Longleat (summer 2008)

I found this little blog in an old notebook and although it’s a few years old, it was always meant to be posted here but somehow forgotten. Still, the sentiments haven’t changed.

Why is it that every time I go out with my six-year-old cousin and her father or mother, depending on who stays home with the baby, it rains? I can’t say anything against my cousin. She’s really cute and always very good, apart from the occasional whine when she gets tired. No, it’s more other people’s children I’d gladly strangle after a day of tramping through the rain and wind and visiting Postman Pat’s village, a parrot show, a stately home and a safari park.

Morning coffee was relatively quiet. The restaurant in the cellar of the stately home was still nearly unoccupied. At the table next to us there were two young girls who were trying to demolish a few plastic flowers that had been put in a vase in the middle of the table. The flowers were not very nice so I wasn’t sorry for that, but then a baby in a high chair started screaming like a pig that was being slaughtered. Remember, we were in the cellars and apart from the modern tables and chairs it was still as it had been hundreds of years ago when the pile was built.

The sounds of the screaming reverberated through the vaulted space and echoed back from all sides. I felt like I had a year ago, BA (before antidepressants), when I couldn’t stand any sort of noise at all, let alone wailing like that. It was enough to make the rock hard scone I had ordered with my coffee get stuck in my throat. And that was only the beginning of the day.

I’ll skip the incident of being nearly bowled over by two teenagers running on their way to somewhere really important and the family of six sitting behind us at the parrot show in Pet’s Corner eating jam sandwiches and attracting at least half the wasp population of Wiltshire. Nor will I speak of the parents who had probably learned from some tabloid how to discuss everything with their little darlings. No, I’m sure you’re getting the picture.

At the end of the afternoon we passed through the part of the safari park where the rhesus monkeys are kept. There was a sign at the entrance warning us in big blood-red lettering that the monkeys actually like damaging cars and that you are going in at your own risk. In retrospect, not a bad sign to put at the gate of my school.

Once inside the enclosure you can see that the sign is not an exaggeration. Monkeys are everywhere. They climb on the cars, jump from one car to another, break off windscreen wipers and rear view mirrors and to top it all off, I saw one swinging from an antenna while another one was tearing rubber insulation strips from car doors. And the parents were giving the youngsters the “good” example. They reminded me of the two fat women with tattoos who were screaming at their combined brats about the food in the tuck shop earlier. It’s a good thing my car is made of decent German stuff. The monkeys didn’t even give it a second glance. They sure know their car makes.

But I won’t say it. I’m not like my grandma yet, who said things like “In my days everything was different” and “children should be seen but not heard”. In those days, when a child asked “Why?” it was just told “Because!”. I won’t say that. Never! But oh, how I want to!