the animals have been removed

When it was suggested that people pop out for a walk when everyone had emerged and breakfasted this morning I had assumed that it would involve being driven somewhere, walking about a little bit then driving back; I was not disappointed. Belle Isle is one of a few little wooded-grounds hotel/house things to which Nicky's parents occasionally drive to to walk around but this particular one seems to have particularly suffered from not being as large as Nicky remembers it being when she was a child. There used to be a couple of extra bits which are no longer accessible; a greenhouse (whose roof is currently being broken through by the plants inside) and a walled and roofed area which used to contain a few sorts of pettable animal, now blocked off by a council sign advising their removal (which would have been better if 'disposed of' had been employed in place of 'removed'). There were still a few paths-through-trees to potter around but even the non-walking-liking people considered it a bit brief so we drove further to a little parking-spot next to a manky and foul-smelling river-outlet for another very short walk up and down the banks. After reassuring people that by being able to see known landmarks, having a sense of direction and being electrically augmented by Google Maps on my phone that I would be in no danger of getting lost I was released to walk back along the seafront and through the town, adding slightly to my knowledge of which physical things are geographically where in Ayr after being exposed to too many things as mere isolated points at the end of short car journeys where I've been more concerned about being ready to brace myself in case of impact than watching where we were going. It wasn't a particularly long distance but would help to offset the evening meal we would be staying to eat, especially when I successfully managed to persuade the food-preparer that I wouldn't wither away and die immediately if I did not eat several fat-dribbling meat-burgers alongside the large plate of vegetable-foods, especially after having eaten a big plateful of stuff containing chicken the previous evening. Perhaps because of her failure to fatten me up Nicky's mum attempted to trick her vegetarian-since-the-age-of-fourteen daughter into eating what she had described as a 'mushroom burger' but which turned out to be a meaty beefburger merely flvaoured with added mushrooms, given away by the glistening beef-fat on the outside, pinkish interior and eventually confirmed by the packet when it was fished out of the recycling. Possibly invigorated by their burgers and custardy dessert-thing Nicky's parents put on a short exhibition of the sort of opinions the newspaper they asked us to get yesterday morning is likely to contain, encourage or reinforce. This has happened before when we've not left for home in the mid-afternoon and have stayed for our tea and is perhaps a Sunday-afternoon tradition in the household. In a way it was a relief that after they had presented their inflammatory opinions and not listened to our reasoned and logical replies that they did not continue or come out with anything else but in another way one can tell that their final "...weeell... so anyway," indicates either that they will continue to think what they think and that no amount of exposure to opinions from the world beyond their local circle of like-minded associates will change their minds on that particular topic or that they accept that what they said was a bit stupid but they're not going to admit it or ask for further clarification on why it's such an unreasonable point of view from which to observe the world. I think that the next time we're here at the weekend I'll refuse to buy them the newspaper of their choice and force them to read one which at least presents some reasonable and modern opinions which might challenge their own before it's too late.