This week I took my son to Deen City Farm. It’s one of a small number of city farms spread across London, helping little kids tell the difference between a sheep, a cow and an alpaca. I jest a little, because I’m a country girl. But I remember taking a university friend from Philadelphia up into the mountains of Tennessee and showing her some white tailed deer, beautiful creatures. But she was far more interested in the cattle and desperately wanted to get in the field with some young bullocks. Not a great idea! So city kids do need to know about farm animals, where their food comes from and so on.

Deen City Farm, like many community and voluntary sector organisations, is partly funded by the council. In this case, Merton council. They’ve already announced cuts for next year, with further cuts almost certain. Signs around the farm explained the funding situation and that they weren’t likely to be able to continue without more support.

That really would be a shame. We’ve certainly enjoyed our regular visits to the city farm. And I’ve always seen many happy families there!

There was a call to action. To sign their petition on Merton’s e-petition form. Frankly, Deen City Farm, that feels a little tame.

On that trip my son was messing about in the cafe where the staff were meeting. I couldn’t help but overhear them talking about trying to use Facebook more effectively and getting celebrities to Tweet their cause. Interesting. Intriguing actually, given what I do. Another farm visitor asked if they could take their picture to post on her own Facebook group.  I took the opportunity to give them my card and offer my help with social media. I might not have mentioned that I would do this for free. But anyway, they haven’t emailed me.    Probably because I wasn’t wearing my social media ninja shirt.

If they had called me, I would have sat down with them to talk them through their objectives, their wider communication efforts and how social media could help them galvanise a rather passionate local fan base around a really amazing community resource.

A campaign must have a call to action! Yes, they’ve asked people to sign the petition. But so what? What will that do?  Will that really save the farm?  I looked over Merton’s e-petition pages, but  it’s not clear what actually happens to petitions. Do they go in front of full council? Scrutiny? Are they sneered at by bored council officers?

Save the Farm is a brilliant call to action at the highest level. It has cultural resonance and it’s clear and emotive.  But underneath that high level call to action, you need some clear steps people can take to save the farm.  These could include signing the petition. Giving their  contact details, since email drives action at crucial points in time. Telling their story. Giving their skills to support the campaign. Giving money. And the ultimate but easy social media campaign ask – telling their friends. To do that you need to get your social media house in order.

1. Sign the petition.

Nothing wrong with that, but I’d like to see more clearly what you expect to happen as a result. If you live work or study in Merton, go on and sign the petition. It can’t hurt.

2. Get those contact details!

It’s easy to set up a Google form which can be embedded or linked from your website asking for contact details. The best social media campaigns use contact details to drive traffic and action when the time is right.

3. Help people tell their story. Can you get people to tell the story of what the farm means to them?  It only needs a few lines, exposed in the right places, and sometimes people need a few simple guidelines about what’s required like a simple question such as…”My favourite Day at Deen City Farm”  I would be happy to tell the story of how my boy took his first ever pony ride at Deen City Farm.  But there will be more powerful, more emotive stories out there.  Signatures might get you in front of the council but real stories from real people beat an electronic signature every time.

And don’t forget people are already telling their Deen City Farm story online.  Here’s a sample of Flickr pics tagged deencityfarm.

People are already sharing their experiences of the farm

Boy and chickens

And there are quite a few videos on YouTube as well, such as the one above showing my less-than-stellar parenting skills.   Curate and showcase the best examples. (There’s more here on Beth Kanter’s blog – she’s much more knowledgeable on this kind of thing than I am)

4. Ask for more.

There is a link on the Deen City Farm main website to a donations page.  And that’s awesome. But why not be a little more upfront about asking for cash? Or donations of skills. Yes, it is hard to manage volunteer effort, but the farm is already good at that when it comes to mucking out and caring for the animals. Now’s the time to call on some of the professional skills of people who live in the area. Wimbledon isn’t exactly short of communications, IT and business professionals who have kids who love Deen City Farm.  I know because I met a whole bunch of them at my first school parent evening.  Or take a look at who’s already following DCF on Twitter, like  Rob Dyson @RobMDyson who handles publicity for WhizzKids – who could probably share a tip or two from their amazing non-profit social media efforts.

Find out where people are already talking about Deen City Farm and join in the conversation and ASK FOR HELP. Kudos to DCF for joining in this MumsNet conversation. But you could have made a little more of some of the suggestions – such as a Facebook group or a Friends board. There are tons of very skilled women in Wimbledon who are taking time out to raise kids who would be thrilled to support this.

But this ‘under construction’ page on how to help the farm sort of typifies the engagement with people who want to help.  And despite the cute picture of the piggy, that’s not the right impression.

It's almost like you don't want our help

5. Get your social media house in order and get people to tell their friends

DCF is already using social media and people are really receptive to this fantastic local resource.  There’s a Facebook page and a Twitter account. But DCF have yet to claim their Facebook places page (which is what comes up first when you search in Facebook). And I don’t see much engagement in either place.  Nor do I see much cross linking between their social media and web presence and almost nothing (that I saw) in the ‘on land’ world.  And a few simple signs at the farm asking people to ‘like them’ on Facebook would be awesome.  Yes, I know all this takes time and it isn’t free in terms of people resources, but I bet there are a handful of local women with previous experience in comms and marketing who would be happy to take this over – if you can let go a little bit.

And bonus tip!  You gotta have a gimmick.

Great social media campaigns usually have some kind of eye catching gimmick.  Manchester Police’s 24 Hours on Twitter. Walsall did the same. Southampton University Hospital Trust used their Twitter feed to highlight what went on durring one shift in a ward under threat.

I don’t think a 24 hour tweet-a-thon is the thing for Deen City Farm. (1am, pigs still asleep – oink…zzzzzz) But I could be wrong.  To me it would be much more cool to look at the impact on the life of a volunteers or to set up an Twitter account for an animal and tell its story for a week. Deen City Farm is also right next to Wimbledon Studios (television and film). Maybe they could see about getting visiting celebs to pop in and spread the word. I dunno, there’s probably people out there with more gimmicky minds than me. But these can get you wider press attention and capture the imagination of potential fans.

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Yesterday, I had a meeting at City Hall (nearest tube London Bridge) and then decided I wanted to head on over to the RSA to do some work (nearest tube Embankment). There’s not really a super-duper easy way to get from one to the other. But there is a boat. And since I’d overshot the cut-through from the south bank to London Bridge station and the boat was pulling up and it was a beautiful day. So, even though it was the more expensive option and I’m not clear if it was the faster option, I took the boat.

And out on the back deck of the boat (is that the stern?), it was gorgeous. Beautiful views of London, Tower Bridge, HMS Belfast and the Houses of Parliament as I reached my stop (port? landing?). Oh, and I also saw a beach. On the Thames. I guess somebody from Southwark or maybe the mayor’s office has dumped a bunch of sand on the muddy banks of the Thames and opened the hitherto shut gates down to the river.

So, looks like the trip to the beach might be a little more handy and convenient. I feel the slight guilt of the slacker parent, but being a slacker parent – it doesn’t last long. Not sure how I’m gonna keep the boy out of that filthy ol’ river, though.

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Heaven forfend!

I’ve been going to Wisley for years, but we started to go more when we had our son.  As a baby, he was always happiest when being wheeled around outdoors, and it was something we could all enjoy.  As he got older, Wisley has been a great place for him to toddle around, and now, yes, he does like to run on the paths and peer over the bridges to look at the gaping koi.

Like the curmudgeonly letter writer, I too cannot abide children running amok in the herbaceous borders or plucking leaves and flowers.  But her tone suggested that their very presence was an anathema.  I was so offended that I wrote back to The Garden, explaining that I didn’t think that children’s behaviour at Wisley was generally a problem and that I hoped to have  many happy visits to Wisley with my son – helping him to learn about horticulture and the great cultivated outdoors.  Not only that, but I suggested that it would be a great idea if Wisley could introduce a designated play area for children and demonstrate how tough, sympathetic planting could be introduced to playgrounds.  Too often, municipal play areas are barren hardscapes with little injection of the natural world.

Fantastic climbing frames

Binoculars at the viewing station

Den building and blocks

My letter was never published.  But there is now a play area at Wisley.  And it’s fabulous.  No swings or slides, but there are climbing frames and brilliant use of logs and stumps – some carved fantastically with snakes and owls and the Green Man.  There’s a tunnel covered with pine logs, like some kind of insect habitat, and there are frames which children can cover with dead branches and palm leaves from the glass house and other leavings of pruning maintenance.  The planting, isn’t up to scratch yet – but it’s early days – and there are olives and eucalyptus and tough herbaceous perennials which are currently fenced off to protect them from being trod on by tiny feet.

Of course, that doesn’t address the issue of inappropriate behaviour by garden visitors.  I take a very firm line on touching the plants or stepping in the borders.  Sadly not something that every garden visitor is as scrupulous about. I saw a woman in her 50s walking around with an allium seed head yesterday. And garden visitors in England are notorious for filching seed or taking surreptitious cuttings.  I have even heard that there is occasionally some scrumping in the orchards.  And yes, I have seen children out of order in the gardens.  More could be done to help parents (and others) enforce appropriate behaviour of garden visitors large and small.  But surely play areas will help little visitors burn off the energy which might be otherwise be spent on smushing the hostas or picking the hydrangeas.

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They boy is now excited by fighting and knights and bows and arrows and such like, so I thought I’d hunt around for a castle to visit and Hurst Castle sounded picturesque and promising.  Not accessible by car, you can walk along a narrow shingle spit from the mainland or take a ferry from the tiny hamlet of Keyhaven.  We didn’t arrive in the New Forest in time to go to the castle on our first day, but we arrived at the ferry port bright and early the next day.  As we approached the castle, a long, low-slung thing hulking just above the water line (or so it appeared from a distance), I said to Simon “I’m not sure this is castle, I think that’s a Fort.”

Our ferry pilot was a very posh chap indeed, who dropped various tidbits of local history in our ears and waved generally in the direction of the castle and said “That’s the bit built by Henry VIII.”  But to be honest, I couldn’t see which bit he was referring to.  And then he pointed to the ferry ahead of us and said “The caretaker’s only just arrived, you might have to wait outside for a bit.”

My goodness.  I’m not sure I’ve EVER been early to any attraction – at least not with my late-rising husband in tow.  But we were happy enough to wander on the outside of Hurst Castle with its beautiful lighthouse next door and beautiful views of the Isle of Wight. We spent a long time chucking rocks into the sea. And then we paid our money and went inside.

Not a castle

I’m really really not sure why this was ever called a castle.  According to the Wikipedia entry on castles:

Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble.

But no lord or noble ever lived there, well…with the exception of the imprisoned Charles I, who was there for only a brief time.  The original fortification was commissioned by Henry VIII who feared invasion after he removed England’s faithful from the Church of Rome.   But the invasion never came.  The ‘castle’ was then expanded substantially during the Victorian era when apparently they had little else to do but build two vast wings of brick and stone and feared invasion from the French.  And it was occupied again in WWII as part of the coastal defenses, but never fired a shot in anger.

But castle or no castle, the boy had a fabulous time climbing up onto the parapets and touching the canon and seeing the WWII era guns.  And he loved the boat ride out to the fort.

I have to say that the display of the ‘castle’ was a little disappointing. The curators hadn’t really constructed a narrative time line through the exhibits. It would have been better if we’d been guided through the history of the castle by starting with the Henrician elements (yes, apparently Henrician is a legit adjective) – then through the Victorian era and on to the WWII bits. But instead we saw a hodge podge of exhibits explaining about the preservation of the shingle spit. (It’s a natural feature, but building of sea walls further west prevents further deposition of material so it’s always being washed away). We only found the original fortification by chance when we were about to leave and it’s probably the coolest part. But it was still a fantastic half-day out if you didn’t count the heart stopping moments when the boy was running across the roof tops and skipping up and down the steep stairs.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

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When I was child, I enjoyed childish things.  Like Scooby Doo and The Monkeys.  I loved Scooby, it introduced me to the concept of mysteries and crime fiction, something I love to this day.  I liked Velma’s irrepressible nature and her insistence on the rational.  There are no ghosts.  There must be something behind all this.  A man in a mask.  And through hard work and improbable traps, you can get to the bottom of it.  Oh, and we would have got away with it, too if it weren’t for you meddling kids.  Meddling kids and their triumph over conniving adults.

But when I became a woman, I put away childish things.  Until my own child became big enough to demand television.  And it was to my great delight that Scooby Doo is played endlessly on certain satellite channels and my even greater delight that my son loves to watch Scooby, too.  The original Scooby shows are still fantastic and one of the few cartoons that I can sit through without becoming annoyed.  Sometimes I watch them.  And sometimes I just let them flow over me, as comforting as a cradle song, while I do something else. There’s something wonderfully nostalgic about watching episodes about a man in a mask with an impossibly contrived scheme to bootleg records. Yes, actual LPs which were copied laboriously in a secret, creepy cave studio and then smuggled across a river by a henchman in  ghost pterodactyl hang glider contraption.   Oh, the days before peer to peer file sharing. If  you wanted a copy of Dixie Chicken live, you’d have to make a shady deal with a man who talked pterodactyl – Veek! Veek!

But these kids channels don’t just show the original Scooby and the series that followed in the original format. They show new modern Scooby, where Fred no longer sports a cravat.  They show a bizarre and poorly drawn spin-off which features only Shaggy and Scooby living in the home of their rich uncle with a robot butler that’s forever getting them out of scrapes.  And they show Scooby movies with complicated plots and commissioned soundtracks. 

Yes, they show those originals and they also show – on occasion – the ones with Scrappy Doo.

It sends a shiver down my spine.

Yesterday, there was a Scooby marathon and after they’d run out of the original and the next series and the movies, they showed some Scrappy Doo episodes as well.  Like every Gen-Xer, I hate Scrappy.  Scrappy is evil.  Scrappy is symbol of all things rotten.  And so Scrappy cannot be shown.  My son did not understand, but the channel was changed.

But watching Scrappy again as an adult as I did on one occasion not too long ago, I realise it’s not Scrappy’s fault.  Scrappy’s introduction to the show coincided with a complete change in format.  Instead of mysteries, it was random running around with ‘real’ supernatural elements.  No more looking for clues.  No more solving puzzles using ‘logic’.  No more nuance of personality from Fred and Velma and Daphne.  It might as well have been a different show.  And we Gen-Xers, only being young’uns at the time, didn’t see that they were dumbing the show down in a misplaced effort to salvage the ratings – instead we blamed Scrappy – who from an adult perspective isn’t as annoying as I remember.  It’s the whole show that’s annoying.  It’s a betrayal of Scooby and a betrayal of us as the audience.  There was no mystery to engage with, we were only being served up dross in the form of Scooby snacks to consume passively.   It was perhaps the first time we were aware of the entertainment industry treating us like morons – and we could never forgive the messenger. The live action Scooby movie even played on this – casting Scrappy as the ultimate villain (sorry for the spoiler, but honestly the film is pretty wretched).

The boy is only 3, so he screamed and wailed when I insisted that no further Scrappy shows can be watched in my house.  So long as I pay for the roof which shelters the tv that I bought receiving the satellite signal that I subscribe to there will be no Scrappy.

(Photo credit: fallentomato )

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It’s a more formal park than the managed ‘wilderness’ of Richmond Park, with planted avenues of chestnut and lime trees and centred around a great round pond with an ornate fountain.  There’s a woodland garden which snakes alongside a slow and shallow stream.  Near the Pheasantry Centre (no pheasants, but a cafe and visitor centre), it was planted with mature bald cypress, one of my favorite tress.  We didn’t explore that in full, but I’d love to go back and see that in spring when the rhododendrons and azaleas are in bloom.

Stream and bald cypress

For us, we had to first get our heads around the scale of the park.  We’re used to the sweeping distances of Richmond Park, and what looked on the map as a long way actually was a short walk.  So even taking the long way, getting to the playground took little time.

The young navigator

We walked through a paved avenue of limes. The name of this tree has always confused me. As these trees don’t produce the kind of limes you can put in your margaritas. As I mentioned this to Simon, he said “You mean they don’t make limes?” Umm, no. One wouldn’t really expect citrus to be produced on an island this far to the north. Instead they are this kind.

This is not the road to Margaritaville

The playground is vast and well-equipped with swings, climbing frames, a sandpit and all risk appetites are catered for with an array of slides.

Bill immediately ran to the scariest slide of all – a behemoth on which kids could (and did) actually hurt themselves (though not badly – mostly bruised bottoms and bruised pride).  He managed it quite well, but an older kid took the slide poorly and landed with a bad thump and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Bill became a bit nervous of the slide after that and demanded that Daddy accompany him.

The big slide

Daddy applies the hand brake

Overall, with less space and what felt like a more people, the park seemed crowded – at least in comparison to Richmond Park.   Both parks have red and fallow deer, but in Bushy Park the deer seem more habituated to humans and we were able to hand feed some young fallow deer.  In late July and early August, the male fallow deer are approachable.   Because of the dry weather, I suspect there’s less grazing and the deer are hungry.  Park visitors were stripping leaves from trees where the deer could not reach, and several of the deer would nibble from your hands.  Some of the visitors were a little less respectful than they ought to have been – as deer can be dangerous.  Although they were grateful for the leaves, they didn’t like being approached or petted from behind and would startle and jump sometimes perilously close to the person who was feeding them from the front.

Feeding the deer

I think we will go back to Bushy Park, but we probably won’t make it a regular trip.

The Diana fountain

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Nothing runs like a Deere

Nothing lasts like a Ford

Almost as exciting as the vintage tractors were the vintage lawnmowers.  The boy was thrilled to “push” an 1880 model mower and roller around the field.  (Just out of frame is the man who’s pulling it along with a rope).

But most of exciting of all, at least for me, is the discovery that Wisley has installed play area!  The tractors will only be there til the 30th, but the playground is there to stay – tucked into a less visited area in the arboretum but only just around the corner from the fabulous Piet Oudolf borders and not far from the glass house. And it’s a really good one.  All still fairly new, I’m not overly impressed by the planting scheme (so far) – this could be an opportunity to show how horticultural and children’s play CAN be combined successfully.  But they may have more in the works and I really can’t grumble about the equipment, including giant logs they’ve half buried in pits – some filled with pine cones. (yes, on reflection that doesn’t sound that good and none of my pictures really came out that well – but it was really fun).  There are some great climbing frames and tunnels you can build your own teepees by adding branches to pre-constructed wooden frames.

Horticultural highlights

You might think that we didn’t even look at the flowers, and yes we spent little time this week.  But the hydrangeas are lovely, the summer border is just hitting its stride and agapanthus are brilliant throughout the gardens.

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And then I met my husband at a pub in borough to do the childcare handover thing.  Unfortunately, the pub we chose didn’t allow children, which they only told us after we ordered food.  They let us eat, though.  And Bill was fortunately remarkably well-behaved, only kicking up a slight fuss when I wouldn’t let him play the fruit machine.

I left Simon with his role-playing chums and Bill and I went off to tour the South Bank and take lots of different forms of transport.

We went up via London Bridge station and Bill was desperate to go on the HMS Belfast.  But it costs a lot of money.  And frankly I didn’t fancy chasing him around a cruiser single-handed.  It’s all a bit head-banging low doorways or gangways or portals or whatever they call doors on ships and treacherous stairs and railings inadequate to prevent a small boy from flinging himself into the Thames.

I told him we couldn’t go on the ship but he spotted the entrance.  Clever boy.

Fortunately he was distracted by the elephants currently populating London.  He wanted to ride the elephants, but I’m not sure that that’s allowed.  And anyway, their high, slippery fibreglass backs looked quite dangerous.

He dashed from pachyderm to pachyderm in front of the GLA building.

We crossed Tower Bridge on foot – something I’d never done before, and well worth doing.  It took some persuasion to get him to pose on one of the few safe areas of the balustrade.  He slumped in his stroller and said “I too tired.  I very, very tired Mommy.”  His latest phrase whenever we want him to something that he doesn’t quite fancy.

But I told him if he posed for a few pictures we could go and see the castle on the other side.   We didn’t go into the Tower of London either.  Another costly tourist attraction.  But we enjoyed an ice cream moatside:

And stopped to look at the Traitor’s Gate.  Bill asked me if that’s where princesses went, and it certainly was.  I tried to explain that it was mostly for ‘bad people’ but sometimes princesses used that gate, too.  I told him how Princess Elizabeth had gone through those doors and up those steps, but that she was one of the few to come out again free.  And that she wasn’t bad.   He nodded.

Because the Northern Line was closed for the weekend, we needed to either catch a train home from London Bridge or Waterloo or catch a dire ‘replacement bus’ from Kennington.  Since he’d said he wanted to ride a boat, we caught the Thames Clipper from the Tower up the Thames to Waterloo.  If you have an Oyster card loaded with cash or a travel card you get a nice discount and fabulous views of the Thames.

At Waterloo, the dock sits right underneath the London Eye and Bill wanted to ‘ride the eggs’.  But that also costs money (there’s a theme here).  And anyway, I’ve taken my last ride on a Ferris Wheel of any description since my mother’s neighbor fell from the top of one while riding with her grandson at the fair in Lawrenceburg a couple of years ago.  (She lived!).

At this point, Bill was genuinely tired of having his photo taken from the outside of visitor attractions.  “I don’t like pictures,” he told me.

But he likes rides.  By the end of the day he’d ridden the Underground, the Overground, a commuter boat and a bus.  Exciting day, even if we didn’t go in any pay attractions.

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I’ve cut my brother’s hair a few times. Mostly when I was a teenager and he was just a little kid.  It never turned out well.  The most memorable occasion was when he about 8 and desperately wanted a crew cut which my mother would not allow.  He brought me a pair of blunt edged paper scissors and asked me to do the job.  I figured that if you just cut it short enough it would have the desired effect.  It turns out that this is not the case. I kept cutting and cutting and cutting, but it never looked right.  When my mother stopped me mid-job, it’s fair to say that the results were uneven.  Uneven as in near-bald in some places and tufty in others.  Being young and gullible, I told him that it looked good, and he believed me.  But it didn’t.  It looked like he had the mange.

Foolishly, seventeen years later, my brother asked me to cut his hair again.  It wasn’t so much that the memory had faded but that he was a bit desperate and assumed that my skills had improved. They hadn’t. But at least I had the right tools – a clipper and a set of guards.  But it turns out that good results are uni-directional.  If you run the clippers the wrong way, you still get the mange look.

And even more foolishly, even after seeing the results of my brother’s cut, my husband let me cut his hair.  It didn’t go well.  It was kind of a post-chemo look.  Apparently I told him that I knew I’d cut it too short in some places, so let some tufts remain in the hopes that it would even out the look.

My brother and husband with the proprietor of a country and western bar deep in the suburbs of Hamburg, Germany

I found this photo and showed it to my husband just before scanning it in.  He said “it does not convey the full horror of that haircut.”

So, even with the full knowledge of what my haircutting skills are like, he let me cut Bill’s hair this morning.

To be fair, the boy’s locks were getting very shaggy indeed.  And we’d already tried a couple of times to get his hair cut at the hairdresser around the corner who had done an excellent job back in December.

Shaggy, shaggy locks

So we got out the clippers this morning.  It all started out well enough.  But Bill soon tired of my clipping and decided we were done.  Although we weren’t.

I'm unlikely to become a licensed hairdresser

And even though it wasn’t a perfect job – a little rough around the edges and over the ears, Simon did say that Bill’s hair looked better after I finished than before I started. And then added that this must be a first for me.

I do it

Bill’s quite fond of power tools, and this was no exception.  He wanted to be the one with power.  He decided that he wanted to do the haircutting and was aggrieved when neither Simon nor I would agree to let him cut our hair.  But if there’s one thing I know about haircuts, it’s that you should never, ever agree to let anyone near your head unless you’re sure they know what they’re doing.

refusal often offends

He’s not crying because he’s having his hair cut.  He’s crying because he’s not doing the hair cutting.

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We’d been to Woburn on a previous occasion on the way back from someplace else, one freezing January Sunday when our Bill was very, very small.

Now Bill is closer to 3 than to 2, so we made a special overnight trip.  We enjoyed driving through the safari park seeing the lions and tigers and bears (oh my!).  We were able to get extraordinarily close to a rhino – which I found scariest of all.  A lion may be able to tear you to shreds, but it’s unlikely to be able to put its head through your windshield.

I had heard about the lemur area before our first visit, but sadly it was closed.  Maybe it was too cold for the lemurs.  This time it was open, but on our first walk through all we could see from the decked walkway humans must use were a few sleeping lemurs.   A short while later, the lemurs were moving around and we were able to get quite close to the lemurs as the perched on the deck to poo onto our walkway.  The lemurs seem to have a kind of disdainful tolerance for the humans.  And I feel the poo on the decking was a sign of how they really feel about us.

Bill felt the need to tell the lemurs not to poo at us, but if you look at the anal area of the lemur you will see that his chastisement was ineffective. The keeper said they poo on the walkway because it’s “not their area” and they don’t like to walk in their own shit, but that wasn’t the impression that I got at all. I think it was a message.

These black and white lemurs are among the largest of the lemur species and they’re bigger than a large cat. They’re impossibly adorable, so you just want to pick them up and squeeze them and take them home in your hand luggage and let them jump around your house and hope that the keeper was right about them not wanting to poo in their own area so that they’d sit on the fence and poo into your neighbour’s garden.

But they are also very noisy. When I was standing right next to a pair of them on Day 1 they started barking and screeching over some kind of internal lemur politics. Freaked me out and I think it scared the toddler, too – as he made a dash for the exit and only cheered up when he was watching some penguins swim underwater.

That incident kinda put a damper on our next visit to the lemurs on the following day. We managed to get in about 5 minutes after it opened on a Bill didn’t want to enter the lemur cage. And then when a saw a small, cute brown lemur being handled by one of the keepers, he freaked and tried to run down the pathway. When he ran into this bundle of cuteness/terror.

And when I got to pet some of these lemurs. Bill tried to stop me. “Don’t touch, Mommy.”

But nothing, nothing was going to stop me petting a lemur.  Some of them are apparently quite friendly, but others will nip at you according to the keeper. I petted the friendly ones, but Simon managed to pet an ‘nippy’ one.  Without incident, thankfully.

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