Time to scoot

Time to scoot

It’s finally stopped raining for an hour so we’ve packed the kids into the car with their scooters for a quick trip to Mesnes Park. There are plenty of flat bits for them to scoot around on and as we arrive it looks fairly quiet. We’ve been trying to decide where to get some exercise today as we need a change of scene and as we walk around, two lads with guitars are being photographed in front of the duck pond and have to dive for cover as a flock of birds suddenly gets spooked and heads right for them.

This is already more excitement than we’ve had in weeks!

As we round the park and head towards the Cafe and Pavillion it looks like things have been closed off for a while and even the complimentary dog-water bowls are nowhere to be seen. We get a pic of the kids in front of the Boer War memorial and I make a mental note to look into that one, as I don’t really know anything about that period of history. Like a lot of people my age, we got very little information about Britain’s age of Empire and I suspect this one might be another example of our less-than-spotless attempts at promoting our interests abroad. Whatever it turns out to be, it’s made it onto the reading list.

The first thing I read about it when I get home is the use of a scorched earth policy and an early interpretation of the concentration camp, so I have a feeling I’ll be reading a bit more about this over the next few months.

I recently read the late Cecil Blanche Woodham-Smith’s (what a name!) account of the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854 which was an eye opener (1200 horses and many of the sickly lower ranks were left behind to starve to death before they even sailed to Balaclava!) so it’ll be interesting to read if we actually learned anything in the following 50 years.

The Boer War was just before the first World War though, so something tells me not to get my hopes up!