Day one of the Boy Wonder’s Big Visit began late this morning at Slimbridge, where his mother handed him over to us, as usual, in the car park. She then went off to a meeting, while the three of us went into the reserve. Reception was busy, but by the time we were half way up the ticket queue the Boy was conducting an in-depth negotiation with me about lunch, which distracted and entertained not just me but every other adult within earshot.
“Can we go to the café? I’m extremely hungry for savoury.”
“Are you?”
“Yes I am – so that’s what I most want, OK?”
“Absolutely fine. We’ll see what they have.”
“Good. But I am allowed pudding as well. Am I?”
“Yes, I think that will be OK.”
“And I’d like to choose the pudding first.”
“Would you?”
“Yes. I’d like to choose the pudding straight away, and buy it, but of course I won’t eat it till I’ve had my savoury.”
“You promise?”
“Mh-huh.”
I don’t know where he’s picked up “mh-huh”, but we must have heard it twenty times this afternoon, so it’s clearly a current favourite. He always grunts it on a bright, rising inflection, making it sound so positive that it’s hard to take it amiss, even when you’d rather be hearing a definite “yes” to whatever question you’ve asked him. Frankly I would have preferred a stronger commitment to the saving of pudding till the end of the meal, because the Boy and I have met before in cafés, and not always perfectly happily – but in the event (whether because someone at home had suggested not getting into food fights with Grandma this visit, or simply because he’s a huge nearly-5-years-old now, I don’t know), all went well. The chosen pudding was a large slab of Victoria sponge cake, but the chicken nuggets were demolished first, and if R and I scored all his chips (“I hate chips.”), and every molecule of baked beans and their sauce had to be scraped off the nuggets and removed to a separate plate (“I really hate baked beans.”), I still count it as a win – especially as he then left half the cake.
After lunch we went out and started looking for the big lanterns they currently have dotted around the reserve. We’d found and admired about half a dozen of these, and were on our way towards the spot where I thought I remembered there being a Barn Owl, when disaster struck – or rather, stung. “Ow!!” said the Boy. “That really hurts! Owww!!!” As we were walking past a nettle patch at the time, we assumed that he’d simply nettled himself, but he was pretty distressed, so R pulled back his sleeve and we found an obvious sting mark on his forearm, with a white ring around it and a spreading patch of red skin beyond. “It was a bee!!” wailed the Boy, but it didn’t look like a honey bee sting, and though neither R nor I had seen a wasp, it’s only a week since I was stung by one at Slimbridge, so I’m happy to convict on circumstantial evidence.
Given my own recent experience I could hardly believe I’d forgotten to bring my calendula/urtica sting cream today, but in its absence R suggested that B should try holding his arm in cold water, and this turned out to be an excellent first aid measure. However, despite confirming that the arm was now less painful, B was still quite shocked, and said he wanted to go home. As we went through the shop I picked up a small toy for him, with a view to distracting him from his woes in the car, and at the till I mentioned the sting to the staff. They immediately sprang into action and summoned a First Aider, who applied a cold pack to B’s arm and then sat chatting with us for about fifteen minutes, by the end of which there was barely any visible sign of the sting, and B reported that it no longer hurt at all.
Given that the last time we had the Boy at Slimbridge he fell in a pond, today’s experience made me feel as if we’re somehow hexed at this place, and B’s initial, tearful reaction to being stung was, “Well, I’m never coming here again!” – but by the time we got home (and I’d applied some cream to what by now was quite an itchy arm) he’d modified this to, “I will go back to Slimbridge again – but I’m definitely not going near a wasp!!”
