Whipsnade Zoo

For Christmas my daughter, Sally, bought me a photography course session in Auckland Zoo. However it was not possible to arrange it during the weeks that we were in New Zealand earlier in the year. Sally arranged for it to be transferred to one of the London Zoos. Although the gift should have come straight to me it went to New Zealand and was posted back to me.

The gift came with a beautiful card in solid box with a letter but no voucher. Having exchanged emails with zoo I eventually received an invite to come provided I said that I was Sally Clerk.

My day was hastily chosen, plans made and on Wednesday 25th June at 7.30 am I was off to Whipsnade Zoo. Well, sort of since most of the journey was in rush hour with its 'stop-go-stop' traffic. I arrived 5 minutes before the gates opened which was over half an hour before the course was due to begin. It was easy to get to the 'Estates Office' and park.

I think that 8 people attended the course with a range of equipment of lower to higher specs than my own. A few were well travelled in Africa but on the whole they were a friendly bunch.

The leader of the course was a professional freelance animal and travel photography called Dave Stevenson. The morning was spent going through some of his pictures as he talked about camera technique and composition. The main elements of this concerned things like movement, using high ISO and eye contact.

Before eating Dave led us into the zoo park and we stopped at various enclosures. I was keen to learn about the use of 'the back button'. This is a technique whereby the camera is focused using a back button rather than the shutter release. This enables quicker focusing since the camera then has only to do the exposure work.

 Suddenly it was 2.30 pm and hunger called. I had a good dinner of Cumberland sausages and mash. Then off we went again.

Spot the flamingo chick

 And with the same suddenness that lunch came so did time to go home. It was 5.30 when I left and not the 4.30 as advertised. Dave gave me his card so that I could email some of his shots and then, after a drink I left the zoo.

It was a lovely sunny evening. Although I had a rain mac I was wearing only shorts and a tee-shirt. Thirty minutes from the zoo at a roundabout on the A5 the car stopped and steam spouted out of the bonnet. I had got big trouble. The RAC number could not be reached from a mobile. When I rang home the message from them was to give me a 'Mobile friendly number'. This failed. Eventually the RAC operator rang me and after much time spent in trying to describe my position as being at a large island on the A5 at the edge of Milton Keynes with a large Macdonalds at the service station on the island I was ready to await rescue. A car mechanic pulled up first and after filling the coolant tank with water and attempting to turn on the engine he diagnosed a blown head gasket.

It was not too long before the friendly RAC man arrived and told me that he could only tow me up to 10 miles. Having spoken to Tim I knew that I had somewhere to stay for the night.

Once the car was towed and parked on the forecourt of a garage the kind man took me to Tim's. It would have been a long walk if he hadn't.

It was beginning to get dark when I arrived at Tim's house. Izzy was in and I had a good chat with her while I waited for the return of the adults. First came Tim and soon after Isla. Although they were both tired after a busy day they made me welcome. Since Isla had not eaten much during the day I went with them to buy chips. Then it was time for bed.

After a reasonable nights sleep I got up in the morning to say good bye to Izzy and Isla. Then Tim and I had breakfast before I waited to go to the doctor's surgery to collect a prescription for my morning medicine. Tim had gone out to see Izzy off on a school trip and then queued at the surgery until 8.00 am to make sure that I got an appointment during the morning. During the wait for the appointment the garage man phoned with the very bad news of the demise of the car. This was after Tim had made an online booking for a coach from MK Coachways to Nottingham Broadmarsh. A plan was hatched to take all my possessions out of the car, take the payment offered and catch the bus.

While Tim was out I made my way to the surgery. The doctor was very nice and gave me a prescription which I took to pharmacist who did not have what I wanted and so I went back to the surgery to be re-prescribed and after a wait went back to the pharmacy. By 12 noon I was able to take my morning medicine.

Tim arrived back from the physio, we had lunch and put the plan into action. I said goodbye to the car. Tim took me to Coachways where we had coffee. He left, the coach was on time and 90 minutes later I was in Nottingham. After a local bus and a walk I returned home almost exactly 24 hours after I left the zoo.

I am very grateful to Tim and Isla for the kindness and hospitality which they showed.

Thursday became much of a lost day apart from the brief time of 'Father-Son bonding'. This was short but good.

On Friday we woke up to three problems. The first was deciding on who should replace our worn out patio door. Our first visitor claimed that according to law they fitted the best. That they were the only company to put argon in between special heat retaining glass and did not use rubber sealing. It was very hard to get a simple quote. He would not accept the fact that we would not make a decision there and then. I asked him to leave. The second guy gave a simple quote which had all the things that the first guy said only they did and at a quarter of the price. He left.

The second problem is a blocked drain. We are working on this.

The third was the car. It could not have been a wetter day to walk out and look round cars. We spent a lot of time at the first garage until it looked like the Fiesta that they would bring over was the one for us. However, we thought that we would look at a Corsa that we had found on the web. This meant a trip to Ilkeston. We walked through the rain to a third garage and was a little tempted. Then we caught the bus. There was a long down hill walk in the pouring rain. Irene rang Joni to meet us at the garage. It stopped raining and we went home.

Having slept on the choice we went to see the Fiesta and decided to buy it.

On Monday came a third problem. Our neighbour asked us if we would go in with her on replacing the rear wall, which was falling down, with a fence. We await them giving us a quote.

Today is the first day of July. A new start.