This is not on the basis of age, elevation to a certain level of natural all-knowingness or just the realisation that it just a little bit stupid and meaningless.
It is out of shame and embarrassment.
I have tendered my resignation on the grounds of not being aware of something tremendously interesting on my very doorstep.
As my family will verify, I am a seemingly endless reservoir of knowledge. Some of it is interesting, a bit of it is worth remembering for the purposes of life enrichment but I will be the first to admit to the fact that the bulk of it consists of useless facts and trivia.
My children, all now grown up, did readily absorb the knowledge that I was able to impart to them as a captive audience whilst out on a road trip, a walk, watching television or in any situation whatsoever. I did take advantage of the ability of their young minds to just absorb an infinitesimal amount of information. Some fabrications of the truth crept in, a few urban myths and in other cases I even amazed myself by producing a very detailed and unnecessarily complicated back story to flesh out a work of complete fiction.
I do know that some of the enthusiasm that I showed in pointing out and describing landscape features, rock formations, cloud shapes and sunsets, breeds of dog and old historic buildings did enthuse my children and they maintain a healthy interest in such things.
I feel sorry when I see a car full of children with their attention taken by a TV screen set into the front seat headrests or their little faces illuminated by a handheld video game console. Their parents or guardians up front do however look relaxed and composed as they have, in a disinterested and materialistic way, avoided having to address the barrage of questions which inquisitive and intelligent offspring are prone to throw up such as "What is that geological formation called?", " Mummy and Daddy, is that an Ox-bow lake?", "Remind us, which is the motte and which is the bailey?" or even "Are we there yet?".
This latter favourite of parental interrogation may have lapsed into obsolescence in modern life because lets face it, children and LED displays have a natural affinity and reaching a destination would be disappointing if inevitably meaning having to stop viewing or gaming, almost regardless of the duration of that journey.
My children were bombarded with facts, figures, statistics, assumptions, speculation and hearsay on each and every opportunity.
There was some educational content in terms of local history, socio-economic factors, geographical processes and human interest.
I had our home area and a radius of about 40 miles pretty well tied up on a factual basis. Old world war two bomb sites, redundant factories, former railway lines and features, interesting churches, homes of famous citizens, locations of gruesome contemporary crimes and murders, supposedly haunted buildings, boarded up terraces awaiting demolition, miscellaneous ruins, building sites with work in progress or pending, particularly muddy sections of the river, scorched tarmac with the outline of a burnt out car, scruffy front gardens and funny sounding street or place names.
I was therefore completely taken aback, shocked and totally embarrassed just yesterday afternoon to come across the magnificent ruins of a Medieval fortress in my home patch that I had no prior knowledge of.
I had let myself down but even more disappointing was that I had let my family down. How this had arisen I frankly have no rational explanation.
The vast array of towers and walls are in the village of Sheriff Hutton not too far to the north east of York. The village does have a mystical, magical name that just jumps out at you from a map. It is a compelling and evocative name . It is somewhere that must be visited.
I may have subconsciously noticed a road sign pointing in its direction whilst out driving over the last 33 years of living in the county but I cannot account for never actually having been there.
My children have not had the benefit of going there, seeing the Castle or taking in the many, many facts that I would normally have researched or simply made up to embellish and garnish that experience.
Myself? Well, I feel that I am mentally and spiritually impoverished by not having been to Sheriff Hutton until yesterday. I have a lot to do to make it up to my deprived offspring and compensate them for the gaping hole in their childhood experiences.
I am not sure where to start but usually Wikipedia and The National Trust website come up with the goods to alleviate the guilt and downright shame of it all.
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