A more innocent time

This is a look inside my absolute favourite book when I was a child, and one I read over and over again. It is 'Enid Blyton's Nature Lover's Book'; the second half has identification details of birds, trees and wild flowers by the month they are seen, plus wildlife poems and short stories, but it was the first half of the book which I really loved. It was made up 24 chapters, two for each month of the year, each detailing a walk in the country or by the sea. I think I learned more about birds and animals, trees, wild flowers and the countryside from this book than I ever did in any class at school. But it won't be available now and if it was, it would no doubt be frowned upon.

Each of the walks was done by three children; a boy of 11, his sister, a little younger, and their six year old brother. It started on a day a bit like today – wet and miserable, when the children were bored, which was why it came to mind. But here is the controversial bit; the walks were accompanied by the new next door neighbour, Mr Meredith (who soon became known as 'Uncle Merry') who happened to be a wildlife writer who pointed things out to the children on the walks. I suspect if this was being written nowadays, Uncle Merry couldn't be a stranger from next door. At the very least he could perhaps be a real Uncle (who had passed all his CRB checks), but he'd probably have to be one of the parents.

When I was not a lot older than these children, a friend and I discovered that living near to us was the late Mr P W B (Peter) Semmens. Railway enthusiasts of a certain age will immediately recognise the name; he was a prolific writer of railway books and latterly responsible for opening the National Railway Museum at York. We were standing outside his house when he spotted us and invited us in, and then gave us a tour of his study showing some of the masses of railway memorabilia that he owned, and lots of his photographs of trains over the years. A charming man, but I can't imagine that happening nowadays.

I'm sure there were no fewer problems in those days but I am glad that I had my childhood in what was, at least outwardly, a much more innocent time.