Splashes & Dashes of Yellow

Big City

We live in a little village,on the outskirts of a town. Life is quite laid back round these parts. We have one street of shops and on that street is a unbelievable amount of hairdressing salons and quite a few pubs. Im not sure why this is,maybe we are very hair conscious and like a good drink. I've just toted up and it's seven hairdressers shops and three pubs,all on one street,within a five minute walk and just around a corner are two more pubs,totalling five pubs within just over a five minute walk. And just dotted around the village are at least five more pubs - great for a pub crawl I guess!

The centre of the universe in the village is the Morrisons supermarket,affectionately known as Morrodogs or Moggos,don't ask me why,it just is. Everybody shops at Morrisons and if you go up there you always see someone that you know,always.

So you get the picture. It's quite a slow pace of life here. We dash around like most people do but we also amble around too. Whether its the age of the people walking up the high street or just the mood around here we kind of just drift up and down.

And I know this because I have seen different paces of life. Once I went to London and I was amazed at the hectic pace of life. Everybody dashing somewhere and doing it at one hundred and fifty million miles per hour. And as for the underground... yikes.

Well our nearest city is nowhere as big as London but the pace is different than our little corner of the universe and yesterday we went to have a look around the big city.

I'm not the greatest fan of shops and hustle and bustle and the greyness of cities but the boys love it there. They like the shops,they like to mooch around with their family and it's a day out.

So we went. And I'm glad we did. Because any day out with the gang is good. I'm all for time with the boys,away from power of the x box and other techy stuff. I took my camera,determined I would find something to take a photograph off. I so like nature that I find looking for interesting photo opportunities in towns and cities much harder but I was hellbent on getting a few different kind of photos. Well it rained,sometimes heavily and this totally hampered my photo opportunities. Grrr! It didnt spoil the day though,infact one memory I have is of Chips walking down the street in just his red Liverpool shirt and joggers loving getting wet.At this point the rain had turned from a few spots into a sudden downpour.As he got to McDonalds he didn't go inside into the warmth and the dryness,oh no, he turned back and came walking up to me,arms outstretched with the biggest smile on his face,his head tipped back so the rain splashed all over his upturned face. My mum was slightly horrified at how wet he was getting,I kinda clocked the smile on his face and just grinned at him.Oh and the rain had another effect,his curls sprang into life. And as we sat eating lunch I saw his twirls and curls appear and that's something I adore. He also got wet in the fountain. A bit too much enthusiasm when dipping his hands into the water resulted in soggy wet hoody sleeves.

This kid was born to get wet!

Our normal, very set, city routine was turned upside down because instead of traveling by train,we had come in the car. So it was backwards! We had a mozy around the shops and then walked through the rain for lunch and after lunch the rain gradually stopped. This made life a bit more comfortable and I quickly snapped a few photos,much to the boys annoyance - they don't like my camera much! Takes too much time up! They are probably right!

All day long,from when he had woke up,Chips had carried a 2p around with him,with the aim to throw it in the fountain. You would not believe how many times that coin had been dropped! However it got to the fountain I'll never know! But it did! Second time around,mind you,the first time we couldn't find it anywhere. That appeased Chips,the job was a good un.

As the afternoon drew to a close we sat snuggled up on a bench eating massive ice creams. The wind was blowing by now and this made the job of eating ice cream tricky. My hair somehow kept managing to dip itself into my ice cream,creating a right sticky mess and Chips got the ice cream everywhere. This did not deter us though and we sat happily licking ice cream and munching chocolate flake and watching the world go by.

And apparently young Sharky and I were thinking exactly the same thing as we sat slurping the soft melty ice cream....we were thinking how diverse the city was compared to our little village. So many different cultures and ways of dressing. It was vibrant and colourful. Buildings so much taller than anything back home and so much busier. And as we sat chattering I began to realise that every so often it's good to visit other places,to see different ways of life,for the boys and me. It's good to see differences and it's also good to return home. Back to our little slow paced corner of the world.