"Well, well. I see you went to the zoo this weekend,” chuckled Nanny #1 as she walked through the door Monday morning this week.
“Oh, you noticed? What gave it away? The Penguin Beach shopping tote? Or the two animal umbrellas? The ladybug raincoats? What?” I laughed.
“Um, nice shirt,” she snorted, pointing to my new “I Heart ZSL” Tshirt. Clearly left over from the day before and having served as both street wear and nightshirt.
I don’t know why, but Fancy here can’t seem to wrap her head around one little fact about living in London: the weather fucking sucks. The skies were blue, dammit. Not a cloud in sight Sunday morning. H was off somewhere in the Middle East, trading camels for oil barrels or some such nonsense, and I decided that I, Frau Fancy, would take the Minis on a trip to the London Zoo. It would not only give Nanny #2 a chance to straighten up, but would be a fun mother-daughters day.
I brushed Nanny #2’s hands away as she tried to hand me the rain cover for the buggy. “No need!” I cried. “The sun is shining! The birds are chirping! It’s a beautiful day!” And out we went. On foot. No rain cover. No umbrellas.
Stupid, stupid me. It started when we reached Regent Park.
So if you happened to be at the London Zoo last weekend, perhaps you spotted me? You surely wouldn’t have recognized me, what with my ultra Fancy appearance. But yes. That was me actually stripping off her soaking blouse in front of the zoo gift shop while ripping off price tags with my teeth and then pulling on a brand new and very hot pink T-shirt. Which went very nicely with my £6.95 plastic poncho, which was basically a very large sheet of cling film with a neck hole. Awesome.
If you didn’t catch me there, maybe you spotted the lady with two very wet toddlers, who were also stripped naked while huddling together under an awning, being wrapped in two layers of size 1-2 ZSL shirts and topped off with very cute little raincoats that fell to their feet, sleeves rolled up about 10 times.
No? How about the woman with very wet hair and running mascara, sitting on a bench trying to use baby wipes to scrub the yellow dye off her feet from her very expensive and now quite wet Italian sandals, while her children tried to stab each other with their new “uhbrells”?”
Let me summarize. Fancy here is capable of leaning. Like did you know that porcupines kill more lions and hyenas than any other animal in Africa? Yes, I know, it’s fascinating. I learned that at the zoo. I also learned that my Friends of ZSL membership card gets me 20% off my purchases this summer, which comes in handy when you spend £100 pounds on dry clothes for yourself and your children. I learned that Nanny #1 keeps an emergency stash of bubbles in the pram, handy for entertaining two young Minis, who were promised lions and instead got the insect exhibit. I learned that petting zoos are not as much fun when there are puddles full of wet goat shit to slog through. I learned that the new zoo exit is all the way around the corner from the taxi stand. And I learned that the waitress at Yo Sushi knows better than to ask if I mean a 125mL or 250mL glass of wine when she sees 3 drowned rats in zoo clothing walk through the door.
See Fancy is a good learner. These are all very good lessons. It’s a shame I just can’t seem to learn the one about the British weather.
