By Becci Ford

Christmas day people and dinosaur watching…

This christmas was the first traditional christmas that I had spent without my family in London.

Christmas is always about tradition in my family home. And we are pretty ritualistic with how we do things…

Always have quality streets, drink bucks fizz in the morning, watch muppets christmas carol etc…

We always spend the day just slobbing around in our PJ’s eating and playing board games!

But this year was a chance to make new traditions.

So I took a walk to Crystal Palace park to watch how other people do christmas.

I’ve always enjoyed people watching, I like to make up stories in my head about where they might be going and what their lives are like. Every scenario could be the stem of another new story or character.

Here are a few things that I saw and what I imagined their story to be – I’ll leave it up to you to separate reality from my dark imagination:

> The little boy stood looking a bit forlorn as his siblings raced ahead of him on new scooters – whilst he stood by his slightly dirtier scooter, he’d wanted a new scooter too but his mum and dad had only enough money for two scooters this year and it wasn’t his turn for the big present…but thats definitely the reason why his scooter is slower than the others…

> “DINAH, DINAH!” The man yelled out and blew on his whistle. He hadn’t wanted to go out for a walk anyway and now the dog had run off. After 2 hours of yelling he was starting to get tired out. Maybe she’d drowned in the lake by the dinosaurs. Good, then he wouldn’t have to drag her out for walks in the rain anymore.

> “Stop pooing…your a girl, girls don’t poop on trees” The three year old girl said softly scolding her dog. On another tree her other dog Buster relived himself…but that was okay because he was a boy dog and as everybody knows, boy dogs can poop anywhere. Except on girl dogs.

> “Look watch meeeee booooofmmmm” Was the final cry of James as he sped down the hill on his new hoverboard to meet the grim reaper at the bottom.

> The old man watched James speed by with a glint in his eye…”there goes another one” he thought…”Kids these days they just don’t know how to ride a hoverboard properly…what do they teach them in school honestly?”

> The lovestruck couple held hands as they walked around the park together gazing into each others eyes and talking about the future. Little did Tom know that whilst he was speaking happily about their life together, Andy was thinking about the best time to get divorced – should he make his move before or after Tom’s birthday?

> Gladys sat on the bench watching the couple who were sat on the opposite – they seemed to be taking in the world. Little did they know she too was doing the same for the first time on her own. Dereck had always liked this spot in the park.

Merry Christmas