I wonder why I like going for country rambles? They hardly ever turn out exactly as I picture them. Take Romantic Walks In Woods for example …
There was that idyllic teenage day when the blue-eyed coxswain of the boat crew took me for a day inland. I was an innocent, romantic sort of girl and as I prepared our picnic lunch I looked forward to leafy glades and perhaps a bit of hand-holding as the sun went down. (Honestly. We didn’t go around wearing X Certificates on our sleeves in those days.) Anyway, there we were, all dreamy brown eyes looking into sea-washed blue eyes under a canopy of translucent green.
We chose our picnic spot by a stream and, casually, I cracked the first hard-boiled egg. Alas, I must have been a wee bit too dreamy during its preparation because out it slithered – raw, into my lap.
‘Swoosh some water over it,’ said my swain, with barely suppressed guffaws. I did and the albumen went mad and foamed all over my skirt. More water. More foam. As sylvan interludes go, the afternoon wasn’t a great success. It put me off the coxswain but I still enjoyed woodland walks so away I went later, hand-in-hand with my future husband. I was a shade more sophisticated by now and much better at boiling eggs but still inclined to gush at the first spring flower.
‘Oh look, David – did you see those violets on that bank? There must have been hundreds of them!’ I trilled.
‘There were seven,’ he said. ‘You do get carried away, don’t you?’
On we rambled, having a ding-dong battle over those damned violets until, with a heavy sigh, he about-turned and frogmarched me back (about a hundred miles) to count the beastly things. There were twenty-eight.
Nowadays, on wintry Sunday afternoons we pile the washing-up in the sink, sort out everybody’s Wellingtons and, before anyone has a chance to become faint-hearted, we are off to the woods, en famille, arms swinging, nostrils a-crackle.
‘Today we will look for fossils,’ I state. From previous excursions our living room already looks like Brighton beach.
Dutifully the children kick a few flinty stones en route. Once we found, along a country lane, a marvellously strange green stone. It had swirls of light and dark jade and was smooth to the touch.
‘Right,’ I said – it was one of my ‘expanding young minds’ days. ‘We will take this to the museum next week and find out exactly what kind of quartz it is.’
Madly keen, I banged on the curator’s door and held out our find. A dusty eagle of a man peered down at the palm of my hand and said ‘Yes?’
‘Please, we found this on the Berkshire Downs and we’d like it identified,’ I piped. For some nervous reason I seemed to be imitating Anna’s voice.
He gave me a long, strange look. ‘It’s basic sludge,’ he said. ‘Brought down from the iron-ore smelters in the Midlands. Used for road mending.’
He did a little drawing of an iron-ore smelter and explained all about the muck settling at the bottom and cooling down and going green. He was quite nice about it in a bleak sort of way. But we left fairly quickly before anyone had a chance to tell him that Mummy thought it was jade.
Undaunted, in nearly all weathers, we stride off out again. I worry that children do not seem sufficiently involved with nature these days and I just hope that some of my enthusiasm is rubbing off, although I sometimes have reason to doubt it.
There are bonus days, of course, with Daniel trotting along in the sunshine clutching three warm, lolloping buttercups, and once we saw the greatly enlarged shadow of a wood- pecker, high on a tree. Often I save the life of our washing machine by discovering, in the nick of time, that the pockets of shorts are loaded down with ‘interesting stones’ which Dan has presumably been collecting on little garden walks of his own. And there are days, too, when Anna’s bedroom looks like one vast nature project.
But young minds are notoriously fickle, so I keep on pegging away … ‘Do look, children – here’s a beautiful piece of speckled blue eggshell. Shall we take it home and look it up in our bird book?’
‘Will you carry it, Mum?’
‘And this pretty piece of fungus.’
‘And this interesting old mossy branch.’
Gamely I stagger along behind. It is better really – less tiring – to limit oneself to one subject per ramble. So next time we go out I take a deep breath and try again …
‘There are all kinds of ivy leaves,’ I say enthusiastically. ‘There are little pointy ones and big fat shiny ones. Look, I’ve picked a lovely assortment.’ I spin round, beaming happily. The children are nowhere to be seen, but a tall, middle-aged man and his dog are drinking in my every word. Flashing them a sickly smile I wander on, swinging my leafy bundle with complete lack of nonchalance. If I ever do catch up with the children I know just what is going to happen.
‘Hurry up, Mum,’ they will say. ‘We’re missing something good on the telly.’