Child friendly? Oh, do grow up!
LIKE TWINS Melissa and Georgia Laurie, pictured, I once went on a “bioluminescence tour”.theirs was in Mexico, mine was in Tobago.
Here’s what happens.you strike off into the ocean on a paddle board as it’s getting dark, take a left somewhere and end up in a black lagoon surrounded by monstrous mangrove swamps silhouetted against the tropical night sky.
Here the bioluminescence (plankton that emit light when touched or disturbed) is intense.you swirl your hands in the water as though through a thousand diamonds. Each dip of your paddle is a sparkling flash.
After a while the guide tells you to pitch off your paddle board into the ebony water and swim through the bioluminescence. Another thrill.
You have to have implicit trust in the guide as the evening’s entertainment includes a couple of activities which seem potentially lethal such as 1) paddle boarding into a night-time ocean, and 2) swimming in a lagoon where heaven-knowswhat could be lurking.
I thought about my tour when I read about how on their similar trip Melissa was attacked by a crocodile which Georgia bravely fought off by punching it on the nose.thankfully Melissa is recovering. Unluckily for them their guide was known to be dodgy.
Mindful of their terrifying experience I’m not sure I’d go on that particular excursion again. On the other hand I’m really glad I did it the first time.
WHAT IS it with grated carrot? I made some coleslaw the other day and the satisfaction of watching the roaring Magimix shred them cannot be overstated.
But as it is impossible to leave the scene of a crime without shedding microscopic evidence so is it also impossible to grate carrots without bits turning up everywhere. Carrots are the vegetable equivalent of glitter – impossible to get rid of.
Long after the coleslaw had been eaten I found a tiny strand of carrot on a picture frame. How? Why?
PEOPLE are inconsistent.those who believe that it was right and proper to derail the career of cricketer Ollie Robinson on the basis of sexist/racist tweets posted when he was a teenager are likely to hold that Shamima Begum (who joined Islamic State and went to Syria as a 15-year-old) should be welcomed back to Britain and forgiven for everything (including her refusal to condemn the Manchester bombing).
On the other side of the culture divide those who think Robinson’s youthful folly should not be held against him tend to think that Begum (who now describes herself as a “dumb kid who made one mistake”) should be left to rot in a refugee camp for what she did as an adolescent.
Either you’re accountable for what you say and do in your extreme youth or you’re not. Cherry picking is not an option.
WAS IT the cold May that did it? Casting your mind back over the mish-mash of weather this year could explain it. But whatever the cause there is no question that British gardens are looking particularly gorgeous in their early summer finery. Lush, blooming and bursting with colour. There is a riot of poppies up and down the land, self-seeded, no gardeners involved, here today and more tomorrow. Climbing roses clinging, swaying, their petals are crinolines of softly coloured silk. Dogwood, cistus, salvia, petunias...so much going on.
I was brought back to earth with a bump when a young couple showed me a picture of their garden. They moved to a new house recently with their three small children. They have a big garden but their aim was to make it a “child-friendly garden”. My heart sank. The words “child-friendly” and “garden” should never appear together.
In fact the very phrase “child-friendly” makes me grumpy.
It’s all part of our modern belief that children must come first. Adults give up seats on trains so children can sit. Parents provide special food and carry snacks at all times so the small people will never have to endure a moment’s hunger or thirst.
The child-friendly garden envisaged by this couple included artificial grass and a sunken trampoline in pride of place. The garden as municipal playground, where no knees will be scratched and no insects bite.
For that’s what artificial grass does. It’s like covering the ground with a plastic bag.
A garden should be a place of scents and textures, of creepy-crawlies, of decay and growth, of dappled sunshine and dank undergrowth. It should be a place for raucous play but also a place where you respect the plants and don’t trample on them. (Or else!). You learn that if you eat a sweet fallen apple you check it for weevils first, digging a thumbnail into the juiciness. You learn that dock leaves miraculously stop the hurt of nettles.
You lie in real grass feeling the cool scratchy softness and watch an ant climbing a single blade.
The obsession with making everything safe and sanitised for children does them no favours. It just allows adults off the hook. If they’re safe in their rooms playing a computer game then they can’t come to any physical harm. Releasing them into the wild is risky but it has to be done.
Of course there must be common sense. Cover garden ponds when there are tinies tottering around, but being safe is about learning rather than eliminating all risks.
So, young parents, let your modest back garden be a world and a wilderness full of delights and some dangers. That’s what is really child-friendly.
ONE OF THE things I missed badly during lockdown was the sound of the church bells on a Sunday morning and the bell ringers’ practice session in the middle of the week.
Happily they’re back, the swelling soundscape of tolling and pealing, of apparent cacophony resolved into receding harmony over and over. It’s lovely. It may not have the desired effect of summoning me to a church service but it provides more spiritual uplift than any sermon. I only hope that some moaning minnie doesn’t complain about the noise as happened in Kenton, Devon, where one resident living near All Saints Church claimed the chimes of the church clock were bad for their mental health. One complaint.
As a result, the bells have now been muffled.
If you don’t like the sound of church bells don’t move near a church. Not difficult is it?