Hello everybody; Ian McMillan’s two-year-old grandson Louie here.
Grandad Ian has decided that this week he wants a rest from writing and so he’s let me make his column for him this week.
I asked him what it should be about and he said that he was thinking about writing about the trips we make to Elsecar every Wednesday because we enjoy them so much and I said that was a good idea and I was going to ask him a few more questions about it but then I noticed that he’d fallen asleep on the settee like he often does, so I opened up his laptop and got on with it.
After all, it’s good practice for a two-year-old to have to meet deadlines. I’ll write quietly so as not to wake grandad up.
We always go to Elsecar on Wednesdays to play, because we like the park and we like the swings and we like the ducks and we like the lovely cafe.
We’ll drive over there at about 10am; grandma drives, of course, because grandad can’t because, as he says, he’d be rubbish at it. Rubbish and scared, which, as he also says, is a really bad combination.
It’s been really cold lately so we make sure I have lots of layers on, nearly as many layers as grandad does when he goes to Oakwell to watch Barnsley win.
He says he’ll take me to Oakwell when I’m older, like he takes my brother. And he also says we’ll be in the Premier League by then.
We get to Elsecar and we park in the car park. It’s always busy because it’s a lovely place: there are walking groups and families and lots and lots of grandmas and grandads with children like me.
We set off from the car park into the actual park and we’re listening for one of my favourite sounds which is the sound of the grass cutters driven by the grass cutter men who sometimes cut grass and sometimes hoover leaves up and sometimes plant plants and work really hard to make the park look lovely.
Their vehicles (I call them tractors but grandad says they’re not tractors but what would he know because he can’t even drive) are green and sometimes we see a big red tractor that grandad says really is a tractor.
We walk up the hill past the bandstand; my brother, when he came to Elsecar with grandma and grandad, used to like to go in the bandstand but I like to go straight to the swings.
Grandad pushes me on the swing and we make up stories and songs; this week the song is about somebody who is stuck up a tree and the swing is a helicopter and grandad and me have come to rescue them.
Grandma is better at pushing the swing than grandad is, though. He tends to push the swing to one side so I lurch about a bit. He should stick to telling stories. Then we go and play in the sandpit for a while and we carry on telling the story because the person we were telling the story about has ended up living in a sandcastle.
Then we hear a noise and we’re all excited because it’s the big red tractor and he’s cutting the grass. We go out of the sandpit and stand watching him and then he waves and goes ‘toot toot’ on his hooter and puts his thumb up.
When I was a little boy I didn’t know how to put my thumb up but now I do and me and grandad return the thumbs up and the driver goes ‘toot toot’ again.
Then grandma says ‘it’s coffee time’ and we go to the lovely cafe in the park. Grandma and grandad have coffee and I have a gingerbread man if they’ve got one and if not I have a slice of toast. I love toast; it’s one of my favourite things to eat, and I think that the toast in the cafe in Elsecar Park is the best I’ll ever have. Grandad says ‘this is the life!’ and I know what he means.
On the way home me and grandad carry on singing and telling stories but then I fall asleep and then grandad does too. As grandma says, it’s a good job he can’t drive.
