Believe it or not, I did spend some time today wondering what on earth I could fill some space on here with. A few things good and bad milled through my mind, until after a beer, I kind of forgot any of it. The frequency at which a beer can effect my ability to recall something as quickly as what a dream was five seconds after awakening, or what I had for yesterdays lunch, is so frequent, I didn't allow this to deter me.
In the end, a joint effort between myself and Mrs. Banks resulted in a fabulous home made pizza. I thought about writing about this. I would have done too, if it wasn't for the fact I couldn't get a decent photograph to do it justice. Even a smart phone cannot handle poor light in a black kitchen.
Anyway, Friday is the day I get to pick Olive up from nursery all week. Due to events at work (which it would be improper to discuss) it has been a fair while since I've been able to do this. In fact, not this year. I was so happy to get back into the routine once more, the look on her little face tonight when I came to pick her up was so great. She was running around shouting to every two and three year old in sight that "it's Olive's Daddy, come to take Olive home now". About 10 laps of the playroom ensued as she was evasive to the last in order to get coat on and leave.
All this reminded me of a recent trip to Knole in Sevenoaks three weeks ago. It's an historical house owned by the National Trust, with a vast setting of open spaces, and woodland for all to explore.
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| Olive found a bunny rabbit hidden in the tree |
The more interesting feature here to me are the wild, but tame, deer that roam around. We went looking for them, and they weren't hard to find being in such huge numbers...
... on the fairway towards Knole Park Golf Club's 13th Green.
It was simply amazing just how close you get to these animals, and they were so tame.
So tame, Olive could get close (watched carefully to not scare the animals)
The deer are tame, because people come to see them like ducks in a pond. Only for deer, they come armed with about two kilo's of carrots.
I'm not sure how I felt about this, as they are wild animals, but being encouraged to scavenge off of us for our own pleasure seems wrong somehow. I'm not taking back the interaction gained, nor that Olive got from it (and I doubt the Knole Gamekeeper minds his fallow being so sociable at the right time of year).
However I learnt a lesson many moons back of trusting 'fed animals'. Meet Charlie, a charming thing who, thankfully, didn't invite us to his swampy den.
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| Looking astutely nervous |
