Pretty in pink
(Pink dolphin show in Sentosa: Singapore)
Today the rain in Glasgow is in sharp contrast to the wonderful breezy sunshine of yesterday. It is drizzly, grey smirr, giving the light a bluish tint. Since I have been preoccupied with showing images of the family trip recently, I’ve decided to mix things up and transport you back to Singapore in February. (Not that it is any different to October or June).
The day that Ying, his sister and I went to spend a day on Sentosa, little island of amusements, it was a day with an incredible temperature. In the sun, I felt as if I were literally melting – perspiration is part and parcel of standing in a queue under the empty sky. Although at the time, it was an uncomfortable feeling of slimy suncreamy stickiness, as I look out of the window to rainy Glasgow, I recall it with slightly more fondness.
I have never seen dolphins before – only in books, on David Attenborough documentaries and in other people’s holiday snaps. I have to confess, I have never even heard of these pink dolphins at all, even in storybooks. They were bigger than I imagined, more like horses than fish* and they were much more majestic than silly. Dolphins have been so much reproduced in figurines, fantastical paintings, tattoos and jewellery that I had forgotten that they were a real being, separate from all the aquatic plush toys in the aquarium shop. The feeling was such with the Pandas I visited in Thailand; http://china.analoguegirl.co.uk/zoo-venirs/. The dolphins were so popular in fact that the entire viewing area was chock full and Ying and I were forced to stand at the top of a stairway, hence the angle of this shot.
They were vastly entertaining and didn’t seem unhappy as they were balancing balls on their bottle ended snouts and leaping out of the water – I get the impression they revel in showing off. There were sea lions too that shook hands, pretended to escape and generally clowned around; childhood memories of circus stories and picture books of cheery marine life are perhaps imitating some form of reality.
* I am aware that dolphins are mammals, not fish, but the obvious similarities are there.
– Today Rosie is sighing at the rain in Glasgow –
