To those who remember the days before computers, the web and all that, when advanced technology was Meccano, Hornby trains and the crystal wireless set, as far as boys were concerned, a recent item here "When We Were Very Young" brought calls from several people who remembered the frog-spawning and other activities. But one said "Your priorities were wrong. Tree-climbing was the big thrill for boys and even girls." He remembered the exhilaration of being able to see far and wide, and thought nothing of the dangers. Indeed you learned a lot about the climbing properties of each kind of tree. Chestnut, ash, oak and so on. Perhaps the dangers were part of the attraction. In one famous demesne in a seaside county he recalls climbing into a giant conifer. He couldn't remember what species, and finding, with his friend, a veritable platform of pine needles on which they both could stretch out full length in great comfort.
Another remembered a wood in which his parents had the loan of a cottage. A small river ran through it and, for the first time in his life he came across eels. He and a companion caught about half a dozen which were, he thinks about 10 inches long, maybe a foot. They managed to catch them with their children's little net on a bamboo stick, and put them into a tin bath outside the cottage. Next morning not one eel. Had someone stolen them? But the father said eels were like that. They could cross land easily, even the stones of the path, and after that they were in woodland and in a few yards back in their element in the river. In this same demesne there was a famous badger settlement. Naturalists used often to come to see the brocks emerge at night. They wrote about it in the papers. The demesne was on the coast and the water shallow. There were flatfish a-plenty. Not big enough to engage real fishermen but ideal chasing for boys - with their nets or, if you were very sophisticated a spear, i.e. a stick well sharpened, if not a two-pronged fork borrowed from a farmer.
Probably the picture that remains in this man's mind's eye, he says, is that of coming into the demesne by a good wide rear entrance and seeing the drive swarming with red squirrels - a dozen at least, he says, all apparently after chestnuts which had fallen. How many people, if we are to believe him, have seen a dozen red squirrels all in one eyeful? This is the last of the "When We Were Very Young" thoughts.