Pale September

That’s right, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, the boy is stripped down to his pants in a wading pool in the middle of September.

It all started on Thursday.  The girls and I had arranged some weeks ago to take a trip over to T’s to see her not so new any more baby and go for lunch.  The husband was supposed to be working, so I was going to take the boy along too.  Saturday sorted.  But R got ill last week, and we decided to postpone until we could all go together. 

Which left me and the boy still in our PJs at 11am at a loss for something to do.  His best idea was go to the park, which while a good idea, still left me feeling like we’d not be making much out of our weekend.  So I transformed his wonderful idea of a trip to the park into an even better one of trekking out to Beckenham and going to Kelsey Park.  At least there’d be some ducks to feed and I knew I’d got a couple of half stale pieces of bread that would otherwise be thrown away.

Unfortunately, as we got as far as the South end of Tooting Broadway, the boy had other ideas.  It ws a constant barrage of ‘are we nearly there yet’ as we crawled through the Saturday afternoon traffic.  I’d hoped that once we’d passed Tooting the traffic would ease off and we could get moving, but no such luck as we crawled even more slowly up to Streatham and then through Stretaham Common. 

And as we were sitting in the traffic on the side of the common, I noticed a wading pool that was still filled, and a few kids playing in it.  “Instead of going to feed the ducks, would you like to go and play in that pool?” I asked, pointing it out to the boy.  He agreed, and so after a fairly non legal u-turn on a main road, we werre heading off to find parking. 

Not expecting to be playing in water in the middle of September, I hadn’t exactly planned to bring spare clothes.  Luckily, we keep a lot of junk in our boot and I managed to russle up a few things.  Despite having been swimming weeks earlier, the husband still hadn’t brought the boy’s swimming bag in to the house and had left it festering in the boot.  The trunks were rather smelly and unwearable but the towel was pretty much dry.  Score one!  There was also the hoodie that I’d left in the car all summer for emergencies.  If the boy stripped down to his pants and t-shirt, he’d be fine.

But as usual, the boy wouldn’t want to make life too convenient; he refused to strip anything off, let along down to his pants, and insisted on rolling up his trouser legs as far as they’d go.  Except they kept falling back down.  It didn’t matter soon though, cos as I watched on in amusement, his legs flew out from under him and he fell straight on his arse.  There went the dry clothes.  We rolled his trouser legs back up and he carried on splashing around, refusing to take them off.  But the weight of the water wasn’t really helping and in th end I convinced him to take his wet clothes off.  Of course he realised, having done so, that mother is always right, because it was a lot easier to play and splash around without having to worry about keeping his clothes dry. 

Once he’d gotten bored, dried off and put his dry hoodie and wet trousers on, the boy decided it was time for an ince cream from the cafe that sits next to the Rookery.  Because after you’ve frozen your arse off in a wading pool in the middle of September, an ice cream is the logical next step.  We sat overlooking the gardens as we ate (well one of us did, the other smeared a horrifically coloured orange lolly across his mouth) and watched as other kids rolled down the small but steep hill.  So of course the moment that lolly was nothing but a stick, that’s what the boy was doing too.  And If I’d not got a bump of baby to worry about, I probably would have joined him. 

We walked around the gardens and watched some overly fearless squirrels.  The boy was curious about sundials and wishing wells and wanted to prod the lillypads in a small pond to see if there were frogs underneath.  We followed the trail of what was once a series of minature waterfalls but now was rather dried out so only looked like a few ponds.  We had an adventure in the woods although in reality it was only a path through a few trees. 

Then we went to the park at the bottom of the common, where the usually fearless boy surprised me by admitting that one climbing frame was just that bit too high for him.  Of course it didn’t stop him from climbing to the top of every other one whilst refusing to remove his hood from his head.  I only hope this isn’t a warning of things to come!