In Which Aldenham Country Park is Weird

Going stir-crazy, and despite the rain, we hopped into the car and went to Aldenham Country Park. It was strewn with pale green passive-aggressive notices but we ignored them, and went for a walk part of the way around the reservoir. We met some serene sheep on the way, and found some large clam shells in various places that looked as though they might have actually come from reservoir clams. I wonder if they did? There was a large notice telling us that the reservoir belonged to one lot of people, and the park belonged to someone else, and the reservoir owners definitely weren't responsible for any injuries or mishaps. Which is a pity, because there was a loose bit of netting on a wooden viewing platform that was a massive trip hazard. Could they have been trying to do away with us?

When we got hungry and thirsty we went to a little shack in the park and looked at the menu. 

'Can we have two pasties please?'

'Pasties will take 25 minutes. We have some sausage rolls here behind us, or you could have soup'. 

Did that mean we weren't allowed to have pasties? The two men looked at us, challengingly. 

'Is there another café here?'. 

'Yes, over there, but it sells the same things as us'.

The script had been written by Ivor Cutler and the afternoon became ever more surreal. At first, the six quid each plus £4.50 for parking (tokens and coins only) had seemed rather steep, but we were bored and we were there so I coughed up at the counter and we wandered into the farm. 

Small tinny speakers set on poles at intervals along the path were playing Hey Diddle Diddle and what sounded like American children's farm songs, at a low and sinister volume on repeat. We saw angry geese and a 'featured' muck heap. Two very grumpy Shetland ponies turned their backs to us in the drizzle. A batch of piglets suckled frantically in the gloom of a corrugated iron pigsty. Everywhere there were sodden teddies tied to poles and roofs: they were part of some sort of children's trail, and definitely not weatherproof. They drooped in the drizzle. We saw chickens just on the point of turning into hens, and more batches of piglets. There were Guinea pigs and rabbits. There was even an enclosure with baby tractors.

'Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon...' drifted weakly behind us. I saw a flash of blue; it was a magnificent peacock was posing for photographs with an Indian family. Disdainfully it leapt down from the fence and marched down the path past us, jewelled tail trembling behind it.

An alpaca tried to make friends with a rabbit (it wasn't interested), and a clutch of turkeys glared at us through their netting enclosure.

A final waterlogged and podgy teddy watched us sadly as we headed into a little shed to wash our hands at child-sized sinks.

'Hey diddle diddle....' we passed more passive-aggressive pale green notices telling us it cost 5 quid to get into the farm (had the cashiers seen those?), and various other commands and instructions. We drove to the gate: 'NO EXIT'. 

Were we stuck here for all time, to be serenaded by the tinny tannoy with the nursery rhymes loop?

Eventually we found the way out. 

Verdict? It was well worth the money to experience surrealism at first hand. No amount of art gallery visits could possibly have been as peculiar as this. I fully expect to try to find the park another time, only to discover that it doesn't actually exist, apart from in my imagination.