Anniversary Blog

I'm the kind of man who tends to miss anniversaries. Well, they're all a bit silly really, aren't they?

So it's no surprise that I missed the anniversary of my own blog, where I first posted last year on the 12th October with some thoughts on the odd things which trigger memories. So why not do something similar today and begin with 'fairy clocks'?

I'm finding it, by the way, more difficult to post blogs regularly. When I started the idea was to ramble on about anything and everything, rather in the way I like to have long, discursive conversations in the pub. I seem to have become more self-conscious and desirous of producing something 'polished' whenever I write. Maybe, this is the time to make a new year's resolution and re-find the joy of talking nonsense.

So, fairy clocks. In other words, the dandelion in its seeding stage, those pretty balls of spores that children used to blow in order to tell the time, the number of puffs required to denude the stalk being the hour of the day. I wonder if they still do that.

I left the house to catch a bus the other day and was surprised to see the lawn carpeted with them. They seemed to have sprung up over night. It triggered memories of spending summer days wandering around fields and woods many years ago. In those days, during the summer holidays, children would leave the house after breakfast and return for tea, their parents quite unconcerned about danger, human, animal or physical.

We would swim unsupervised in the 'forty-foot' drain, make arrows from garden canes and nails, throw stones into wasps nests, light fires, practice riding bikes around corners without touching the handle-bars, and slash with sticks at vegetation.

By that time we'd gone beyond blowing the spores off fairy clocks. We preferred to do our part in the symbiotic relationship with them by kicking the hell out of them. No matter. The seed was spread far and wide, as the dandelions wanted. (Forgive the teleology). just as birds eat berries and pass the seeds through their gut, and bees spread pollen in return for nectar, we were doing our bit for dandelions in return for fun and fresh air.

The earlier game of blowing at them to tell the time had given us another benefit, namely a healthy lesson in scepticism. When three little boys get three different times from the exercise, they tend to doubt the foolish adults who had told them such nonsense.

Why do parents tell their children all these lies? Jack Frost painting the windows in winter; fairies (again) leaving coins under the pillow in exchange for teeth, or constructing perfect rings of mushrooms within which to cavort.

To be honest, those are all beautiful conceits, but why aren't children told that they are metaphors? Yes, I know that people say that 'children must be allowed their childhood', and the years of childhood are indeed the years of wonder. But isn't it just as wonderful to know the truth about these miracles of nature. I still don't know how the phenomenon of mushroom rings occurs.

The essential, defining characteristic of the human animal is his mind. But more than that, we have evolved in such a way that we have perhaps the longest period of immaturity in the animal kingdom, something like 16% of our lives. All that time to grow and learn, learn, learn.

And yet how often do you hear parents impatiently discouraging their children's questions or palming them off with cliches and ex cathedra judgments.

You can tell a lot about a person by discovering when he stopped believing in Father Christmas. It could be useful at a university selection board. Imagine:

Interviewer: When did you stop believing in Father Christmas?

Candidate: But I haven't. I still believe in Father Christmas.

Interviewer: I'm sorry, but a degree in maths, physics, biology or philosophy is out of the question in your case. I think you should read theology.

Yes, that's what I'm getting round to. Religion. Stuffing children's heads full of superstitious mythology is one of the worst kinds of child abuse. We rightly make a hell of a fuss about debauching their bodies, but let's show their minds a bit of respect too.

I'm not talking about children being told that Jesus is weeping because they've been caught stealing a Mars bar; or terrified by visions of hell because a mother thinks her son's socks are suspiciously stiff.

Nor am I condemning religion because some rogue priests allow the frustrations of their life-denying celibacy to spill over into confirmation candidates. Or because others use it as an excuse for murder or the persecution of teachers who give teddy bears a funny name and tell kids the story of the three little pigs

Funny where the thought process leads you.