Paignton Zoo

Today's 'work' was a delightful trip with the company to Paignton Zoo; my first ever visit and was I impressed!? Paignton Zoo is the Lion of zoos - a fantastic, wonderful, enormous 'environmental park' full of the wildest animals imaginable, right in south Devon.

We set off from Sandygate at 08.45am, two yellow Hookways coaches full of staff, a genuine Carry On at your Convenience of works trips. Not W C Boggs, of course, but the Payment Agency, a collection of civil servants, all delighted to travel with colleagues - friends, really - down the M5 and A38/A279 to Paignton.

With our clipboards, and divided up into about five groups, we wandered around the park like that hilarious bunch in the 1962 film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I'm not sure if I was Spencer Tracey - the policeman - or Mickey Rooney. Or Peter Falk. Anyway, there was no Big W, just a series of questions about various animals, all answered by diligently reading the title plates to each animal. My favourate has to be either the tiger or the gorilla.