We have spent the evening at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
It was wild, and there were buffalo, stampeding about excitedly whilst we had our dinner. One of them rolled about in the sand and had to be encouraged to get up and get on with stampeding like a properly terrifying creature.
There were lots of horses and cows, and Mark helpfully pointed out what breeds of cows they were. This sort of thing always fascinates the children and makes them pleased to have such interesting and informative parents, just like when he explains about different sorts of rocks on the beach. How riveted they were.
We all recognised the Jersey cross and spent ages wondering why anybody would cross breed a Jersey for being in a show. Jersey cows are notoriously tiresome, if you put them in a barn with lots of others they will just wander about poking other cows with their horns, like the child in the classroom who eventually goes home with a black eye.
Anyway, it was ace. There were cowboys and Indians and some absolutely gorgeous horses, rolling their eyes and bouncing about and clearly full of themselves. I watched one of them do its gallop around the ring and then stop dead and look round for the cowboy who it clearly liked best, to see if it had done well. The cowboy sloped across to it behind Sitting Bull’s rock when he thought nobody was looking, and scratched its ears, and it bumped its head on his arm, looking very pleased with itself.
While we watched we had dinner, like a cross between a circus and a restaurant, rows of audience with tables in front of them all bashing their cutlery about whenever something exciting happened. It was ace. We ate chilli, and then ribs and fried chicken and something else fried and unidentifiable, followed by apple pie. Since we were in France we washed it down with a bottle of red wine, and all of the time we cheered and yelled at the galloping Indians and buffalo and stagecoaches charging about just in front of our noses.
It was an outstandingly unusual experience, I am not at all accustomed to consuming my evening meal in the company of cows, not since we stopped living in France at any rate.
We were all absolutely exhausted afterwards, which we had got no business to be, because none of us woke up until ten this morning.
I was the first one to notice that it was daytime, because I heard the whistle of the Disneyland Steam Train outside the window, and realised that it must be morning, because obviously the train doesn’t run at nights.
We ambled downstairs and managed to achieve breakfast before they stopped serving. Oliver is in breakfast heaven here. This morning he had two slices of ham, three pancakes and eight doughnuts.
After breakfast it was so nearly lunchtime that we didn’t bother doing very much. Mark and Oliver went off to the shooting range, which they got bored with after they had shot out all of the targets twice, and Lucy and I went to look around the shops.
The shops are beautiful, I mean really gorgeous, although you can’t buy anything that doesn’t have Mickey Mouse on it. This doesn’t matter, because the shops themselves are so clean and lovely and nice to be inside that you can quite happily just walk around for ages, looking at the beautiful decorations.
We did this for a while, and then met up, and Lucy and Oliver went off together leaving me and Mark in each other’s company.
This was ace. We sat in a bench and listened to the music, and looked at the sunshine and the thrilling park, and felt very happy. We called the children to make sure they were all right, and they said that they were, but needed more money. When we asked where they were so that we could deliver some, Lucy explained that they were in Disneyland.
Afterwards we went to Cafe Fantasia, for pre-dinner cocktails.
The picture is what happens when you allow middle aged ladies to drink in the middle of the afternoon.
