Wanderings off the beaten track
By Reina Free
The rhythmic hammerings of a woodpecker decided me to investigate just for the sake of a diversion and a livening up of the mind. I have been told that this hammering is a kind of mating call. Interesting, is it not? A prelude to courtship, mating, nest building, babies. Again it makes me meander about today’s human behaviours.
And so I wandered off to the small wood behind the dew pond where the flint pits once were. Young children – one of whom was my late mother-in-law, a Pearce from Lee Common – were sent there after school to collect flints for building material.
My wandering thoughts drift into the past. In the timeless stillness of this small wood I hear children’s voices, singing, calling out to each other. I see girls in bonnets, striped aprons with big pockets, boys in caps and grey woollen pants. Mothers, together with baskets with thick slices of bread with jam or beef dripping slightly salted. One small girl cries that she has cut her finger, two girls investigate each other’s baskets. An older boy is picking for his Mum a bunch of celandines and pink whitewood anemones. My mother-in-law told me that in the evening they platted straw for the hat industry in Luton.
What a great deal has changed in the world in which we now live. It makes me wonder if today’s children are happier. Materially they have much more – computers, iPods, mobile phones. They are told things that deny them the right to be children. I remember as a little girl during the war we were happy with small things – however, what do I know! And so back again into Kings Lane. The woodpecker has stopped his hammering love call, the children grew up, married, had children, now all part of the past. But the celandines and wood anemones are once more in bloom. The yellow hammers are singing; I look up and have a word for us all.
By Reina Free
The rhythmic hammerings of a woodpecker decided me to investigate just for the sake of a diversion and a livening up of the mind. I have been told that this hammering is a kind of mating call. Interesting, is it not? A prelude to courtship, mating, nest building, babies. Again it makes me meander about today’s human behaviours.
And so I wandered off to the small wood behind the dew pond where the flint pits once were. Young children – one of whom was my late mother-in-law, a Pearce from Lee Common – were sent there after school to collect flints for building material.
My wandering thoughts drift into the past. In the timeless stillness of this small wood I hear children’s voices, singing, calling out to each other. I see girls in bonnets, striped aprons with big pockets, boys in caps and grey woollen pants. Mothers, together with baskets with thick slices of bread with jam or beef dripping slightly salted. One small girl cries that she has cut her finger, two girls investigate each other’s baskets. An older boy is picking for his Mum a bunch of celandines and pink whitewood anemones. My mother-in-law told me that in the evening they platted straw for the hat industry in Luton.
What a great deal has changed in the world in which we now live. It makes me wonder if today’s children are happier. Materially they have much more – computers, iPods, mobile phones. They are told things that deny them the right to be children. I remember as a little girl during the war we were happy with small things – however, what do I know! And so back again into Kings Lane. The woodpecker has stopped his hammering love call, the children grew up, married, had children, now all part of the past. But the celandines and wood anemones are once more in bloom. The yellow hammers are singing; I look up and have a word for us all.