Pleeeeaaassseee Muuuuuummmm!

There's a school in heaven or the uterus or stork land, or wherever babies come from.  Every child must attend.  Every child graduates.  My children graduated at the top of their class, Magna Cum Laude.  Now they're  bloody Associate Professors, experts, schooled in every way known to man in the art of nagging.  

Goughy will tell you I'm an expert too, but I am a nagging pleb compared to my boys.  It starts small.  Just a simple question.  The answer I give is irrelevant.  It's like water off a ducks back, like a basketball shot that misses the hoop entirely.  It grows - the same question but asked after a quick "I love you', or at the completion of all their jobs.  My God they're good.  What I need to do is Slam Dunk that ball right now.  Answer the question and enforce it with a threat of death if it's asked again, but I'm weak.  I might be making dinner or preparing tomorrows lessons or pinning on Pinterest.  I'm distracted and I'm dumb.  I forget about yesterdays experience with nagging and the day before and the day before that.  I try another non committal answer in an attempt to appease the gods.  It's a rookie mistake, one I repeatedly make.  They've seen a chink in my armour, a weak link in my defence.   They see a glimmer of hope because I haven't threatened death.  The two of them, with tiny glances at each other and using the ancient, secret language of nagging, launch an all out assault on me and bring out the big guns - the whine.  Whine is very different to wine.  Either one works on me, but thankfully children are not allowed to purchase alcohol to support their nagging attacks.  "Plleeeeaaaassseee Muum, pleeeeeeeeaaaaassssseeee."

I cave.  Please Lord make the noise go away.  "Yes boys, yes you can have that, you can pretty much have whatever you want, just leave this vicinity immediately."  I'm bruised and battered and ashamed.  And reality has just set in.  What have I done?  What have I just promised them, just so I could pin one more pin in peace?  

Today's excursion is the result of an especially brutal nagging attack.  Paul brought me some touristy brochures and left them on the coffee table for me to look through.  The boys found the Longleat one and the rest is history.  I'm secretly glad because this happened......

and this...

and this,

Too much?  OK, how about this?

or this?

I think part of the attraction of this place for the boys was the chance to have a go at the Deadly 60 Challenge.  Deadly 60 is a TV program the boys watch and love.  It's hosted by an English Steve Irwin type.  The Challenge involved physical obstacles and animal knowledge quizzes. 

See that result in the middle? 

This is Longleat House.  It's spectacular.  The 82 year old single owner still lives here on the top floor.  He's eccentric and a bit of a recluse.  His Dad, who had a mate in a circus, was the one who started with the animals and allowing the public access to them.  He rented the Lions from the circus, bought a few other unusual animals, mowed some of the 9000 hectares of lawn for people to picnic on, and Bob's your Uncle. 

We arrived at 9.45 am and left at 4.45 pm with little left in our energy tank.  We'd experienced everything and had an absolute pearla of a day.  

Below is a video of our encounter with one of the types of animals.  It's pretty indicative of how we all reacted to many of the animals that were so close to our car.  A cacophony of laughter and fear and excitement and awe and anxiety - it truly was brilliant.