Esledes

Guiltily, we left the artist back at camp and decided to go on ahead and take the castle ourselves. Horseback was out of the question, which was a shame as it was good riding weather, but morale was not low and some of us had already read up for example on our Amboise, Falaise, Bamburgh and Ludlow castles - however we took this one it would be fine. A crow crowed. An already dead leaf fell. Our 4-year-old nephew and 5-year-old son went first. Trained from an early age in stealth and conquest, you imagined there were few challenges they would not be prepared to accept. You imagined correctly. After the Norman foundations, mediaeval gatehouse, and Tudor tower - though the older ones such as myself were confused - we were pretty soon sneaking through the peacocks and swans like petty thieves with high ideals. The artist's father filmed. The artist's mother held many hands. The artist's brother stared warily at a peahen: 'As long as there is a humour between me and them,' I thought he said most charmingly, when in fact he said: 'As long as there is a human between me and them.' Anyway, we reassembled by 2,400 small yew trees constituting the maze and eventually found ourselves again after much meandering and puzzlement in the grotto in the centre depicting the giant Typhoeus, father of Harpies. That's right, Harpies, not Herpes. All was well. We had remained undetected. Next stop was the aviary. As none of us could remember what it was exactly we were supposed to be conquering - the castle was across a moat and really for adults only - we allowed ourselves, foolishly perhaps, to be seduced instead by the Peruvian Thick-Knees - Thick-Knees, not Cockneys - in their cages. (They were saying something which in pure audio terms sounded like the artist's brother's wife's surrealist podcast about a barber shop recorded in 5.1 Surround.) We sneaked past to the tuft-headed Crowned Cranes and made it to the Toco Toucans, also. (I used to have a picture of one of them on my bedroom wall as a child and it was as if it had just come to life.) Just then, a loud cockatoo had me jump out of my skin and I fled. As I write this all down, the 5-year-old, who cannot sleep, is standing beside me with a broad however sleepless grin, and the artist is coughing much less. Perhaps this was the point of the exercise. Refortification again.