Child friendly garden

[The Natural Philosopher]

Darwin award?

[Ian Stirling]

Naah, just segway owner training.

[Bob Eager]

Not eligible - he's still alive and (presumably) able to contribute to the gene pool..

[Suz]

Funny how things take you right back to childhood. One of the things I used to love when I was a child was when my mother would drive through big puddles and make them splash up high. The other day I was out with my nearly-4 yr old and after the showers spotted a huge puddle about 20 foot long. I told her to watch out the window and splashed right through it. A long wall of water and a big whoosh appeared right outside her window. She turned to me and said with shining eyes. "COOL! That was COOL mummy". I had to grin.

Back to the subject I spent many hours going round our back yard trying to keep off the ground - clinging to nuts on a corrugated tin wall and walking on the render bit at the bottom, jumping from step to step outside cowshed doors. At the entrance to the yard where it was much to wide to be able to jump across I kept on the line created by a strip of wood used when the different areas of concrete were put down.

Anybody remember not stepping on the paving cracks? It was like a disease when you started it.

[Dave Stanton]

month old grandson starts to walk.

Cheers

Dave

[Brian]

[Ophelia]

Heavens YES!!! :)

[Ophelia]

Wonderful memories for you:))

Ophelia

[Suz]

Is your real name Victor Meldrew by any chance? And I'll bet I'm not the first to say that.

Suzanne

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, its omethomng entirely different.

And you are...

[Jaques d'Alltrades]

The message from Jane Ransom contains these words:

Snip of horrors...

Quite. When I was small I used to make dens at the bottom of the garden. I used to cross the deep ditch into the field behind. (Oh, and I'm talking about aged about six or so) I used to cross the road and invade the meadow opposite and play by (but occasionally, in) the pond there, or go down the road and play in the brook, and beyond that, another pond, or slope-off into the woods a quarter of a mile away, through which the brook ran and in which there was an evil pond full of black sludge and green surface weeds, and when I was ten we moved to a house which backed on to the far side of that wood, and in the acre of garden of the house were trees, trees, trees, (36 fruit trees to begin with) clumps of bamboo, a couple of stands of the rigid-leaved yucca, an air-raid shelter under a steep mound of soil, several eminently climbable trees, including a big sycamore in which I made a tree-hous^H^H^den, a summerhouse, various wooden sheds and garages, lots of lovely poisonous plants, a couple of water butts, and a nearby chemist who later sold me anything I needed for molishing bigger and better bangs.

The best I can do along those lines is catching an adder in Epping Forest and pretending it was a grass-snake so the parents wouldn't mind me taking it home. I used to handle it without gloves....

Quite. And make sure they have every opportunity to get well into that peck of dirt they have to eat in a lifetime, or their immune systems will be about as much use as a very useless thing.

[Jaques d'Alltrades]

The message from Victoria Clare contains these words:

I had one. No-one else ever knew it was there.

Dragons. And possibly muffins.

It is/was cool. Especially as when I was being 'sought' I spent a lot of time removing the inward-facing prickles with my sheath-knife (another secret).

[Jaques d'Alltrades]

The message from "Ophelia" contains these words:

I have a limited edition lithograph (204/450) of the illustrated poem "Lines and Squares". Poem by A.A.Milne, picture by E.H.Shepard.

[Suz]

sober