August 2017.

Darren’s sister Paula celebrated her 60th birthday and her children arranged for us all to go down to Brighton as a surprise day out for her.  She was very lucky with the weather, it was such a beautiful day we were able to sit outside beside the beach for coffee, THAT doesn’t happen very often at the seaside in the UK.

I renewed my acquaintance with Birdworld, when I visited it with Darren’s family and Gethan where some pygmy goats mistook Gethan for a climbing frame and clambered on to his back and started chewing his jacket, great parent that I am instead of rescuing him I saw it as a great photo opportunity.

I used to take our children to Birdworld a lot when they were small, on one occasion we were there so late in the day that when we went to leave I discovered the main entrance was closed and the only way to exit was through the turnstile.  Ordinarily that would have been fine but I was carrying our youngest child in a carrier on my back and I couldn’t get it through.  I could see a member of staff in the building across the car park but couldn’t attract their attention, I was in a bit of a quandary, should I stay where I was with my toddler and my 5 year old and send my 7 year old son across to the shop and hope he didn’t get sidetracked and forget what his mission was or should we all just sit and wait and hope that someone walked past very soon!  Do I leave them all inside the turnstile, dash across to the shop and hope that the boys didn’t make the most of their unexpected freedom to race off around Birdworld again.  In the end Morgan was the hero of the day, he wandered over to the shop, found a member of staff, told them of our predicament and they immediately hurried over and apologetically opened the main door so that we could go on our way.  That was a great adventure never to be forgotten!