23 August 2016
While we’d been walking around the Marlands I’d been doing my best to tick all the zebras we found off on the app. Out in the town for the most part it was easy because the app on my phone would magically find the zebra we were closest to most of the time. Occasionally it wouldn’t and CJ would have to read the number on the plinth out to me so I could manually tick it off. With so many zebras and baby zebras in the Marlands, the app was finding all of them at once. This was confusing.
“Maybe we should save the Zany Zebra headquarters for another day,” I suggested. “I’m beginning to lose track of what we’ve seen and what we haven’t.”
“There can’t be that many left now,” CJ said. “We might as well see them all while we’re here. If we don’t we’ll kick ourselves later.”
He had a point so, despite feeling rather zebraed out, we headed for the Zany Zebra shop. There were three baby zebras in the window. Bizzy, sponsored by Business South had spots instead of stripes and a fetching shocking pink mane. Black and White and Red All over was, unsurprisingly, sponsored by the Daily Echo and her red stripes bore the names of local areas. Then there was yet another Woody. To avoid confusion this Woody was called Woody (Huffty). He was painted with handprint stripes by the children of Woodentots Nursery and Royal Naval personnel at HMS Collingwood
Inside there were parents and children at a large table painting and lots of phoots of the zebras around the city. The first baby zebra we saw was Periculo Z painted with the patterns of endangered or extinct animals by the children of Oak Lodge School.
Then we spied a zebra we’d both being waiting to see almost since the beginning of the trail. It was Chris Cross, the zebra that had began the trail standing at the top of the precinct but had been vandalised very early on, before we saw him. He was well worth the wait.
Sponsored by NatWest Bank he was created by Will Rosie from hundred of tiles in the form of a crossword puzzle. We were both glad to see the damage hed suffered seemed to be all repaired and he looked perfect.
Another zebra we’d missed on the trail due to the vandals was Zeeberry, the strawberry zebra sponsored by Pickwell Farm where you can pick real strawberries. With her red body, strawberry pips and green ears, painted by Deven Bhurke, she reminded me we hadn’t had lunch yet.
In her shadow we discovered Mechanical Zebra designed by Finley Harris of Valentine Primary School. This fantastical creature has bolts, cogs, nuts and wires, areal robot of a zebra.
Finally we found Jiggy, a colourful jigsaw puzzle of a baby zebra designed by Liam Curtis of Tanners Brook Primary School.
“So, have we found all the Marlands zebra now?” CJ asked as we ticked Jiggy off the list.
“Let me just check the app,” I said, “it would be really annoying to get home and find we’d missed one.”
It was a good job I did check because we’d missed more than one. In fact there were three zebras still to find in Marlands shopping centre and it looked as if the first was just across the atrium opposite the Zany Zebras Headquarters. If we’d been paying attention the zebra striped cloths on the tables outside Fredericks Chocolates. This is most certainly my kind of shop. Inside, amongst the chocolate and jars of old fashioned sweets, we found Florence. She’s named for Florence Nightingale who once lived at Embley Park, now the home of Hampshire Collegiate Prep School who painted her in their school colours.
According to the app the next zebra was somewhere on the ground floor in a shop called Discount Second Hand Jewellers. This was a shop I’d never heard of, although it sounded quite interesting. Right at the beginning of our walk around Marlands, when we went upstairs when we intended to stay downstairs, we must have missed the shop and Aztec the zebra. It didn’t take long to put this omission right. She’s a colourful beast painted with rainbow swirls on a black background by the children of Shakespeare Junior School. I’m very glad we didn’t miss her out,
The final Marlands zebra was, Cherby, near the Above Bar entrance in the doorway of The Perfume Shop. Painted by the children of Cherbourg Primary School she’s a very glamorous young lady wearing a beautiful striped suit made from strips of pink, purle, blue and red material with zips that are open revealing her true colours. I loved the buttons on her legs and the pom-poms on her ears but most of all I loved her beautiful long eyelashes. Don’t tell anyone, but I think they may have been false!
It had been a long and slightly confusing day but we’d found all the zebras we’d set out to find, plus a few surprise extras. Now the trail is very close to an end, at least for us. We still haven’t seen Ticket to Ride but, now he’s been found in the river, we hope he will be fixed up and back on the trail soon. A thorough check through the list of zebras on the app revealed we were still missing two more city zebras, Sam, who was supposed to be in East Park but wasn’t and Together We Are One, a baby zebra we’d somehow missed when we were in Guildhall Square. The latter is an easy fix, the former not so much.
Hopefully Sam’s still at the vets being repaired, just like Ticket to Ride and we’ll have a chance to see both at some point. There are also the miniature zebras, along with a giant zebra, at Marwell Zoo, but I think I’ll leave them until the children go back to school and the zoo is less crowded. After all this hard work it would be a terrible shame not to see every single one.
Please see my copyright information before you copy or use any of the above words or pictures.
