Books or Children, Children or Books

"Why don't you sell your books Dad?" This from our fourteen, soon to be fifteen, year old daughter. It was prompted by a conversation about our "embarrassing" television. Apparently we have the oldest and therefore most embarrassing tele around. We Birdwatchers have a bit of a thing going really. The worlds most embarrassing tele, the worlds most embarrassing car and until recently we had the worlds fattest hamster.


Anyway back to the books. I explained that I could not possibly sell them. Each one is a friend.


"That's rubbish dad. If you sold each one for £2 then we could get a new tele and a decent car."


I thought for a moment. "Mum wouldn't sell them!" Which put an end to the argument. She accepted this as well.


It made me think about books and children though. Books are reliable, I mean you don't come down in the morning to find that the latest Ian Rankin has suddenly grown and now its pages won't fit between the covers.


Your much loved Adam Smith does not disappear for hours at a time only to come back just as you are about to phone the Police and return sulkily to its place on the shelf, after elbowing for no reason your copy of 1984 out of the way.


Great Expectations does not find you so intolerably embarrassing that it refuses to allow you to read it unless you first put a plain brown cover around it.

Books or Children? I thought a bit more and then remembered how brilliant they had both been at my brothers wedding, looking after the younger children. The excitement in the smaller birdwatchers voice as he tells me about his riding lesson. Seeing our daughter perform in her play. Watching them go off to school in the morning and feeling happy that they are getting on so well and worried for them at the same time. Its not even a contest!

Sunday Afternoon in the Goyt

It was a glorious spring day. What better way to walk of the excesses off Sunday lunch than to take a stroll in the Goyt. Mrs BW declined. She said she needed a little bit of peace and quiet. So I took the fledglings. Amazingly they actually wanted to come with me. Even when I said the word Walk. This normally causes them to go pale, and to hide their walking boots. I found out why they wanted to come as soon as we pulled out of the drive. "Can we get some sweets dad, and a drink?"

We did not do a long walk. It was more of a stroll really. The fledglings ran on ahead. This left me to get on with the important business of clearing the clutter from my head. A Sky lark rose into the air and hung there. I heard then saw a curlew. The clutter began to disappear.

I caught up with them by the bridge, where in the summer we often take a picnic if the weather is good. We played a couple of games of "Whats the Time Mr Wolf", but I was rubbish at catching them.

They wanted to roll down the steep slope opposite. This is fairly harmless thing to do. They get a lot of pleasure from it and they do look very funny, especially when they get to the bottom and try and stand up. We decided against it eventually.

On the way back the lapwings were out and about, and there were a couple of geese by the duck pond, but we had more important things to do. Like get home to watch Dr Who, which I had missed on Saturday night. "Its really good dad, you must watch it!"

Tomorrow I have get up early and go to Loughborough. It is the first exciting day under the new management, and they have arranged a "day" of "workshops" and opportunities to meet everyone. They will tell us how exciting the future will be. How wonderful the new technology will be. We will sit there and nod and smile. My heart won't be in it though. It will be in the Goyt straining to hear the curlews.