Plastic Tragedy

2nd August

Two of the plastic people have gone overboard. I was on the back deck shaking crumbs off the play mat – I didn’t realise that Iggle Piggle and Upsy Daisy were in there! So not just any plastic people but the leaders of the plastic people. My daughter’s favourite toy is her bag full of miniature plastic characters and her most prized and favourite two are those two Night Garden(TM) friends. We have not yet broken the news to the Tombliboos and MaccaPacca, but my daughter took it really well. It has however, provided us with an opportunity to explain that when a person – plastic or otherwise, falls into the river, they are irretrievable. We try to explain that children must keep back from the edge because if she falls in, she won’t be able to breathe and this will hurt very much.
“Worse than the time you burnt your fingers on the diesel stove. And me and Daddy may not be able to get you out again.”
“But then I could see Upsy Daisy and Iggle Piggle again?” she pipes up, optimistically.
There’s always a silver lining.
We turned the boat at the next lock, and went back to Roydon lock to fill the water tank at the lock cottage. Then we turned again, (there’s just about enough room to wind the boat above the lock) and returned to moor in a different part of Hunsdon Mead. Geese fly in formation overhead. Buttercups and dandelions pepper the field.