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I worked out how to come down the slide very slowly, much to my own delight and Phoebe's consternation. Then I came down fast the next time. You have to give the public what they want. For the rest of the swim I tried to sleep inside Ernie's rubber ring, whilst floating on the pool, but I wasn't allowed. The kids insisted that I play with them and Catie insisted I stay awake to prevent them both from drowning. But they're more or less self-reliant. The worst that would happen is we lost the little one.
He's actually a pretty strong swimmer and managed to get right up to the deep end swimming against the wave machine. It reminded me of the our first trip to Center Parcs when Ernie had vanished in the pool and turned up happily floating in the deep water where the wave machine was its most vicious. It's remarkable that either kid has made it this far to be honest.
We took it pretty easy on this last full day and I read a good chunk of David Mitchell's new book Unruly, which is unsurprisingly funny, but slightly surprisingly a very good summation of each of our monarchs, all the way back to the weird Anglo-Saxon ones whose names I can never remember and whose stories slip right out of my brain as soon as I've read about them. I am talking to him about it next week - podcast out in October.
We got in another game of ten pin bowling and played at the arcade. I tried to win Phoebe a squirrel on one of those grab and drop games, but failed. I've spent enough to buy an army of squirrels this week. I came very close today, but luckily failed as I'd accidentally targeted a fox, that looked like a squirrel from behind. Don't they all?
We went for a burger (I had a healthy wrap) and the man behind the counter offered me a staff discount. "You work here, right?" he said. "No."
"You used to work here though? I recognise you." I could probably have saved 20% on my meal had I lied, but I am just that level of famous where people assume that they've seen me around the work place of they went to school with me and never that they saw me on an episode of Loose Talk in 1995.
In any case we were there at kicking out time and he came round with some unsold pastries and gave them to us for nothing. I think this was rather than throwing them in the bin, rather than because he'd watched "Never Mind The Fullstops". He also offered them to the family on the next table and none of them had played the voice of a spider on early 1990s schools TV. And nor had I because the tape "went wrong" and they got someone else to do it.
Nice to get something for free at Center Parcs, even though I am on a diet and so wouldn't be eating any of it.
