A walk in the park
The last post is unfair because it makes it sound like I haven’t had a wonderful day, and I have 
I hadn’t been entirely sure what I wanted to do with my day off, but the question had been settled by the fact that my boyfriend had to work in the evening so it made most sense to go to Leicester. I arrived just before ten and spent a few minutes wandering around in the sunshine before my boyfriend arrived. It was such a bright, sunny day that even the urban horror of Leicester managed to look quite attractive, and I was starting to feel quite excited about a text my boyfriend had sent me which mentioned going to a park and seeing deer We met up and went for a coffee, or more precisely one of those iced coffee milkshakey things which I am rather addicted to, and splashed out to the extent of sharing a rather delicious chocolate cookie.
We also headed to the nearby branch of WH Smith in an attempt to use up some of my vouchers, seeing as I am getting a little low on reading matter at the moment. I spent years of my childhood hoarding up WH Smith vouchers which I never seemed to get chance to utilise, and several months ago I decided to donate them to Babel on the grounds that he buys books all the time, whereas I never do. Rather generously, however, he decided to use them to buy books for me, the only slight problem being that our tastes in books aren’t always the same and so he’s never quite sure what to buy. Some of the things he has bought me have been incredibly good, others (most notably a history of the Spanish Inquisition) I haven’t quite managed to get to the end of 
But yeah, today I was able to choose for myself which was rather fun, and Smith’s actually have a buy one get one free offer on any books in the top 50 chart, which was definitely an added bonus. I therefore managed to get two books for only 8 pounds worth of vouchers. One is the Sebastian Faulks book ‘Engleby’. I’m not sure what it’s about and haven’t even read a review of it, but I fail to believe that anything written by the author of ‘Birdsong’ can be bad. The second is called ‘The Forgotten Garden’ and is the second book by Kate Morton who wrote the excellent novel ‘The House at Riverton’ which I read earlier in the year. I feel quite excited about both of them and would like to start one of them tonight, however probably won’t because once I get home I have managers to email and hotels to book/unbook 
Anyhow, books bought and coffee drunk, our final errand was to pick up some photos my boyfriend had ordered from Jessops. He also needed a new passport photo taken, which provided the most amusing moment of the day I won’t embarrass him by publishing the photo here, but honestly you have never seen anything like it in your life 
The current photo on his passport is pretty bad and makes him look like a rather greasy dago, if you excuse me using such a word. But this one is even worse! It’s the sort of picture the police publish on Crimewatch when they are tracking down a dangerous serial killer 
In fact, if I worked in the passport control office of any self respecting country, I wouldn’t permit him to cross my border on the grounds that he looks very much like a terrorist. Not in real life, in real life he is actually quite attractive, but in the photo… Anyway, I have never had a passport photo of him to keep in my purse, and I felt that after nearly a year and a half together this was something which needed to me remedied, so I requested one of the spares. It now joins the rather motley collection in my purse, comprising a photo of my boyfriend’s nephew, a photo of my previous boyfriend, and a photo of a German I have never met.
Errands completed, we were free to enjoy the rest of our day, the aim of which was to go for a walk in a place called Bradgate Park. This park was supposed to be within walking distance of a small town whose name I was sure was imprinted on my brain but which is now eluding me. It was something like Antsey or Anstey… In any case, I was a little sceptical about the idea of going to a park. From a young age I was brought up with the impression that a park was a dangerous place that could only be visited in the company of a man. Not that my father is a particularly imposing sort of man, and my mother is not at all a timid type, but nevertheless we virtually never went to a park without him when I was a kid. When we did go to a park, it was most often to a private park where we paid a subscription for a key. This was the only park where I was really allowed on the play equipment because it was the fashion in Birmingham at the time to superglue razor blades to the kiddy slides.
You might think my mother was slightly neurotic. I did, until in my first year at uni I went to one of the most popular parks in Birmingham on a sunny May afternoon, and in the middle of feeding the ducks happened to witness a man getting stabbed to death. For a while after that I was on the verge of experiencing a panic attack every time I had to go near that park, and was highly uncomfortable with the idea of parks in general. There is a beautiful park in my suburb for example, which used to be part of the estate of the famous Chamberlain family, but it is unfortunately advertised on the internet as a good place to go if you wish to meet a willing stranger with whom to indulge in homosexual relations behind a tree. Over the past year or so the police, to be fair to them, have made an effort to clean things up by installing cctv, but even so it is not a place which I would suggest for a day trip.
So, parks and me don’t generally mix but my boyfriend assured me that this was Leicester, and Leicester is a place where the bus drivers give change We got to Antsey and it wasn’t entirely obvious where the park was, so my cowerind stopped a promising looking woman to ask for directions. She seemed a little surprised that we were planning to walk so far and suggested that we take a shortcut by walking through a jitty. Having pronounced such a bizarre word, she clarified whether or not we’d understood her, and whilst I wondered in perplexity where on earth she expected us to find a jetty in Leicester, my boyfriend assured her that he was a Leicester lad and started striding off up the road. Once I caught him up, he clarified that a jitty is a Leicester word for an alleyway path sort of thing. I’m not sure, but I think it might be a bit like what normal people call a gully.
Anyhow, we continued walking up the road in search of this peculiar feature, and after not very long at all we came across a footpath leading out into fields. We followed this for fifteen minutes or so and it was really quite beautiful, although there was a slightly hairy moment when we had to squeeze through the bars of a gate. Unfortunately, our progress was thwarted at every turn by the fact that the ground under the stiles etc was at best boggy and at worst totally waterlogged During one particular attempt to move between fields, I stood on a piece of mud which looked perfectly dry and stable, only to find my leg disappearing down to my calf in horrible slime. I emitted a surprised sort of squeal, to which my boyfriend was singularly unsympathetic, and managed to jump to dry land but it was rather unpleasant and I had to walk around caked in dry mud for the rest of the day
Eventually we turned back and walked a little further up the road, whereupon we stumbled across the correct jitty which was helpfully signposted Bradgate Park This time we fared much better and after a walk across fields plus a bit of a stroll down a pleasant road, we had reached the park itself.
Wow It wasn’t quite what I expected from a park! For a start it was huge, being the former grounds of some sort of stately home, and secondly it was absolutely beautiful. Parts of it were kind of hilly, and there was a lovely little rivery thing running through it where in the afternoon we were able to feed some really cute ducks. The ruin of the stately home is visible, though we didn’t have time to investigate it, and there’s also some sort of castle, although we didn’t have time to climb the hill to that either. The most spectacular thing about the entire park, however, was the deer.
I’ve really never seen anything like the deer There were literally hundreds of them, seemingly almost tame, roaming freely all over the parkland. Most of them were quite small and only had little horny stumps, although there were a few with proper antlers, and lots of them were all speckledy and looked just like Bambi, only perhaps cuter. I’ve never seen so many deer, or been so close to them. I’ve tried to take a photo which I may insert next time I get to use a computer, but it probably won’t capture how magical it was
We sat on the grass for a bit and had a lovely packed lunch which my boyfriend had brought for me, and I thought soppy thoughts which were periodically interrupted by my boyfriend burping, and all too soon it was over and we had to head back so that my boyfriend wasn’t late for work. The walk back seemed a little longer than the walk there but it was still fun and I think it did me so much good to have some exercise and get out in the countryside with some fresh air. A day like that soothes the soul
So, thank you very much to Babel for thinking of something which was such fun 
I’d definitely like to go back and explore more sometime soon. I headed back to Birmingham on the train after that and spent a very long time in public toilets attempting to rid myself of mud. After that I went to Starbucks in the hope of getting a sandwich, but that was an experience so frustrating it deserves a post of it’s own. I am currently sitting on a rather cold stone outside the Bull Ring, and bizarre as it sounds, it is actually rather beautiful here. I’ve taken some photos which I may insert here also. I feel almost peaceful again, and able to head home to deal with the confounded mess which is next week.
Tags: bradgate park, Leicester