This morning I gave the Boy Wonder a choice between going to Charlecote to see the Fallow Deer (which R and I still refer to between ourselves, as B used to at the age of 2, as “deer with horns on head”), or a trip to the MAD Museum in Stratford. I think it was probably the fact that I’d never been there myself, and therefore couldn’t really tell him what to expect, that clinched his decision in favour of MAD. We parked in the rec’ car park and walked up through town, with the Boy detailed to try to find a sign that matched the logo across the top of our tickets. Here you see him a moment after he’d found our goal – the tickets held in his left hand like a map, while the right was being used as a telescope.
For the first few minutes we were in the museum, which is very small, and was very crowded, it was obvious that the Boy didn’t like it much – not least because many of the exhibits sit on stacked shelves, and even after we’d provided him with a hop-up step he simply couldn’t see the highest ones. Ten minutes in, he said he wanted to go, so we made our way towards the exit. But then he suddenly darted away, calling back, “I just want to look at this one, OK?”, and that one led him to another, and then on to something else – and in the end we were there for almost an hour.
After that we walked up Henley Street to BTP, where we had lunch and sat out an unexpected rainstorm, and then we went to the river and fed the birds again. En route we bought the Boy a reflective plastic poppy from a Royal British Legion stall on Bridge Street, and a lanyard to hang it from because he didn’t want it attached to the zip of his gilet. “Actually,” he said as we walked on, “these are for people’s jobs, and I don’t have a job so I shouldn’t wear it.” He then stuffed the lanyard in his pocket, zipped it up safely, and, pointing to the canal tunnel that runs under the Clopton Bridge, said, “Can we go down there?” After quarter of an hour invoking the echo in the tunnel, and about half an hour up on the lock bridge, dividing slices of wholemeal bread minutely between a large flock of pigeons and gulls, we finally managed to coax him away to the car, and went back home for dinner.
This evening as I was tucking him into bed, he suddenly sat bolt upright and said, “Grandma! That thing – do you remember? The thing we bought, on the ribbon that’s for people’s jobs – you said we could look at it in the dark tonight with a torch, to see if it really does shine!” So off we went, back downstairs, where we found the lanyard and poppy, and R located a torch, and we shut ourselves in the kitchen with the lights off, and did our experiment. I’m happy to report that the poppy was satisfactorily reflective, and this brought our third day to a successful close.
This evening, after both my boys were asleep, I sat up for a while and watched When Bruce Springsteen Came to Britain, which – much like the man himself – was absolutely charming. To be fair, I was the perfect target audience for the programme, having been a fan for forty five years or so, but I’m not ashamed to say that in places it made me cry. If you’re a UK TV licence holder you can find it on the BBC iPlayer for the next six months, but it may also be available to stream elsewhere. Highly recommended.
