In the swim

Continuing our "vacation at home" theme today we visited the hotel pool. Except we're not in a hotel so we went to the pool at Stockport instead. It's a good one with an Olympic-sized pool and a nice shallow area with a jaccuzi, waterslides, plenty of fun floats and good changing facilities. I hate going swimming because I am a lousy swimmer and I am scared the kids will drown. The kids love it though and happily head off in all different directions, splashing and screaming and scaring me silly. I want them to be more confident in the water than I am and I really should take lessons to build up my own confidence but I can never find the time.

The pool is part of Stockport's "Grand Central" entertainment area which also has bars, a multiplex cinema and lots of fast food places. It probably has bingo and a bowling alley as well, I've never noticed, but they seem to be part of the package. So we went to McDonald's for lunch and then to the cinema to watch "Cars". It was rubbish but the kids liked it. I'm sure the animation was all very technically stunning, but that's not what I want from a movie. The plot was off-the-shelf, and the setting was designed to evoke nostalgia for a time and place I never knew, so it left me cold. It wasn't as bad as "The Spongebob Squarepants Movie", but it wasn't "Shrek" either.

You can't really take pictures in the swimming pool (without either wrecking your digital camera or getting arrested), or in the cinema, and taking pictures in McDonalds just seems, well, tacky. So todays picture is from our visit to Chester zoo. I've tried to keep the swimming/animated movie theme going, though.