When I was small, I was so small I could fit inside a matchbox
When I was a child my father was big into hiking and consequently as young children myself and my siblings were taken on many a hike.
Other children I knew spent Saturdays watching cartoons and playing with friends but we usually spent it half way up some mountain.
It probably helped that our house is located on a hill on a road that dips down into town but you don't have to travel far up it to find yourself in the woods. many acres of terrain to be explored and it wasn't possible to sit in our garden without getting a glimpse of this.
When I was young enough to be suitably
Enthusiastic each Saturday brought the possibility of adventure. We could be splashing With our dogs in the streams of glenary or creeping through the woods that lead to the lake wondering nervously what creatures lurked in the dark shadows. Even as an adult I feel a little unnerved walking through a dark woods and feel a fear that can only be a byproduct of a voracious appetite for reading and an over active imagination.
Every weekend without fail we'd be bundled up and packed into the car. My dad would have his jacket pockets full of fruit and pen knife handy to carve us walking sticks .
In the summer we swam ( or In my case paddled) in the lake and chased each other up hills barely pausing to catch our breath or we walked from Carey's castle down into Glenary, running so fast down the hill it felt as though we would never stop. In the winter we still went out in wind and rain, wrapped up warm and dry and close to Christmas we collected holly to decorate the house.
It was great right up until I reached the awkward age where I was still too young to be left home unsupervised but no linger feeling the same enthusiasm for a Saturday spent up a mountain. Despite the lack of enthusiasm we were still told to put on warm coats and bundled into the car and taken up some mountain or into the woods where we punctuated the walk With intermittent whinging,
'Im hungry' , 'I'm tired' , 'I'm bored' and so my father had to get creative ( or else he probably would have been tempted to do a Hansel and Gretel on it and just leave us in the woods) in order to keep us quiet on long walks. When we went for a beach
Walk he would give us a silver mint each and we would compete to see who could make it last the longest and in doing that we'd fail to notice we'd walked the length of the beach and it was time to turn around.
In mount mellory and occasionally Glenary he would tell us they had opened a new sweet shop just around the corner and If we were to run ahead we would see it. He'd say it had been opened because of all the scouts who camped there. We were such gullible children that we fell for it every time.
When all else failed he would keep us quiet with tales of his own childhood which in turn amused and fascinated us, partly because we found the idea of our father as a child a bit mad as most kids do at a young age. On walks we would
Implore him to 'tell us a story
About when you were small' and sometimes he would but other times he would instead tell us a story that began with ' when I was small, I was so small that I lived Inside a matchbox' .....
Other children I knew spent Saturdays watching cartoons and playing with friends but we usually spent it half way up some mountain.
It probably helped that our house is located on a hill on a road that dips down into town but you don't have to travel far up it to find yourself in the woods. many acres of terrain to be explored and it wasn't possible to sit in our garden without getting a glimpse of this.
When I was young enough to be suitably
Enthusiastic each Saturday brought the possibility of adventure. We could be splashing With our dogs in the streams of glenary or creeping through the woods that lead to the lake wondering nervously what creatures lurked in the dark shadows. Even as an adult I feel a little unnerved walking through a dark woods and feel a fear that can only be a byproduct of a voracious appetite for reading and an over active imagination.
Every weekend without fail we'd be bundled up and packed into the car. My dad would have his jacket pockets full of fruit and pen knife handy to carve us walking sticks .
In the summer we swam ( or In my case paddled) in the lake and chased each other up hills barely pausing to catch our breath or we walked from Carey's castle down into Glenary, running so fast down the hill it felt as though we would never stop. In the winter we still went out in wind and rain, wrapped up warm and dry and close to Christmas we collected holly to decorate the house.
It was great right up until I reached the awkward age where I was still too young to be left home unsupervised but no linger feeling the same enthusiasm for a Saturday spent up a mountain. Despite the lack of enthusiasm we were still told to put on warm coats and bundled into the car and taken up some mountain or into the woods where we punctuated the walk With intermittent whinging,
'Im hungry' , 'I'm tired' , 'I'm bored' and so my father had to get creative ( or else he probably would have been tempted to do a Hansel and Gretel on it and just leave us in the woods) in order to keep us quiet on long walks. When we went for a beach
Walk he would give us a silver mint each and we would compete to see who could make it last the longest and in doing that we'd fail to notice we'd walked the length of the beach and it was time to turn around.
In mount mellory and occasionally Glenary he would tell us they had opened a new sweet shop just around the corner and If we were to run ahead we would see it. He'd say it had been opened because of all the scouts who camped there. We were such gullible children that we fell for it every time.
When all else failed he would keep us quiet with tales of his own childhood which in turn amused and fascinated us, partly because we found the idea of our father as a child a bit mad as most kids do at a young age. On walks we would
Implore him to 'tell us a story
About when you were small' and sometimes he would but other times he would instead tell us a story that began with ' when I was small, I was so small that I lived Inside a matchbox' .....
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