Finding ways to play by the water when it’s cold. Making boats out of twigs, leaves and nettles. Spotting river monsters. Throwing sticks, pebbles and leaves.
Sunday 19 January. Cloudy. 3°C.
For the last few weeks, at the mouth of the Taff river leading into Cardiff Bay, there’s lived a monster. B spotted it before Christmas. There were lots of storms and one of them delivered what appears to be most of a tree upside down in the water. I was tentatively planning a beach day today but B was having none of it. “No, I don’t like the beach”.
Me: Well, what do you want to do? We could go and see the monster?
B: Yes! And we can make boats and race them.
She always comes up with the best ideas. We find a spot where we can get right down to the lakeside to see if we can see the monster properly… and find another even better one! We’re really excited. There are different boats passing by – the motordriven ferries and the skulls with rowers in. When the motor boats go by, they make waves which rock up to the monster.
B looks for bramble leaves to make sails for her stick boat. She makes two holes in each and pushes the stick through. I try a more avant garde model using a thistle and reeds. Neither look overly floatable but its 3°C and I reckon there’s a time and a place for crafting carefully and it’s not now. Anyway, I’ve got distracted with little orange bits of wood in the pebbles at the water side and start making a 347. B gets distracted with more sticks. “Let’s see if we can throw them on the monsters back”. With apologies to the little boat that goes around the lake clearing up debris we have several attempts at getting them to land.
We get distracted with a big trunk of wood which has been left on the shore. We work out we can move it together, one on each end. B wants to try and get it into the water but the logistics of holding one end only overcome us and I manage to drop it on B’s ankle. She’s not too badly maimed but not happy and we head home.
