What a beautiful autumn day. I spent the afternoon chillaxing (oh yeah, I am with it) in Regent's Park, reading the papers, eating ice cream. A slightly confused looking wasp bumbled into my airspace: "Watch out! Jasper!" I instinctively shouted. It's what we called wasps back at school in Cheddar. What a great description that is! Bumble bees had no such harsh sounding epithet, even though they were capable of stinging. But wasps are somehow less cute and more dangerous, the rottweilers of the air. And Jasper is the perfect name for them.
But I remembered that that was also the name we gave to the dinner ladies who would patrol the playground making sure none of us were up to any mischief. I had never really considered how appropriate it was to compare these hovering killjoys of the ground to those flying pitbulls. Sneaky, spiky, skinny, swooping around the playground in random and unpredictable patterns, ready to strike! It made me laugh to think that some child at some point had come up with the comparison, some West Country knee high poet. I hadn't thought about either kind of Jasper for some time.
Later I got in a rowing boat for the first time in four and a half years, though this one had two oars and didn't move quite so quickly and I was just drifting round a boating pond in the sunshine. It took me a while to get the hang of it, and even then the boat tended to veer sharply to one side after four or five strokes, but it was fun to be giving it a go. And lovely to be taking some time away from the computer, enjoying a lazy afternoon. Such halcyon days will be the ones we look back on when we're old and greyer and unable to get our oar in a rollock any longer.
Then I headed for Primrose Hill, passing by London Zoo and managing to catch a free glimpse of my beloved
okapi over the fence. Take that London Zoo! I didn't pay a penny and became sexually aroused by the hind quarters of an exotic animal. Who is the loser now?
I don't think I've ever been up Primrose Hill, but you get a wonderful view of London from up there. Someone had set up a makeshift water slide on the hillside and people in fancy dress and swimming costumes were sliding precariously down it to the whoops of delight of several spectators. Two of the girls were dressed up as zebras and so from behind they looked exactly like okapis. What a day I was having! You wait four years to see zebra legged creatures and then three come along all at once.
London in the sunshine is a pretty wonderful place. Happy days!
