It’s odd to come back into Cricklewood station and to see the how different the world can be in the space of a day.
In the early afternoon I was canoing on a (albeit artificial) lake with some real actual baby ducks (though they didn’t have baby canoes, that would be too cute). In fact Centreparcs is almost Disneyesque in it’s nature – a deer walking past our window, lots of mothers and baby ducks (mother ducks that is, not just mothers. Though it being a family destination there are a lot of mothers too, but stating this wouldn’t necessarily emphasize the sheer orgy of nature at Centerparcs – Oh dear, I appear to have used the words Centerparcs, mothers and orgy in the same paragraph, that’ll get some odd google searchers sent here. Hello sickos).
In fact, in all honesty I thought the nature was a bit overdone, yes it is in the countryside and that is where nature lives, but it all had a very plastic feel to it. The lake was moulded with a wire mesh running along the bottom, as if there was real wildlife trying to come up, but it wasn’t allowed. Only nature outsourced from Centerparcs preferred suppliers could come up.
And at one point on this final day I happened to comment that I hadn’t seen a bunny when some others had. We turned the corner and lo and behold there was little bunny rabbit looking cuter than Hazel from Watership Down (and believe me, I know that bunny well, not in the biblical sense, but as a child I watched that film too much – “Big Waaater”). I began to fear that the whole place was covered with microphones, and my exclamation at the lack of bunnies led to someone in a control room smoking a cigarette and saying “Bunny needed in Sector 12″ or something, God knows what sector we were actually in.
Or maybe the bunny’s aren’t even real. I was rather scared that I’d turn another corner and see the forest backdrop peeling away and behind it a load of little people with bunny costumes half rolled down, puffing on a cigarette and swigging on some whiskey until someone yelled into their ear “Bunny needed in Sector 15″ (different bunny folks) and they donned the costumes and made people go aaah.
Why do I think all of this? Lots of nature, yet no piles of shit… think about it.
But no matter whether the nature was fake or, well, natural, getting back to Cricklewood showed me just how dirty London can be. Off the train and I couldn’t even see past the smog to the end of the road clearly. My mouth had a nasty taste within seconds.
This is the first lengthly amount of time I’ve spent in the proper country since moving here in 2001, and for the first time I came back and could see how dirty the place I lived in was. God knows how dirty the croquettes really are…