Not all Elephants Live in The Zoo!
“What did you used to do in the
holidays, Dad? There‘s nothing to do round home. I bet it
wasn‘t like now, when you were a boy!!”
“You’re talking
rubbish, Jason; I found lots to do. Of course, I didn‘t have a
computer or a TV in my bedroom, like you have. I got out into
the fresh air and went exploring roundabout the area “.
“I
can’t do that by myself, you said so!”
“Alone, yes. But if
you go with a group, it’s much more interesting and safe. I
mean, take yesterday for instance, I went and saw a real life
elephant sheltering from the midday sun under a tree, just a
few miles from where you’re sitting. And I didn‘t hop on a
plane anywhere!”
“Well, you did leave the house after
breakfast”
“If you were enough awake to see me then, surely
you also saw that I wasn’t carrying a case or holdall when I
left.”
“You said to Mum you were going with the social club
on an outing”.
“Yes, and I said last week that you could
come with me. But no, you said you had other things to do,
rather than go on boring outings with grownups”
“Well, I
had to stay home because Mum was threatening to clean and tidy
my room while we were away for the day. Everybody knows you
can’t find anything after she’s been giving the bedrooms a
‘sorting‘, as she calls it”.
“Well, you missed seeing the
elephant and quite few other things as well. I was on a steam
train, for example. You’ve not been on a big powerful steam
train, all you’ve done is read about ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’
and his friends.”
“One of his friends is much bigger than
him.”
“Yes, but you still don’t know how big these engines
actually are, or how they sound in real life and what it
smells like when you travel in one of their
carriages.”
“Who wants to travel in a smelly old
carriage?”
“Oh they’re not smelly like that; much more like
when you travel in someone else’s car, the smell is just
different from our car. And steam trains smell different from
modern day diesels or tube trains on the underground. Quite
different”
“I’ve been on those. They are all right. I
thought people always went on those nowadays”.
“Nowadays
yes, but when I was your age I went on many long journeys with
my parents on steam trains. One journey to Scotland took us a
long time. We had sandwiches for our breakfast, lunch, tea and
supper on the train for one journey and on another we even had
beds to sleep in!
“You slept on the train?”
“Well no,
not all the time. It was too shuggly. And then there were the
bright lights and noises going past. It kept me awake most of
the time”.
“Shuggly? I’ve never heard you use that word
before!”
“There’s no need to use the word nowadays. I
meant the train rocked about a lot and you could never guess
which way it was going to shake, left or right, up or down. It
was tiring.”
“That was during the War, when you were very
young? “
“Well, I’m not so old now. It’s just that things
change fast, and if you don’t experience them when you can,
they’ve gone into the history books.”
“We were hearing
about musty old steam trains in history in school last
week.”
“The real thing is much better than musty old
history. Even space rockets are history now and you boys get
too bored easily, especially if there isn‘t any
football.”
“Dad, You’re an old Fogey.”
The
End
© By
John Cheyne Click here to visit John's
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