In the dock of Tiger Bay, on the road to Mandalay, from Bombay to Santa Fe, o'er the hills and far away

Young Ben and I managed to find a dry 'window' last week in the midst of a typical Scottish summer and headed off to the park.

Ben likes the park since he knows that whilst there he will encounter three of his favourite things in life. These are 1) balls 2) dogs and 3) sticks.

Of these three a ball is the only one we take with us to the park. Selecting from his vast emporium of balls we took his current ball of choice and set off. He was unhappy about not carrying the ball himself but there are some steep streets on the way to the park and I did not fancy chasing off down Ledard Road after a ball which was not going to stop until it reached Hampden and strangely I actually won that argument. He was obviously saving himself for bigger battles

Once in the park we headed for the stretch of grass which was formerly a disused bowling green and more recently a disused putting green but is currently our Camp Nou. The recent downpours have been so bad that Ikea have sold out of their self-assembly Arks and the conditions underfoot in our dear green place were soggy to say the least. Our footie kick about was more like a water polo match but nonetheless we soldiered on bravely

As we squelched off our pitch and headed up the hill in search of refreshments we encountered a lady who was out dog walking. She must have had about eight to ten dogs with her and Ben, being the polite fellow he is, had to bestow hugs and kisses to all of them. His new found canine friends seemed to appreciate his displays of affection and reciprocated with their own licks and kisses. There was free love everywhere. It reminded me a bit of Woodstock, except without the drugs and music.

One of the dogs was even called Ben which led to mass confusion when we finally headed in our different ways and Ben was being called in opposite directions. Actually he never listens to me anyway so there was not that much confusion and there was more chance of Ben the dog heeding my requests

It was at this point that the stick collecting began. As many of you will already know stick collecting is an art and sticks come in numerous shapes and sizes with countless uses. Young Ben is a quick learner but is currently going through the "Quantity rather than Quality" phase although even then he is still quite picky and does not like to have any sticks that are too similar in his collection

We had earlier used some sticks for goalposts when we were playing football (it was too wet and damp for jumpers) but those sticks had served their purpose and were left for others to use

By the time we reached the bench which I like to use as a pit-stop before the last push up the hill to The Glasshouse Young Ben had acquired an array of new sticks. There was "Pointy" who looked like the brother of those we had left behind on our football pitch. Then there was "Proddy", which was not an indication of his Glaswegian Sectarian leanings, but rather he was an excellent shape and size for using to prod things, and when I say "things" I mean Grandpas. Next was "Throwy" which is always useful to have so that any passing dog can choose to ignore it when thrown and Grandpa can do the fetching. Disturbing my five minutes of peace was "Bangy" which was used as a drumstick along with "Throwy" as Ben performed some sort of drum solo on the bench, the likes of which have not been seen since the days of Ginger Baker. Last but not least there was "Branchy" who was basically a branch and had to be dragged along the path due to his his size and awkward shape. I called him George Sewell because he was a Special Branch.
No? Ben didn't get that one either

We finally made it to The Glasshouse for our refreshments and I managed to have a well earned rest as Ben used up even more of his seemingly endless supplies of energy in the Soft Play Area

By the time we arrived home Fireman Sam was on the TV. It strikes me that for a town with a population of about 20 Ponypandy seems to have more fires in a week than California does in a year but even so we both both do enjoy Fireman Sam, although I may have nodded off during the third episode and Ben had to bring me up to speed with any plot developments I had missed

Needless to say Ben's mum was delighted with the sticks we had brought home. You can never have enough good sticks.