Nice weather for ducks

Yesterday, given the unseasonally sunny weather, me and Pete went to Barnwell Country Park to feed the ducks. I hadn't been there since my parents used to drag me out for some exercise and family bonding so that was some years ago. This meant I just got Pete to drive in the general direction of where I thought it might be, with the instruction that if we hit Norfolk, we'd gone too far. It was further than I thought (well, I knew it was near Oundle, I just didn't have much of an idea where Oundle was) but we got there about 4.15 and it was still warm enough. We had a wander round for half an hour, feeding ducks. I did find the seagulls lurking about slightly unnerving in a Hitchcock kind of way, but I ignored this and enjoyed the late afternoon sun. I think geese have got smaller than they were when I was a kid. I used to find them terrifying. I remember my grandmother chasing them away a lot.

I don't know why I like feeding ducks so much. I used to have a tradition of returning to Geneva for my birthdays up until I turned 18, and I always use to go round the lake to Versoix to feed the ducks. Mallards, mandarins, the ubiquitous Canada geese, coots... I could happily spend hours throwing bread at them (to them, surely?) and staring out over the water. Maybe it's a Pisces thing. The marshy waters of Barnwell Country Park aren't quite the same as looking out over Lac Leman with the mountains lurking in the background, Mont Blanc appearing on a clear day, but it felt a little similar. The fact that some people passed us speaking French did help with the ambiance.

I wrote a lot of poems when I was younger. There was one I wrote at school in Balsall Common, aged about 7 or 8, called Ducks. I have no idea what this was related to, other than I remember the brother of a girl in my class used to breed and show ducks and occasionally brought them in to assemblies and such, so maybe that's the link. People seemed to like the poem and a lot of fuss was made (by 7 or 8 I was already a bit blase when people got worked up over my writing... how times change!). My mother still refers to it. I think she can see the influence of the Ogden Nash book she had bought me. I know it off by heart and am almost tempted to type it up here for posterity. But I won't. I think 26 year old me is a bit resentful of having reached her creative peak at 7 or 8.

Still, I find ducks very soothing. And feeding them bread can be considered responsible waste manangement. Ducks are eco friendly.