When they are not on the sports fields, boys of today can hardly be dragged away from computers and computer games. A friend recently produced from a pile of miscellaneous old books and periodicals a school magazine of the early 1930s, showing another side of boys' leisure time. For his grandfather's name appeared under a short essay: "How I spend the weekend". When not playing rugby or cricket, he wrote, he rambled the nearby hills with his friend, always, he stressed, making their own dinner or tea out in the open over a wood fire. One spot not three miles from their home drew them regularly because of a small river or stream. They often walked it from source to the small lake into which it flowed. Their great interest in it lay in damning up the flow in a suitable pebble-bottomed pool and catching trout in their hands. Small trout, and after inspecting them, the trout were released.
This was the time when boys still collected birds' eggs - as did some serious grown-ups, too. He recalled a mistle thrush's nest and eggs of some sort of duck in a little island in the river. But their biggest excitement was in the fire on which they cooked their meals. Nothing very elaborate, of course, boiling water for tea and frying rashers and eggs. Dead hawthorn from the odd hedge they found the easiest fuel - and it smelled well. Once they tried Irish stew. Their mothers cut up the meat and potatoes and onions for them, but they were bored at the length of time it took to cook in their billycans.
Overall their main interest was in getting to know what they regarded as "their" territory. They seldom met anyone else. There were few cars on the road. Little agriculture and no weekend cottages. They kept mostly to the river and the heather and the fields. The population was sparse. The remarkable aspect, in thinking it over, some 60 odd years later, is that weekend after weekend two boys of about 12 or 13 could not only be allowed, but positively encouraged, by parents to roam the hills on their own. "Fresh air" was much spoken of in cities. It was an era of innocence, in so many ways.
As to birds, again, he mentioned their excitement when a bird of some size landed on a post about a yard from their billycan fire. They didn't know what it was until it sounded loudly "cuckoo" and went off. That was one egg they never found. Did someone say just now "Heck, they were easily pleased, I'm away for a burger"?