I had a patch of wilderness as a child, my escape, where I played make believe, amongst the stinging nettles, and blackberry brambles stood an old tin shed. the walls were long gone, there was just a tin roof left, but to us it was not just a roof, it was our hideaway, our hut in the wild.
A stream ran along the one boundary edge, with huge old willow trees. This is where we fished for tiddlers, with a little cheap net and a jam jar strung on a string by my mum. I can still visualize her as a young woman tying that string. Or I would climb those trees and pretend I was in my tree house, or look out post. Too much reading of Swallows and Amazons or The Famous Five. At one place was a plank across the stream, I don't know who put it there, but I would sit and dangle my legs over that stream. It was truly a little nothing stream, but to me it was anything and everything I wanted it to be. On the other two sides was a tall fence and tangled bushes, nobody could see us. The entire area we called "The Bottom of the Garden."
Mum can we go and play at the "bottom of the garden," to get there you ran to the edge of the lawn, to the right was a narrow path that wound steeply down, turned and there lay our wilderness.
It's hard to explain the feeling I had as a child after a day at Primary School, I'd come home have a snack, ask my mum to go out to play and I would skip and run to the edge of the lawn that first step on the path was my escape through the wardrobe to Never Land.
We knew we had about an hour before we'd be called to dinner, but what an hour that was. That was our magical time of make believe.
I was never lonely on my own, or sometimes a friend from school would join me or my younger sister BB, but mostly I was on my own, my sister being five years younger and at that age it's too wide an age gap to play the same games.
That feeling of freedom when my foot hit the path to "The Bottom of the Garden."
Christy
P.S. Please share any special child hood memories, I'd love to hear them.
A stream ran along the one boundary edge, with huge old willow trees. This is where we fished for tiddlers, with a little cheap net and a jam jar strung on a string by my mum. I can still visualize her as a young woman tying that string. Or I would climb those trees and pretend I was in my tree house, or look out post. Too much reading of Swallows and Amazons or The Famous Five. At one place was a plank across the stream, I don't know who put it there, but I would sit and dangle my legs over that stream. It was truly a little nothing stream, but to me it was anything and everything I wanted it to be. On the other two sides was a tall fence and tangled bushes, nobody could see us. The entire area we called "The Bottom of the Garden."
Mum can we go and play at the "bottom of the garden," to get there you ran to the edge of the lawn, to the right was a narrow path that wound steeply down, turned and there lay our wilderness.
It's hard to explain the feeling I had as a child after a day at Primary School, I'd come home have a snack, ask my mum to go out to play and I would skip and run to the edge of the lawn that first step on the path was my escape through the wardrobe to Never Land.
We knew we had about an hour before we'd be called to dinner, but what an hour that was. That was our magical time of make believe.
I was never lonely on my own, or sometimes a friend from school would join me or my younger sister BB, but mostly I was on my own, my sister being five years younger and at that age it's too wide an age gap to play the same games.
That feeling of freedom when my foot hit the path to "The Bottom of the Garden."
Christy
P.S. Please share any special child hood memories, I'd love to hear them.
What lovely memories. Will children today remember happy memories of playing on their ipads? On Friday evenings I went from school to a friends house for tea and then we would go into the field behind her house to our den. It could be anything we wanted it to be and we were lost in our own world. We were about 8 years old. We wouldn't let an 8 year old do that now which is sad.
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