Splash it all over

This has been a fantastic week of weather although I've been fretting about work enough not to enjoy it. Yesterday however, Mrs Holiday and I went to Greenwich for the afternoon with the two kids and a friend and her two. The plan was to take in lovely Greenwich Park, let the boys stretch their legs and then have lunch in a bar in the grounds of the Naval College.

As it happened, we didn't get much beyond the first patch of grass. This was being watered with an array of sprinklers, which J's pal Other J (let's call him OJ for short) headed for like iron filings to a magnet. J swiftly followed and it quickly became apparent we wouldn't get much further for a while. The two of them stripped off and swooped and hollered around the sprinklers for the best part of the next hour before a reluctant break for lunch and then back for more running around in their pants and getting soaked. All to the soundtrack of soloists practising in the Trinity College of Music which overlooks the garden.

It reminded me a bit of the films we see of New York kids playing in water hydrant spray - the nearest they get to the seaside perhaps (although Coney Island isn't that far away). It also reminded me how good children are at coming up with their own entertainment and that perhaps parents are sometimes guilty of trying too hard to entertain them. Mind you, that was before they started to daub themselves with mud, at which point the laissez faire approach ceased.

Both J and OJ had smiles a mile wide playing in the spray, as did most of the people who wandered past. It was so hot I'm sure that a few of them wouldn't have minded a cooling drench themselves. When we get a garden I think I'll have to invest in a hose and sprinkler pretty quickly - here's hoping for hosepipe ban free summers.

Actually, I've just remembered another water feature that would be well worth a visit. This has been outside the Royal Festival Hall for the past few years. Wonder if it's there this year.