h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Glad you like it. Oz ain't bad either. In fact the first time I came across you on hootoo was in GBs journal and you were recommending looking at some place west of Alice Springs...

F43348?thread=3723144&skip=20&show=20#p43689690

..what a memory you have Paff. You should go on Mastermind..special subject,Hootoo...

I remember as a kid in England, we would be forever going for walks across the fields, up and down the hills, into the forests. There would be up to 20 of us kids, and didn't have a care or worry, or money for that matter...

We would pick blackberries to eat, raid a small cottage garden for rhubarb, drink water straight from a running stream...

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be...



Peeb

Funny that. Fields and hills and blackberries is what I do now with the nippers. We get excited about the first blackberry of the year, or the first bluebells, or the nights drawing in and 'battening down the hatches' and the first time you smell smoke from someone's chimney.

But when I was a kid I lived in London, so nostalgia for me goes like this:

I remember as a kid, we would be playing frizbee in the middle of the street and someone would shout "car" and we'd all run onto the pavement while the car went past. Or going to the park on our bikes and getting pushed off the witches hat by a kid who had a knife.

Maybe my 'concrete and tarmac' childhood explains why I'm insisting on having a 'field and moor' adulthood.

In an earlier posting we talked about this 24/7 life. The worst part about it for me is that children are expected to lose their innocence and wonder and imagination at an earlier and earlier age. That may be an old fashioned point of view, but I believe that children should never be allowed to lose their childhood....

We used to go to a forest called Humford Woods, near Blyth, and my favourite flowers were bluebells. Talking about cars though, our street, Tynedale Drive, was a really long street, and there was only ever one bloke who owned a car, an Austin A40. The road was bitumen with wide footpaths, but our Fruit and Vegs were delivered by an old man with a horse and cart..what memories..

As I get older, I feel a strenghtening desire to revisit my old area when I come for a holiday next year. I know that things will be different, but at least I can "re-live" the times in my imagination...




Peeb

I agree, and although it's an old fashioned point of view, I'm finding that more people are wanting to get off the merry-go-round, and that 'old fashioned' is becoming the new 'new'.

Childhood
We've successfully brainwashed the nippers into appreciating the simple things. Yes, they may well get to an age where they feel that Devon is a backwater and they want to go off to university in London or somewhere, but for now they are convinced that there's nothing better than putting croissants and coffee in a basket and heading off for Saturday morning breakfast on the moor.

Horse and cart
The only horse and cart I remember from being a kid was the rag-n-bone man. Where we live now there is a woman who walks her pony at the same time as walking the dog. She ties them both up outside the shop when she goes in. That's something I never saw 30something years ago in London, but seems quite natural here.

Going back
You might want to check that some of your old haunts are still there. I found that the A1066 had been built on my childhood playgroup building about 15 years ago. I didn't think I was the sentimental sort, but I was gutted to find it was gone and that I hadn't known.

You should come up to Essex for a camping trip. You've still got my instructions! Which I am thinking I may ask for them to be posted after all.

I've GoogleEarthed a lot of my old hometown, Paff, and apart from some new housing and schools, it appears to have remained the same...

I won't know until I visit though. When you bring your kids up to enjoy the sort of life they have now, they will always keep that in their hearts, no matter where they go in their lives...
Then, when they have their own children, you will find that they will want to raise them in the same way they were raised themselves...

All things aside, they carry your genetic make-up, so unless there exists a mutation on their DNA.., they will do as you and your wife has done.



Peeb (Amateur Philosopher)