03/02/08

God damn trains! It's the last time I'm ever going to have to make this journey, so they've decided to make it one to remember. My choices - either take the route with four changes including two buses, which takes 3 hours 40 minutes, or take the route with only three changes and one bus, which takes 5 hours 20 minutes ...

Anyways.

Went to a butterfly park today. Haven't been to one for ages. It was in one of those rickety retail places just out of town that somehow give the feeling of having been there since before the town was even built. You got the vague sense that it had actually closed down ten years ago, but no-one inside had realised yet.

We had some food in a reasonable cafe - though I couldn't eat the mash, because it tasted like it was at least half butter, maybe more. I like butter okay, but I don't, as a rule, want to eat it on it's own. You could see into the butterfly place from inside the cafe, and it looked like maybe there weren't so many butterflies. In fact, possibly none at all. But then suddenly one started banging repeatedly at the window, as if to make the point that there absolutely definately were butterflies inside, and we better go take a look at them or they'd be pissed. So we did.

It was as rickety-looking inside as it was outside, but I found it strangely comforting - I'm getting pretty sick of slick, new places. For a start, they always seem to have loads of those dumb interactive computer displays For Kids, which break within ten seconds of being brought into contact with a real child. I find them faintly depressing.

Despite the doubts, there were loads of butterflies. There was also a frankly terrifying number of coy carp in the pond. There was a little fish food machine nearby, so we bought some food and the instant we started throwing the food in the pond, they went crazy. They were fighting each other in this wreathing mass, just to get a little bit closer - there were so many fish, you couldn't see the water between them. Even more disturbing was when one fish would manage to climb on top of all the other fish, and lie there, gasping and flopping about, until the others shouldered it back into the water again. The whole thing was vaguely obscene.

Also this weekend - played giant Jenga, went to a dinner dance, and cleaned wine off the carpet at 3am. I really shouldn't have left that half full glass under the lightswitch.