March 17, 2012

Trip to the farm!

Saturday we decided to take a day trip outside of the city.  We took the DRL train out to Mudchute Farm, which is 32 acres of farm and park where you can pet the animals and walk around admiring them.  It was a bit rainy when we got there, and I quickly discovered that I was highly unwilling to touch any wet farm animals.  The first animal we happened upon was a big, fat, uglay pig.  There was no way I was touching that thing.  The thing was huge and I’m pretty sure he (you could tell it was obviously a boy…) knew everyone was disgusted with him and reveled in that fact, because he pleasured in slomping around his pen, trying to rub up on the fence next to wherever we were standing.  No pig, I’m not going to pet you.  His ears were huge and floppy and covered his eyes completely.  One was even a bit bloody.  No fun, quirky, entertaining James Herriot here Mom.  This is the real world, where the animals are solemn, mundane, uninspiring, kinda nasty, and have bloody ears.

Really gross pig

                Next up was a cow.  I’ve seen a couple cows in my day, and I could tell this cow had major problems.  She had her face up against the fence and was just staring.  We thought for a bit that she might be dead or something, but she blinked once.  She had a look like she was zoned out, staring off into space.  I guess if I was a cow that lived on a weird little London farm and had to endure being petted by lots of people every day I might go a bit crazy too.  This cow had obviously had her fair share of tourists and overactive children in her day. 

The "deer-in-the-headlights" cow

                 We wandered over to a sheep pasture, and I called some of the sheep over so we could pet them.  Apparently I’m a sheep-whisperer because two of them came trotting over as I was bleating to them to come on over.  It was pretty dang cool.  Unfortunately they didn’t listen (or maybe they just didn’t understand) when I asked them to recite the sheep-mantra from Babe to me (“Baa-ram-ewe. Baa-ram-ewe. To your breed, your fleece, your clan be true. Sheep be true. Baa-ram-ewe”).  Or perhaps they were keeping their little sheep chants secret from me.  It has to be a pretty chill life, being a sheep.  They just chill out in their green little pasture and eat all day long.  If I get to choose what animal I want to be if I’m reincarnated, I want to be a sheep.

Evidence of my sheep-whisperer skills

What a power I have over them 

Such a perfect life.  Chilling, eating grass, getting free haircuts.

                 I got to practice more of my animal-calling skills on some chickens next to the sheep pasture.  They didn’t take to well to my clucks or caws.  They were much too interested in pecking and scratching around in the dirt and eating leaves.  Oh well, what can you expect from an animal that eats leaves?

The coolest hair I've ever seen

Oh, and more pigs.  This momma pig was kept from her babies.  Kinda sad.

Rainy day at the farm

                 I had much better luck with the turkeys though.  There was a huge enclosure with a single male turkey strutting around, showing off his nasty snood (the red bugger-like thing hanging off his nose).  He had a huge yard all to himself and a little turkey house in the middle.  I made some expert turkey-calls to him, and to our surprise, about 15 turkeys and other various birds came running out of the bird house!  The main man turkey spread out all his feathers and started strutting around the yard.  Too bad I’m definitely not attracted to turkeys, cause he was strutting his stuff for nothing.  If college doesn’t end up working out for me, I guess I can always have my own reality TV show on MTV or some trashy TV station, The Turkey Whisperer. 

The head turkey man with his snood.  And you can see the other birds
flocking to my call as they rush out of the house.

Just a small group of the birds I summoned to me.

                 I didn’t have as much luck with the llamas.  When I called for them to come over, they took a couple timid steps towards me, and then looked at me as if to say, “how dumb do you think we are?  We’re definitely not as dumb as the sheep and those turkeys you made friends with.”  And oh, how I wanted those llamas to come close to me.  One of them was white and very wooly and looked excellent for riding. 

Fuzzy llama

                 I had even worse luck with the goats.  They were much more interested in eating a random tree branch that had fallen in their pen than coming over to my goat-calls.  Goats have such a sad existence.  They were just going to town on that tree branch – the whole family of goats.  Ahhh…if only they knew that there are much better things to eat in the world than tree branches.  Like grass.  Or In-N-Out burgers.

Goats going to town on a dead branch.

                 We meandered over to the duck pond and were rewarded with an immediate exile of ducks.  They immigrated to the opposite side of the pond, as far away from us as they could get.  Whatever ducks, you’re not that cool anyways.

Here they are all standing up and turning away to run off.  Rude.

Is this like "free range chicken"?

                 That was basically the end of the farm, other than a couple small ponies near the end.  We walked through the rest of the grassy park and got back on the DLR train (no, it doesn’t stand for “Dangerous Lesbian Runaways” like I had thought.  It’s “Docklands Light Railway”) and headed off to Greenwich.

Ponies.  Real ones.

Walking through the rainy farm

                In Greenwich we checked out the Old Royal Naval College where I expected to see lots of beautiful British navy officers in uniform, marching around.  I was disappointed however.  Not too disappointed though because I got a great view of the Thames and got to watch the tide ebb and flow.  It was nice to close my eyes and just listen to the waves, pretending I was back home at Newport Beach. 

Old Royal Naval College

Beach :)

                 We walked around the college (which is now the University of Greenwich) and popped into the chapel and the ‘Painted Hall’.  The Painted Hall had a huge mural covering the ceiling and stretching to the front of the building.  Truly spectacular. 

Painted Hall

 Then we headed over to the National Maritime Museum and got to check out lots of fun nautical historical things.  We learned about ships, the East India Trading Company, and trading in early England.  These are all things we’ve been learning about in my history class, so there you go.  Applying what I’ve learned in real life.  Looks like this college education is finally paying off.

National Maritime Museum

                 We also checked out the Prime Meridian that was up the hill in from the National Maritime Museum located in another museum.  We climbed a steep mountain to get up to the Prime Meridian, only to discover that to stand on the line we would have to pay £7!!!  No way.  There is NO way I’m going to pay £7 to stand on a little line.  

Where the Prime Meridian is

There was a steel fence that divided the cheap, low-life’s like myself safely away from the rich customers.  We were lucky enough to get a glimpse of the expensive line and could even squeeze our cheap little poor-tourist cameras through the fence to get pictures of the rich tourists enjoying their experience.  This was real-life discrimination.  The upper-class and lower-class were kept separate (most likely to protect the precious little upper class.  Who knows what we, the poor people, would have done if we had been allowed to stand on the prime meridian?  We’d probably go crazy and start demanding rights or something).  So we had to settle with taking pictures through the fence that kept us from the wealthy customers.  We tried to map out where the line continued outside of the fenced area and took pictures of our feet on every insignificant line in the sidewalk after that, imagining it was a continuation of the prime meridian.

The PM itself

Dumb fence

Watching all the asians have fun inside the gates

But hey, we got to see the official Greenwich clock that all other clocks are set to!

Perhaps a continuation of the Prime Meridian??

                 It was St. Patrick’s Day, so of course we had to go to a pub for dinner.  We found a pub close to the center and enjoyed Irish green decorations and traditional Irish music, being played by a non-traditional speaker system.  I enjoyed a jacket potato (a staple at every pub in England) and basked in an atmosphere thick with of mean, drunk British people.  A very successful day in London.

Pub for St. Patrick's Day