Guess who came out for a walk with me?! James. Yes, he did. I was going out the door, said goodbye to the boys, and one of them followed me. 'Where are you going?' says I. 'Never mind about that,' says James, 'let's just go, shall we?' Okay then!
James brought his new balisong, which I couldn't remember how to pronounce for a couple of days. It took some convincing on his part to get me to buy this for him last week, because it looks like a lethal weapon. But it has no blade and he's going to learn fancy tricks in a martial arts sort of way, so I decided this was fine. Here it is:
So throwing the balisong around all the way down the road, James wasn't particularly interested in where we were going. He really just wanted to show off the tricks he'd learned in a nice open space. He allowed me to tell him where we were going, but he pretty much ignored me after that. We went to the Hundred Acre Wood, where I was hoping we might see another fox. We didn't see any. And James would've missed it anyway.
Here he is, being tall, flinging the balisong around, clonking himself on the knuckles, which I thought was quite funny. 'Can I have a go?' says I. 'Hell, naaaah!' says my delightful son. Then he seemed to realise this was a bit rude and said that I could have a go after he'd mastered his first trick and could teach it to me – he reckoned he needed about fifty more tries.
'You should bring your camera out with you for walks, James,' says I. 'Yeah, whatever,' he says. Then he checked his manners again and realised that shutting a conversation down probably isn't all that nice. 'Well, I could do, yeah.' He won't.
He decided to have a break from the trick he was trying to master and instead tried a fancy throwing trick. It looked like he was just chucking it around to me, but he assured me that what he was doing was impressive, and who am I to argue. Here, I have highlighted the balisong in the air for you:
I left him to his tricks for a while and just tramped through the wood, looking for foxes. Didn't see any, like I said. They were perhaps scared off by the clinky clanky noise of the balisong, and James shouting 'owwwww' every few seconds when he hit his knuckles.
We went over to see how the corn was getting on. James did put the balisong in his pocket for a bit then, and we admired the pretty crops. He remembered when we went to a maize maze once, and we decided we should do that again post-Covid. Incidentally, we don't really have a big list of things we want to do when this is finally over properly. Do you? I thought we would, but actually, we just like our lives as they are now, all peaceful and calm. Looking at corn and such.
James wasn't against the idea of popping up to my favourite bench and taking in the view of the bay and the Lakes, but we decided not to follow the path because apparently the path is for losers. So we hiked up the grassy bit of the hill. Now, I expected to find this easy because, look, it's not far.
But hiking up a small hill through the long and weedy grass takes a bit more effort than walking up the same hill on the path. I was wheezing by the time I got to the top. James was not, and he beat me. He did admit that his calves were stinging a bit though. And then he also admitted that the view was very cool, which was a lovely thing. 'Alright,' he says, 'don't get all mushy about it!' He's not big on feelings and emotions and such, young James.
Still throwing the balisong around, he trotted off to the bench while I got my breath back. I stayed in the long grass for a bit, just because I like standing in long grass. Even though there are ticks – I always check for ticks when I get home.
Ahhhh, lovely. I know it's not that interesting to read about because I come here fairly frequently now, but it is just the loveliest place to sit. The fields look amazing, the Lakes in the distance are very special, and it's all just gorgeous. I know there's a big-ass road in the way, but we can't do anything about that now.
We sat here for quite some time while James perfected his first trick. He asked me to capture the trick in still photo form, which I have done here below. I don't think you can quite see what's going on though because I took around fifty photos and a lot of them were blurred. But we had a nice half an hour bruising our knuckles (he finally let me have a go) and chatting about this and that.
In the end, though, it was time to go home because James had some very important YouTube videos to catch up on and I had some very important reading about Saxons and Danes to do. We popped a bit of music on when we got to Jack Sparrow Lane because it was a jolly day and there's nothing wrong with pretending to be pirates for five minutes. James said he could see why I liked it here, even though this path is a bit scruffy and there's nothing to do. Nice.
And then we saw this – a stone balancing on another stone! Now that's not something you see every day.
I decided to see how high I could pile the stones and I managed four. I did quite fancy sitting here for a while, making stone sculptures, but this was the longest James had been outside since last time he came out with me and he was getting withdrawal symptoms for technology.
So a hop, skip and a jump down the rugby club lane, and we were home again in ten minutes. 'You coming out again tomorrow, James?' says I. 'Nah,' says he, 'probably not.' 'Did you enjoy your walk?' I really wanted to know. 'Yeah, it was alright.' Well, that's good enough.
Until tomorrow, guys and gals.
WQ
Comments
Post a Comment