Going wild on our birthday

 No, I'm not using the Royal 'we' - as well as my 42nd birthday it was the Boy's tenth birthday, ooh double figures!  And it was a glorious day too - we were in the Highlands again visiting my parents for the long weekend, so we all went to the Highland Wildlife Park for the day. There was still snow on the mountains but it was hot (that's Scottish hot, probably just tepid to Californians and similar, but the kind of day on which peely-wally Scots get just a bit pink-and-singed-looking). The camels looked quite relaxed and sleepy. I think that's a yak in the background. A yakground. Or possibly it's a spy-sheep in a mac. Incognito.

Another camel catching some rays:

This is a rare sight, the saltire against an actually properly blue sky:

Well, it's rare in the soggy bit of Scotland which I inhabit anyway. My family mock me for my habit of taking photos of blue skies but it's good to relish them and even better to look back at the pictures when it's grey, wet and generally dreich. Look! It's so bluuuuuue!

That's the view across the snow monkey enclosure. I'm relaxing just looking at it.

Like Eliza Stickleback, I was also taking pictures of the 'wrong' things - such as lapwings and oystercatchers in the bit of the park you drive through. Well, the bison and suchlike were further away from the road. And I like birds, especially oystercatchers but my oystercatcher picture is a bit blurred.

I indulged myself with a pink drink with my picnic - rose lemonade! I'd never seen or, obviously, drunk it before but it was too pretty not to have as a birthday drink, don't you think? 'Weird but nice' is my summary. The Boy tried a bit and agreed.

A very nice day indeed. I was quite happy to be 42 (in recent years I've not been keen on the new number but 42 is different) and the Boy seemed quite pleased to be ten. Even if I kept muttering 'you can't be ten, you were just a baby a minute ago' and other similarly parental things.