YOU’LL GET square eyes” our parents would caution us in the 1980s as we were ensconced in front of the television mainlining Neighbours (steady, some useful life lessons) or Home and Away (frivolous, a bit racy). It may have encouraged an unfathomable affection for Jason or Kylie but still these moments were punctuations in a childhood spent mainly outside – poking, prodding, making (destroying) and discovering.
Anyone in charge of an animal had the routine drummed into them:the garden, with our own rules and regulations that were mainly fallen foul of by the younger sibling and visiting smalls. We’d wrap potatoes in foil and stick them into the smouldering embers of the bonfire, poking them in with sticks, and wait hopefully for a baked potato of supreme scrumptiousness. We identified trees and flowers and noted them down – I’m still thrilled to see a great spotted woodpecker descend on the bird feeder or spot a bullfinch flitting across the lane when we walk the dogs before supper. There would be hours lost to damming, undamming, tinkering and generally messing about in the stream. This did not appear to us as a privilege but looking at it now, through the ubiquitous smartphone filter, it seems like an unparalleled luxury: a naturally curious and independent childhood. It mattered not a jot what everyone else was doing – we were having fun exploring.
