It has been unseasonably warm and sunny this weekend in Marlow, so W and I took it upon ourselves to go for a stroll in Higginson Park - about a mile from where we live.
W warned me on the way that the park would be packed with people doing the same as us, and I didn’t really believe her - until we rounded the corner and saw the small army of parents and children in the childrens play area…
Thankfully the park is a huge - more than enough room for us to wander off and avoid the legions of screaming kids (shouting variations of “I want an ice cream” in only the way that spoiled children particular to this part of the world can - it comes out sounding like “I want a pony, mummy” - these are the same children who are probably chauffered to the park and then transported in hermetically sealed bubbles to the play area by “Daddy” who is showing off his latest FA Porsche designed pushchair…
Perhaps I really am becoming a cynic. What ever happened to making your kids walk? Perhaps that’s why there are so many fat kids around - the ones who’s mothers took them fried food for lunch after the schools started serving healthy food recently.
Getting away from the masses, we find a quiet spot and content ourselves with watching the swans drift past.
Higginson Park really is a wonderful place to go on days like today - there are many, many old trees throughout the park - some of which are several yards wide…
This one (a plane tree?) is probably hundreds of years old, and towers above nearby buildings. I have quite often wondered how different the people and surroundings would have been when these trees were young - we’re probably looking back to a time before Guy Fawkes hatched his gunpowder plot to blow up parliament. On a side-note, one of the plotters houses still exists on the edge of Marlow.
On the way home we were wandering through a side alley, and noticed something…
I didn’t look too closely - I got a bit scared - but isn’t this the marker for the exit from Narnia? Does this mean we have been living in Narnia all along?