I had plans for today

And they involved going to bed about an hour ago and getting up very early tomorrow to revel in the glories of home before heading back to the internetless wilderness of Essex. Though I do plan to go to the park again in full daylight and see if there are still squirrels around. I took several pics of them the other day and it was so nearly dusk, they were all blurry.
This is a nice place around the back end of Braintree...it looks as though it's intended to be some sort of 'public amenity area' but has some nice dramatic bits.
And here is further proof that Braintree is crooked.
Um, well maybe I have time for a quick visit or three.

And one or two more memories.

This is Mount Kenya, seen from a great distance on the way to the Abedare Mountains.
We stayed one night at Treetops..famous because Queenie and PP went there on their honeymoon and heard the news that she had become HM while they were there! I bet they were really pissed off at having to leave Paradise and go home to do stately stuff in soggy old England!
Treetops was wonderful. It looks at first sight like a giant wooden fortress but inside it's like an enormous luxurious bird-watching hide. There are viewing platforms on the roof, open balconies facing the waterholes and picture windows in the bar. On the ground floor there are rooms with window slits looking out to the water holes so if you feel brave you can end up face to knee with an elephant in the middle of the night. We were greeted by stern admonitions on no account to go outside at any time for any reason..we could go anywhere inside the building but not outside please as we might get trampled or eaten.
We had buzzers in our rooms so that if any exciting animals came to the water hole in the night, we could leap out of bed and come and see. (4 buzzes for elephants, 3 for rhinos, 2 for leopards and 1 for hyenas).

I fell in love with this fire exit...not only could I see distant herds of buffalo but it was so beautiful.
I was also rather taken with the warthogs. Fabulously ugly and aggressively busy, they trotted briskly around when they weren't wallowing and exuded a 'don't try it Buster' sort of attitude.

And occasionally stopped for a good scratch.Irridescent birds at feeding time.
The whole place had a sort of reverent hush...there were animals at the water holes nearly all the time and going to bed at all seemed a waste of precious time. As dusk fell, dim lights came on and I was reminded, oddly enough, of a labour ward at night. A kind of dim, warm, reddish quietness punctuated by important events. Soft- footed purposeful surges of people murmuring in astonishment and delight.
We could see rather better than this but I'm afraid the animals didn't actually stand still for long :) I thought there was a hyena in the picture above but obviously he left while the camera was still busy!
The elephant, rhino and buffalo below were at the salt lick. There was a certain amount of not entirely polite rearrangement between them to accommodate varying personal space requirements. Rhino seemed to need the most distance and nobody cared much about the buffalo! Elephant and Rhino did a kind of slow motion dance around each other with buffalo as a centrepoint. This was taken from the roof.
We had to leave at 6.30 so I got up early and was splendidly rewarded with the rosy dawn touching the peak of Mount Kenya. Utter magic.

Hey Ho. Back to Braintree tomorrow.