad drivers had been sent back from the future in an attempt to stop us ever reaching the park so that this terrible event would never happen.
Probably not. A car crash would probably be worse. Maybe someone came to push Ernie off the swing to save us from the car crashes and just got the timing right. Maybe time travel wasn’t involved at all.
Anyway the park was good and the floor of the playground is nice and spongy which is useful if you are a neglectful parent.
The best bit though was when we passed a man sleeping on a bench at 4pm and I was singing to the kids and Phoebe said, “Be quiet daddy, that man is trying to sleep.” Which you can’t really argue with, without opening a can of worms. My daughter is very considerate and it’s a shame the world is so much harsher that a 4 year old’s brain can imagine.
