1. 'A red one, like the coastguard,' says Alec about the buoyancy aids. He is suddenly much more confident and talks about rescuing me from the wave pool. We head for something called Lazy River, which turns out to be a sort of circular corridor with a current. We whirl round several times clinging to each other and very excited. On the fifth rotation we pass an elderly lady clinging to the rocks by the entrance. 'They've taken the rope away,' she calls to another lady bobbing past. Grab my hand!' She's still there on our seventh time round and I think her friend was not trying very hard to escape.
2. 'You go and have your swim,' says Nick gently but firmly. I leave him getting the children changed and scamper off to find the water slides and the rapids. I had forgotten how much I love waterslides and feel like a naughty school girl when I scuttle back up for a second go, and join a group of hooting, stamping men in their early twenties on a horrible thing called a water piste which dumps you very fast and suddenly into deep water.
2b. The nervous stout party who I came across at the bottom of the first slide in the rapids -- she was clinging to the rocks and wondering about getting out. While I was bobbing around in the current she announced decisively that she had come this far and... oooops, down she went towards the next pool.
3. Nick reports that in the pond behind our lodge he saw a kingfisher, not just the usual flash of blue but actually a kingfisher perched on a dead branch.
