A young hero to fill us with pride

COULD the week get any worse? Aren’t you fed up with hearing the phrase “circuit breaker” and looking at squiggly graphs? Aren’t you occasionally gripped by compassion fatigue when another weepy family tells you how awful everything is?

There I was slumped in front of the local BBC news in my customary state of abject despair and suddenly there was a brighteyed little boy in a tent with a dog. Name of Max Woosey, 10, who has raised more than £40,000 for the North Devon Hospice which last February helped his neighbour Rick Abbott to achieve his final wish of dying at home.

Mr Abbott lived across the street from Max’s family in Braunton, North Devon. He was an outdoorsy person with no children of his own. His wife Sue had died of cancer in 2017 and also spent her last days in the hospice. Last Christmas Rick gave Max his tent saying: “I want you to promise me you will have an adventure in it.”

As Britain went into lockdown in March, Max, inset, kept his promise to Mr Abbott by setting up a Just Giving page e and pledging to sleep for a year in the he tent, in his back garden.

Max says that one of the best bits of sleeping outside is being able to read the Beano by the light of a torch for as long as he likes. Who knew that little boys still read the Beano? There’s hope after all.

He also has his dog for commpany on occasions, along with his teddies. Sometimes, he admits, mits he even sneaks some extra rations in.

Once he discovered an ants’ nest under the tent which was one of the less enjoyable bits of his great adventure and admits that he sometimes gets “a bit freaked out when it’s stormy weather”.

Frankly I’m surprised that social services haven’t been alerted to the fact that a young child is sleeping under canvas in his back ga garden. After all, any display of indep independence, physical daring and enterprise is usually fr frowned upon now if it in involves children.

But meanwhile – before anyone steps in to spoil his fun – three huge cheers for Max who clearly enjoyed his ap appearance on the news and, as m mum Rachael said, has found that he is able to do “something on his own th that has made a difference”. He’s the Captain Tom of the under-12s, one of those people whose determination is just the sort of tonic our gloomy country needs at the moment.