The Devil wears a Golden Hairband.

It's friday morning. I went to work yesterday and in a little while I have to go to work again. Last night a man danced a bit extravagantly and smashed his face up, and there was blood everywhere. All over the floor, all over the poor lady he danced into, all over the sink. Then a man with the whitest teeth I've ever experienced came in, and cleaned him up. I'm fully expecting to see white-teeth-man at Pride tomorrow night, if you know what I mean. We're going to Pride tomorrow night. It's our friend's birthday, so we have to. It will be mad. Anyway, Pride is another thing. Today I want to tell you about the zoo.

On Wednesday, Ray, Cheesy and I went to Marwell Zoo. Cheesy is my smallest brother, he is great and I love him. Ray stayed over on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday morning at 8am (!) I woke her up with a cup of tea and we sat and watched the final episode of Gilmore Girls together. It was the definition of emotional. I cried like a baby, and I'm still not over it. Then we had breakfast with my Vati, who makes the best eggs ever, and then, eventually, after dropping Seth off at work, we were on our way to Marwell. Straight down the M27, in case you're interested. We had to stop on the way to pump my tires up and buy 'caffeine in many forms'. Then we had to stop again because the car had developed a worrying slant.

It turns out that after the exit off the M27 (is 'exit off' a tautology? Ray will know) there is a much longer drive than you're expecting. It says it's only 8 miles, but it's really far longer than that. You could literally Lose Yourself (that's a joke specifically for Eminem fans) on the way. But we found it, and we parked in a mad car park without an entrance, and we went to the zoo.

The thing about Marwell is, it doesnt have lions or elephants. Thus making it a slightly disappointing zoo. It does however have a fine collection of penguins with a nice underwater viewing bit, and a nice lot of monkeys. Specifically Golden Lion Tamarin Monkeys, which are my absolute fave. When I was little I had a book about a dog who saved some Golden Lion Tamarin Monkeys, and I loved it. We saw some playing with each other in a cute way. Marwell's crowning feature is the fact that it has a Snow Leopard. Snow leopards are incredibly rare, there are only 5,000 left in the world or something ridiculous like that. It makes me sad, because they are very pretty. It was raining, so not unlike their domestic cousins, all the cats were sleeping. As well as the snow leopard, we saw regular leopards, and tigers. Fuck me tigers are huge. One paw is about the size of my face. It'd kill ya without even trying. Amazing. I enjoy cats, they're just so chilled out. Chillaxin' and maxin' and shootin' some B-ball, if anything.

The bat enclosure was terrifying, because it was very dark and very full of bats. All flapping around a bit too close to comfort. There was a bat in my living room once, when Mel and I were watching Britain's Got Talent. We screamed and ran away, and I threw some cats at it. Not very friendly, but they chased it outside. Also Ray and I encountered a maybug in my room on Tuesday and nearly had simultaneous heart attacks.

Cheesy's favourite bit about the zoo was the rhinos. The horn of a rhino is made entirely out of hair, did you know that? The rhinos were very big, which is an understatement of the highest order. Ray enjoyed the giraffes most, although they smelled a bit funky. There was a baby one which was exciting. I think being a giraffe might be rather fun. You could look down on things and say 'ahhaha, in your face small thing, I beat you all in the tallness game' and that would be good because as we all know, the tallness game is a very important one. Ray is the average height of a British man (5"9) and I am the average height of a small bear (5"4). Cheesy is not the average height of anything. He is practically giant man, although he isnt as tall as Seth (my other brother) and Seth isnt as tall as Mattmatt (my tallest cousin) who is 6"7 or something mad. He plays basketball.

The zoo website (http://www.marwell.org.uk/) recommends 4-5 hours for your visit. We did it in 3. It was raining, Ray's ankle was giving her gip and I was wearing flipflops. We bought a present for Mel (I cant tell you what it is, because I havent given it to her yet) and also a post card for Kay. And some truly disgusting tea which isnt even worth mentioning, and then we went home.

I say 'went home', what we actually did is become totally aspated by attempting to cut off the extraordinary amount of driving necessary to get back to the M27, and somehow ended up on the M3. Charging towards the M25, which we arrived on in rush hour. It took us just over an hour to get to the zoo, and it took us nearly 3 hours to get home. The moral of this story, kids, is never try to cheat the system.