In Which I Nearly Get Banned From Waterstones for Snickering, and See Some Elephants in Hyde Park
Categories: life-and-musings, ramblings
Date: 05 September 2007 22:35:35
So I was in Waterstones, looking for a book on photography, and wandered past the "Biographies" section, and stopped dead, blinking.
"Painful Lives" lead seamlessly on to "Royal Biographies" which lead on to "Celebrities."
Snort.
And don't get me started on the whole "Painful Lives" thing. Known in the trade as "Misery Porn," I'm just not sure it's entirely helpful for someone who wasn't fed minced slugs and kept in a cupboard to read "I was fed minced slugs and kept in a cupboard" biographies. I read one once on a train journey up to Cumbria. By the time I got to Grange-Over-Sands I was ready to chuck myself in. Mind you, that could have been the train journey.
Anyway. Elephants. So cute. The babies were all tucked up in bed by the time I got there (baby elephants need spleep too, or they get fractious. Would you like to meet a fractious baby elephant)?
"Elephant Family cannot imagine a world without [the elephant's] intelligent and engaging spirit, so we dedicate our days to protecting it through its habitat and by working with the local communities that live near wild herds. We also care for domesticated elephants and their keepers (the 'mahouts') who look after them."
"For us here at "Trunks Meet Trunks" HQ, one of the London parks was the perfect setting to show how India's forests have been cut up by roads, railways and villages, making it impossible for wild Asian elephants to roam."
If you're in London, go and see them. They're on the south side of the Serpentine.
