Lellow wellies

"We've brought you some new wellies," said R. "Let me see," said the Boy Wonder. "Oh! Lellow! Lellow wellies!"

The lellow wellies came in pretty useful at Forest Farm this morning, because just after we arrived the sky blackened, and it heaved down for several minutes. We took shelter under a tree at the side of the towpath, and laughed at the big drops of water dripping through the leaves onto us - though obviously it would have been less amusing if it had carried on raining for any length of time. As it was though, the sky cleared again quite quickly, and we were able to carry on with our walk.

I mentioned recently that B has developed a pretty good throw, but today for some reason he kept mistiming it, and soon became frustrated that the bread wasn't going exactly where he wanted it to. "Can you do it, Granddad?" he said. "I want you to frow it." R took the chunks of bread B gave him and threw them out across the canal, dropping them right in front of individual ducks and moorhens. B was enchanted: watching Granddad doing amazing throwing was clearly much more fun than feeding the ducks himself.

The sun then came out and the boys went off to explore together, while I walked quickly on to the "dragon zone" in search of Golden-ringed Dragonflies. I saw at least two, possibly more, plus a kingfisher, but all of them came from behind me and were only spotted as fast-disappearing blurry backsides - so no photos were taken. I'm beginning to fear that 2023 might not be my year, GRD-wise.

After lunch we went to the park, where B was very adventurous on the playground equipment, and then surprised us by asking to go into the water play area. As we hadn't expected this we didn't have swimmers or towels with us, but I decided to take him in anyway ("How bad could it get?" I said, eyeing several older children who were soaked literally to the skin and thinking well, pretty bad actually, but choosing to ignore this possibility and relax into the situation). The Boy and I took off our shoes and and socks, and I rolled up my trousers, and off we went, while R sat by the fence and looked after all our gear. Luckily B only wanted to explore the smaller jets, which limited the risk of us getting drenched; he had fun playing with the water, and I had fun watching him learning things about fluid dynamics, and we only got very slightly damp. Getting him out of there when it came time for us to leave was slightly less fun, but after some sticky negotiation he remembered a conversation he had with R back at the weekend, and suddenly gave in. "I decided to say yes, Grandma," he said, and I gave him a hug and told him he was a wonderful Boy.

Which of course, is exactly what he is. A Boy Wonder, in fact.