So, earlier this week Young Ben and I spent the day at Queen's Park. Swinging on the swings, see-sawing on the see-saw, sliding down the chute, spinning round on the roundabout. It was great fun, although after a while Ben asked if he could have a go rather than just watch me swinging on the swings, see-sawing on the see-saw, sliding down the chute and spinning on the roundabout. Kids nowadays, I don't know.
Playgrounds have certainly changed since I was a boy. The surface of the ground is softer than my mattress at home and if you fall over you virtually bounce back up again. When I was growing up in Ayr I used to go to the swing park at the top of King George V Playing Fields. We used to play a game on the roundabout where one of you dropped something off the side and the other people had to try and pick it up. I recall hanging precariously off the side and eventually 'coming a cropper' (to use a favourite expression of my dad) on several occasions. Unfortunately back then there was no safety covering on the ground. It was good old gravel or concrete, so I would regularly return home with bumps and scrapes as everyone did in those days.
In Glasgow we even play football on ash pitches. It's no wonder we never used to have any good goalies, who would want to dive about on that surface.
In all my times on the swings I never mastered the art of 'looping the loop' where you jump off the swing at a great height and the swing then wraps itself around the top pole. I was never quite agile enough for that and the joy of sitting in a swing and your mates turning it round and round and round and then letting it go so that it unravelled at great speed. Well that just made me feel ill. There was probably a name for that (I mean the swing turning not the me feeling ill) but I cannot recall it just as there was probably a name for when one of you sat on the swing and a mate stood up on the same swing in order to gather extra impetus. Dumb...I think that's what the name for that was
Anyway after we had finished in the play area Young Ben and I wandered round to The Glasshouse for a refreshment. He wanted to give a bit of his ice-pole to Terry The Tarantula in the Reptile House but I managed to convince him that was not such a great idea.
From there we headed up to the flagpole which offers breathtaking views of Glasgow in all directions including clear across the city to The Campsie Fells.
Then we meandered down to the boating pond where grown men sail model boats. Everything was going splendidly until our model Trident submarine sunk The Waverley and The Titanic (makes a change from an iceberg) and we were asked to leave. Ben wants to go back next week and launch our Stuka from a safe distance to see how our intrepid mariners cope with that. I really don't know where he gets it from
We then took turns at throwing our American Football to one another but by the time I had actually 'gone long' Ben had become bored and started chatting to a young lady nearby. I really don't know where he gets it from
On our way out of the park we witnessed a Glasgow phenomenon. Whenever the sun shines in Scotland, and I believe in particular in Glasgow, men are obliged to take off their shirts. This is not reserved to the parks or the beach. Oh no, you walk down Buchanan Street on a sunny day and you will see men in dress trousers with their shirts off. It's not a good look. Some of these guys make Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart look positively bronzed. So in the park we saw what must have been an improvised footie match of 'shirts' vs 'skins' wherein most of the 'skins' were playing in trousers and shoes
At that point Ben decided it was definitely time for home just in case his grandpa was bitten by the 'skins' bug. If that happened he would never be able to show his face in the park again
Anyway that's it for this week. Ben and I are experimenting in the bath to work out if Aquaman will still be able to swim with a torpedo strapped to his back. Look out Sir Francis Drake! We are coming for you!
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