We're goin' to the zoo, zoo, zoo...

‘…We're goin' to the zoo, zoo, zoo
How about you, you, you
You can come too, too, too
We're goin' to the zoo, zoo, zoo…’

Photograph Werner Bischof

Back in the 1960s a large part of the capital’s population must have visited Edinburgh Zoo on at least one occasion.

We too went as a family on a few occasions and perhaps not by chance, the weather was sunny and hot so as it involved two busses from Oxgangs to Corstorphine and then back home again in the late afternoon it was always a long, tiring day out – thank goodness for the zoo's little bus-train that ferried us high up on to Corstorphine Hill allowing us work our way down, along and through the zoo.

There were the glasshouses with the terrifying snakes behind them which despite us tapping on the windows never batted an eye all the while probably eyeing us up as their dinner. 

Then there were the lions and tigers in their enclosures – if you had just the smallest amount of imagination, boy were they scary. 

Photograph Aileen Kirchin

And then if we were lucky we saw the seals being fed with flying fishes being launched in their direction; and of course there were the King Penguins or the chimpanzees' tea.

Photograph Rozalia Cull

We were never well off so we always brought a wee picnic with us but did enjoy a single treat of perhaps one of the Walls ice cream cones that came in a packet. 

Photograph David O'Brien

The shop was full of other serendipities but with no discretionary spend we could only look and wish.

Ken Hoffmann with Iain; Anne and Peter

Whilst those zoo visits were an interesting and rare interlude in our day to day lives as a family, rather poignantly and with a hint of regret now for far away and irretrievable days I’m unsure if I really enjoyed those occasions the way I should have as captured in the photograph - perhaps I'd just had a telling off!

Photograph John Greenwood

But Tom Paxton got it about right too; and come the late Edinburgh afternoon, for us it was a case of joining the extraordinarily long bus queue outside the zoo – hopping up and down I thought God will we ever get on that 26 bus, but we always did to thereafter get the number 4 bus at Haymarket to take us home to Oxgangs, most probably nodding off en-route.

‘…Well we stayed all day and I'm gettin' sleepy
Sittin' in the car gettin' sleep sleep sleepy
Home already gettin' sleep sleep sleepy
'Cause we have stayed all day…’ 
                                                                                                Tom Paxton