Mind Games for under 10's

I say that scaring your children on a fairly regular basis is character forming.

I do not mean meat cleaver through the door and a screwed up face amongst the splintered woodwork saying 'Daddy's Home', or anything that could actually place them in harms way but a periodic frightening to emphasise a point or ideally with some educational value.

That was my thinking behind the elaborate and actually quite spooky exercise that I thought would be both interesting and stimulating to my three young children during an autumnal week away in Northumberland.

The village scene of Bamburgh, in particular the stone built houses and a red phone box are regularly featured as the theme for jigsaw puzzles and 'guess where?'quizzes. The typical range of merchandise and souvenirs from the gifte shoppes ,either toffee, fudge, boiled sweets or just tea towels and framed art prints bear the same images. Within perhaps half a mile there is however an unprecedented choice of heritage and historic associations that could easily fill a wholesalers warehouse on a Newcastle Trading Estate with bric a brac and something to proudly place on a display shelf or eventually relegate to the back of a kitchen drawer.

Just up the road lived Grace Darling who, with her father, crewed and rowed out one stomy night to rescue desperate souls whose ship was foundering on the treacherous rocky outcrops of the Farne Islands. However, the most dominant and magnificent landmark between the village and the sea is Bamburgh Castle.

In technical and architectural terminology it is massive. The silhouette is easily recognised from some bit-parts and atmospheric scenes in high budget movies, I seem to remember it behind Costner and Freeman in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves (note to self- better check this), and also as a backdrop for various pop videos most notably one with a windswept Brian Ferry. The Castle rivals the best in England in terms of size and historic significance being located very much on the front line against attack and invasion from the north and the sea. First mention in archives of a fortification on the volcanic mound are from 547 AD and the list of occupiers, usurpers, besiegers and chancers includes early Britons, Anglo Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Tudors and a few noblemen, marauding Scots, powerful clergy and for much of the last century rebuilt and made commercially viable with the industrial based fortunes originating from a family dynasty in the Victorian period.

Our weeks stay was in an old coach house, set back behind the biscuit tin photo-montage of the through road, just past the chocolatiers, gourmet sausage makers and copper kettle signed tea shop. A low squat building in warm local stone which provided plenty of space for 2 grown ups and three active children. The east facing frontage and the bedrooms in which the children were to sleep looked directly towards and with uninterrupted views of the Castle. In the gloomy dusk light, about 4.30pm in autumn, the floodlights on the sidelines of the football pitch at the only level part of the village below the sheer outcrop were fired into action. Although some half a mile from our accommodation the white misty light was all intruding and cast shadows deep into our holidy house.

My conspiracy, innocently devised for entertainment and educational content for the children,had been planned some weeks before whilst I was sat in my office at work.

I am fascinated by things historical but my family, generally are less so. My constant regurgitation of facts, mostly true but with a scattering of urban myths, at every opportunity of a trip or day out may have resulted in their frequent glazed. "give it a rest Dad" expressions.

Over the time before the vacation I fabricated on the oldest office paper stocks a series of letters which would purport to have been written by three ghostly children who resided in some limbo-type existence up the Castle. These referred to my own children and  in real-time the correspondence mentioned their clothes, mannerisms and day to day activities as though being closely watched from one of the barred and arrow slit apertures in the west wall of the castle.

For the sake of authenticity I pre-soaked the paper in a weak solution of office tea and when dry, warped and a bit brittle carefully invented characters, emotions and aspirations for the three incumbents and wrote such in my best ink fountain pen with further smudges to add flavour.

Of course,there was no logic, sense or actual possibility in what I was fabricating but to me it seemed a bit of harmless, and yes, education based fun. My office were instructed to post out one of the sequenced letters every day for the week. The Hull postmark would not be noticed if I intercepted the mail on the doormat before taking it to my children.

The ruse was very effective, not so much in its learning value but ensuring that my children were, for much of the stay, petrified of showing themselves in the windows at the front of the house or indeed anywhere in the village which could be overlooked by the fictionalised, and frightening vapour based castle occupants.

It took some explaining and incentivised reassurance to retrieve the situation and the confidence of  the children, suffice to say that the trading figures for the village gift shops all showed a very unseasonal profit for that autumn week.