Picnics, pigeons and men in camoflauge...what an afternoon

Yesterday, despite having a 'to-do' list the length of my arm, I threw caution to the wind and decided to take advantage of the sunshine and relative cloud-free sky by heading down to Hyde Park with my friend Aimee. Work/play balance is key, right?!

Sunny days are a godsend for us cash-strapped students as you can eat your pre-prepared lunch from your rather tragic looking plastic tuperware container, and rather than just look a bit frugal, you can turn the whole sorry activity into a an alfresco dining experience, aka. a 'picnic'. As it turns out, everyone loves picnics, not least of all Aimee and I.

There were some minor slip-ups however; one being that it's not so easy to eat couscous with chopsticks. Note to self: bring appropriate cutlery to picnics in future and do not depend on utensils stolen from Asian restaurants and thrown to the bottom of handbags. Another minor hazard were the pigeons who were eying up our food. Although I'm not quite sure how much they would have appreciated my couscous, I'm pretty sure they would have enjoyed Aimee's rather delicious looking sandwich, leaving us with the dilemma 'to share or not to share?' As much as I dislike pigeons, I couldn't help but feel as though we had invited ourselves into someone’s home, cracked open a delicious treat and didn't offer even a taste to our hosts. On this occasion however, we kept our food to ourselves (it was very tasty after all). I didn't want to give the pigeons the wrong impression- throw them one crust and next thing you know they could very well be perched on your arm pecking mercifully into your hand looking for more. You know those pigeons, it's just take take take...

Happily, the pigeons were not our only distraction. While Aimee and I were the ultimate ladies of leisure, army men were busy running rings around us, dressed in all their army gear, hauling huge backpacks around while screaming at their fellow army folk, and being shouted at by the leader of the bunch (we knew he was the leader because he was the only one who got to wear a white wifebeater tank top, lucky man). No skipping ropes for these guys, but wow, they are hard workers. Then again, I would be too if an insanely muscley man behind me was bellowing 'run faster faggot, FASTER!' into my eardrum. Who know how many skips I could do under that kind of pressure!

Not the quiet, chilled-out afternoon that we had first envisaged. But hey, when army men present themselves, who are we to turn them away. I’m loving Hyde Park.