Open Writing

“Mam, can I have some jam jars please. And some band.’’

Band is the Yorkshire dialect word for string. My boyhood was spent in a remote mining village, a place where most folk spoke in dialect.

Mother would be about her daily chores, washing or ironing, dusting, polishing or baking. But she would promptly make time to get the jars and string.

“And don’t go falling in that pond,’’ she would caution.

String was tied to the top of each jar to serve as a carrying handle.

Away we would go, happy to be embarking on a fishing trip in the delightful first week of the long summer holiday, Philip Kaye, Alan Kaye, Brian Banks, me.

Away to the pond by the wood, in a sunny corner of the local golf links.

Boys had laid stepping stones in the pond, so that we could reach deeper water, clear of the reeds. We stepped out on the stones, all four of us, then, crouching in careful balance, set our jars on the bottom of the pond.

The jars would be craftily placed between stones, so that an unwary fish would turn a corner and suddenly find itself in a glass trap.

Then we watched and waited, while dragonflies speed-winged their hungry way, close to the water’s surface.

Boys are not very good at watching and waiting. After a very few minutes we would leave the jars, tread back along the stepping-stone piers, and go off into the wood to climb trees.

Trees are made for boys to climb. For half an hour, and more, we would be Robin Hood, and Tarzan. Then, almost by chance, we would remember the pond, and the jars.

Back we would go to balance again on the stepping stones. And if we were lucky, there would be a stickleback, or even two sticklebacks, in our jars.

And if we were very, very lucky, one of the jars would contain a newt: a primitive grey-black creature that none of us liked to touch, though we would never admit to being afraid of them.

We always let the newts go. There was something in their pre-historic shape that threatened ill-luck on anyone who took them away from their pond.

But the sticklebacks were carried home in triumph. To languish in imprisonment for a day at the back of a garden shed, or on a window ledge, before expiring and turning their glassy cell into a stinking criticism of those who had robbed them of their freedom.

Fishing trips were rare. Even the most heartless boy felt a twinge of guilt at the sight of a stickleback floating belly-up at the top of a foul-stinking jar.

But there were lots of other outdoor delights. Damning streams. Playing cricket, with a broken bat, a scuffed tennis ball, and a rusted oil drum for a wicket. Doing small jobs, which seemed more like a game than work, on a local farm.

Mothers would have thought we were sickening for something if we didn’t gobble down breakfast and sally forth for another day’s adventuring.

But that was then. A bygone age.

Now children are no longer allowed to roam. Now it is no longer sticklebacks who are imprisoned, but youngsters. They have to be cosseted and protected, day-long.

With both parents going out to work, and no grandparents to act as supervisory stand-ins, that means paying for child-minders during the long summer holidays.

An article in one of last Sunday’s newspapers said that the cost of keeping a child occupied during the summer holidays had risen to £1,200. During this holiday break British parents are expected to spend a total of £1,800,000 on child care.

For that amount you could get enough jam jars and string to send every child in the world on a fishing trip.