Aug 10 2013

MeerKats versus Wild Boar near Chipping

It’s really quite refreshing to see people smoking heavily at a family attraction. One of those things that seem to have died out and been replaced with being forced to spend two pounds on a bottle of Elderflower Presse because Pepsi Maxx has  mostly been declared illegal by the sort of jolly people wearing wellies no matter the weather conditions; people who are happy to spend twenty quid during a recession to look at some depressed Lop Eared rabbits shaking in a hutch as long as there is organic flapjack to be had.

The Wild Boar Park needs to reconsider its name. When thinking about whether to spend ten pounds upwards on a family day out, the concept of wild boar don’t normally top the fun-ometer. Water-slide World may have a slight edge.

 

Strangely enough, the actual cutesy animal money-spinners are under-recognised or ignored on the brochure, and it is rare to have an attraction where the animal in its title  can also be purchased in burgers or fillets replete with squidgy blood in sealed plastic bags in the shop. That would certainly liven up the Shire Horse Centre.

 

Anyway, it had started to rain, we had to drive in and instantly pay on the way through which terrified me as I wished to have a panic in the car park about whether to go in or not for twenty minutes, judged purely on a laminated poster featuring bad clip-art attached to a fence or a family who look far too confident, expensively coated and shrill going in before us.

 

This decision was snatched from me far too quickly and I realised only too late, I had not recently looked at the Trip Advisor reviews. Maybe everyone else felt like this and that’s why they were all smoking?

 

I love looking at local attraction and eating establishment reviews on Trip Advisor. I am aware this shows me up at a complete and utter loser and will be something I regret on my death-bed (see also Rightmove)

 

It is particularly exciting when owners respond with vitriol and definitely makes up for not having a social life.

 

The Wild Boar Park should be renamed MeerKat Mansions because no-one really cares about wild boar. Their noses are slightly too long but I do like the juxtaposition between their hairy squat pigginess and their sad soulful eyes. Maybe they have heard about the shop.

 

I like them but not quite enough to spend nearly 20 quid on looking at them. I was mainly determined to drive twenty miles to have an egg butty with chips and bread and butter for an attractive price (£3.60) as seen on the website.  It was only 11am and I had already had breakfast but I am hardcore.

 

I utterly recommend a trip to the Wild Boar Park. The TWO free range eggs were a perfect marriage to the large amount of freshly fried over salted (by me) chips and mopping up the yellowy congealing mass with proper white bread and butter whilst sitting on a picnic bench in the sunshine pretending I had not seen my toddler shoulder charging another toddler to get to the swirly slide was possibly the highlight of a summer spent enjoying saturated fat in a variety of picturesque locations.

 

But then I saw meerkats! Meerkats! Meerkats trying to eat butterflies with sharp snatchy teeth, meerkats trying to sleep then one jumping on them for a cuddle and being chucked off, all the meerkats deciding to have an enormous fight just for the lols, the one bad meerkat strolling around being bad and eyeing up disgarded fag butts.

 

However it saddens me that I felt guilty for enjoying the meerkats due their advertising presence and plastic figurined occupation in down-market shops. Despite their utterly appalling behaviour ( a quick bite at a fellow sunbathing spread-eagled meerkats penis is Bad Meerkats main occupation) they have become a wide-eyed Disney figure for commercialisation and thus are unworthy of the admiration of someone who owned limited edition Huggybear seven inch records.

 

I go and pretend to like the wild boar. They glare at me suspiciously. I’m not surprised really. I have just squeezed their brethren in a shop nearby. I try to explain that I am a vegetarian and it was for someone else who wanted me to purchase it but they look at me with eyes that know that no meerkat has ever been sold with chips for four pounds a few hundred yards away.

 

I tell them to frolic, to be the star of an insurance advert, to assume quirky identities, have a funny spelling, maybe Wyld Borz but they snort, smell and the Danger signs are really not helping their cause if they want to be re-branded.

 

One looks at me. In his surprisingly over-lashed eyes, I see his contempt.

 

‘Who is the star here?’ he snorts. ‘The wallabies are not even in the informative brochure. What’s the name of this joint? The Wild Boar Park. That’s it. WILD BOAR. People love us. We do not need to sit atop of a small wooden castle with a flag cutely looking around. We are wild boar. This place is named after us and because of us. By the way, have you seen my dad anywhere? Been gone a few days now.’

Sometimes, your offers of help are just flung back in your face.