T Rex: Eats children (wearing trainers) (Day One Part Two)

We emerged into bright sunlight and apparently into the Jurassic period complete with King Kong and, controversially, fairies. Not wanting to question what this had to do with caves and cheese, we just accepted it and enjoyed the “life-size” dinosaurs and friends. Especially Blue who seemed to enjoy King Kong way too much as evidenced by one of skit’s photos (and more of that later as I reveal the startling truth about indylead).

As we ambled and gambled around the valley of the dinosaurs, the Hobbling cameras all came out. Hobbling holidays are plagued with them nowadays as it becomes not just “a photo a day”, but the philosophical question of “if I don’t take a photo of it and upload it to flickr, did it really happen?”

We followed the leat (my new word for the day) and discussed what, if anything, would make us jump in it. I don’t know whether skit noticed, but I purposefully walked alongside Sky and not skit during this dangerous time. Not because I don’t trust skit but because I know from experience that any potentially embarrassing or life-ending situation leads to us fighting to get the other into trouble. So instead I walked with Sky who is surprisingly safe for a Hobbling.

We entered the museum passing a row of cheery, fibre-glass policeman (if I remember right), a necessary part of any fairy/dinosaur/giant ape adventure. The museum itself was as dusty as all museums are with a few rocks and bones to play with. Skit and I emerged first and entered the paper mill.

This Victorian industry seemed to agree with skit who looked at the photographs of rows upon rows of exhausted, body and soul-worn women tearing rags and declared her love. Maybe her attention was more fixed on the large rag boilers now I come to think of it. Or mulling over the mechanism for creating watermarks. No matter.

We waited for the others on a conveniently and quite randomly placed sofa and as we went to leave the paper mill, a man, identifying us as no better than children, asked for two volunteers to try their hand at paper-making. Actually, I don’t think he even said the paper-making part so I was a bit surprised when skit and Blue jumped to attention when for all we knew he could have wanted a hand with pilfering the cheese of mass destruction.

But it was paper-making which involved Stuff™. Stuff being German apparently for rags and bones. Skit and Blue plunged their hands into the Stuff and performed an esoteric set of movements that led to them both having a thick slab of soppy mess in front of them. The man (who I assume actually worked at the paper mill and gets paid for this) proceeded to heap praise on skit’s mess and insisted that she put her palm print in it as if she was a movie star in front of Grauman’s Chinese theatre. He then moved on to insult Blue’s mess and tell her to put a foot print in it (though someone who I will guess was indy was begging for her to put her face in it instead). In the end though both skit and Blue made baby footprints with clenched fists (if you don’t know what I mean, you probably didn’t go to an all girls’ school where we sat around every lunch time board out of our skulls).

Then the messes got thrown away. Which was nice. Not really paper-making then, was it?

Next up, we were cruelly not allowed entrance to the two-storey play area because, apparently, we were kid enough to get to play with Stuff but not kid enough to enjoy ropes and swings. Grrr. However, there was more than enough fun to be had in the mirror maze. I wonder what it says about us that we spent so much time in the company of infinite Hobblings (and dvds and hats). The mirror maze was brilliant, the mirrors were good enough that it was extremely hard to navigate. At one point we turned to see Blue right behind us. She was waving for help and crying out “where do I go?” Such a simple question and yet by walking forward she would have crashed right into a mirror.

I do wish that I had seen the little kid that ran straight into a mirror. It sounds great.

After the mirror maze (yes, there is more- who would have thought that visiting caves could lead to such a variety show?) came the Victorian Penny Arcade. Visitors to San Francisco will know that my favourite place to take people in the city was the Mechanical Museum of old arcade games. When I took skit there, we had just come off the coldest boat trip of my life (yes, it was colder in June than in October when I went out into the Bay with Em and Q) and I blame her competitive nature and encouragement for me to play against her in feats of strength for the loss of sensation and colour in one of my fingers. Anyway, I think the point is here that I like these old games. Even when I don’t play on them, I am fascinated by the design and ideas much more than anything I’d find in modern arcades.

We exchanged our currency for old pennies and attacked the games. The best ones are of course the ones you play with other people and I did kind of insist on playing with skit for payback for all those games I lost to her in San Francisco. Oh yes. Great fun to win for once. Great fun for me anyway.

The games were not the last part of the Wookey Hole experience. Oh no, next came the crazy circus mirrors. Where are the photographs of these, skit and biped? They spent forever (with Sky) taking photos and laughing at themselves squat, curvy and tall while indy and Blue explored the shop and bought fudge. The shop was also home to models of pirates of unlikely dress (Blue seemed baffled at the mechanical structure some of the female pirates must have had in their bras). I flitted between the two groups gaining the disapproval of both, I am sure.

Incidentally, parrots in a boat with pirates on their shoulders. Remember we are doing that in the boat race, biped and skit. Remember.

This was, alas, the end of what Wookey Hole had to offer. It did get a wee bit crazy towards the end but that’s what happens when you attempt a Real Life BAD. We just can’t help but fall into time portals, blend our genre with fantasy and pirates, find a clone-o-matic and pretend to be in crude relations with King Kong.