THERE are very few lions in Yorkshire.
I’m reminded of the joke about the man sprinkling something out of the train window on the Stalybridge to Huddersfield track.
“What are you up to?” asks another passenger.
“It’s anti-lion powder,” says the man.
“But there are no lions in Marsden,” says the passenger.
“I know. It’s great stuff, isn’t it?”
Of the few lions in Yorkshire, most can be found at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster.
I thought grandson Harry would be chuffed to bits over the children’s playground, the slides, the chance to pat a goat and cuddle a wallaby.
I thought he might have been taken with the ring-tailed lemurs, the mongooses and the meerkats – or even his big bowl of lunchtime pasta.
But no – it was the lions.
Bear in mind the lions were sitting asleep on a mound of earth 100 metres behind a 10 metre high electrified fence.
They didn’t move or roar or pace about or bring down and feast upon a wildebeest.
There’s a message here.
Do not imagine you know what is really going on in a child’s mind.
Do not imagine you know what will please, amuse, frighten or intrigue a child.
It will almost certainly be not what you think it is.
That was the lesson the lions of Yorkshire and Harry have taught me and, as an assiduous grandfather, it’s not one I’m going to forget in a hurry.
