Walkabout

We were brought up as children of nature.

This does not mean that we wandered about semi-naked, holding sunbeams in our hands, chasing butterflies or wearing flowers in our hair but just to appreciate the natural world around us.

It was, on reflection, a privileged upbringing in that we always lived in houses with a garden or with the open countryside fully available just the other side of a timber gate or at the end of the street. Our parents encouraged us to play out, in their sight in our earliest of years and then on a bit more of a far ranging basis.

We would think nothing of leaving the house and staying out all day walking or riding bikes across a farmers newly sown field, dismantling and reassembling piles of straw bales, throwing stones at increasingly dilapidated old buildings or shouting at livestock in a manic attempt to impersonate their mooing, bleating or neighing.

Trees were there as a challenge to clamber up with no real thought as to how to get back down. Streams and ditches could be jumped, bridged with a cast off bough or fallen into up to your knees or worse.

A favourite activity was excavating the steep sides of the railway cutting whose thick and heavy clay was a good source of large fossils. We stopped this after watching the landslide scene in the film of The Railway Children.

We were skilled in the manufacture of weapons from whatever we could scavenge and would make very effective bows and arrows from springy willows or saplings. There is a lot of fun and perhaps some risk of injury in a full blown battle between rival gangs of 10 year olds with the sky full of projectiles and the whack-whack of stick fights. The victory, which was hard to define, was usually claimed by each side but only after a strategic retreat to the safety and security of your own back garden or home when the bravado really kicked in.

Bike rides took us even further afield. In the search for a good fast downhill we would travel to reach the distant hills, at least 5 miles but totally unprepared for any mechanical problems or punctures with our town bikes, big sisters shopper bike and Raleigh Choppers.

We learnt by this innocent route a lot about the sometimes harsh realities of the world.

In this manner I saw my first drowned dog in a stretch of the canal. It was bloated and puffy but we dare not prod it with our ever present sharp sticks in case it burst. In another incident down by a sharp bend on the river path a car travelling too fast skidded and careered down the bank into the water. Fortunately there were following motorists and a few anglers around to rescue the distressed occupants but it could have been nasty.

We would come across squashed animals on the country roads or find a small bird, injured and helpless and at the mercy of its predators.

I clearly remember walking in Scotland with my family when we were caught up by a slow moving, unattended car whose handbrake had slipped out of hold on a gentle slope down the harbour. We rallied round and stopped its progress until the owner, red faced and embarrassed was found.

A man, obviously well drunk, decided unwisely to cross the busy main road at the traffic light junction by walking between the back of my Father's car and our caravan and was temporarily transported whilst straddling the tow-bar.

Sat cosily under a large fishing umbrella I was disappointed to hear a steady stream of rain only to realise that it was someone urinating on our camouflaged position on the way back from the pub.

I was, even as a small child, fascinated by human behaviour. On the beach in Norfolk two women were engaged in a full blown fight for the affection and favour of the man who drove the visitors in an amphibious vehicle across the low tide sands.

On our countryside adventures we would often see courting couples emerging from the undergrowth re-arranging their dishevelled clothes. I could sympathise as brambles and thorns could wreak havoc and even penetrate through to your pants in pursuit of that concealed den or short-cut.

We would return to our respective homes happy, tired and grubby. In answer to our parents casual enquiries about what we had got up to we would always mutter, 'not a lot really, it's quite boring 'round here'.