The Sawdust Road

In the early 1970s, my grandfather would take me, my sister Kate and brother Ben, suitably clad in anoraks and wellies, through the field to Barcaldine forest : not the Sutherland's grove part, but the working heart, where only the green Forestry Landovers rumbled up the tracks, and the air was fresh and filled with fir. Along with the collie, Pandy, we made it our own wild playground. Always we'd slip our fingers into pink foxglove bells and come home with pink fingers, elegant to the last

Then we'd wash the poison (digitalis, from the foxgloves)off our fingers, and sit down for lunch, before settling down to a game of Beggar My Neighbour, if it was raining. It usually was.

On frantic days like this, when I hardly take a break for twelve hours, it's a boon to remember those distant days of walking in the forest, tumbling, jumping and rolling on the wet sawdust bing.