Why I Become A Bunny Hugger

My eldest daughter turn six only five months after I drag myself to 46. If I keep this sort of thinking up I will be at “ I will be 58 when she thinking about university”. Be assured this will happen for two reasons: A. I am about as middle class as they come so wanting my daughters to go to University is hard wired into my DNA and B. by 2020 it will be the norm to have at least a first degree if not a post grad to be a wheel clamper.

So why have these thoughts? Just being more than 45 or getting fatter may be enough for most but for me it all stems from a series of fractious conversations with a former member of staff. Former because I how work for another employer in another sector not because I showed him the door, that might have been the best route but I value the power of discussion as a way of moving forward.

Our disagreement was about why our organisation owned and managed a protected landscape. He came from the “because it’s a SSSI, SAC. etc” school of thought I felt that in our role as a major open spaces provider to millions of people we should put their needs on at least the same level as stag beetles, oak polypores and beech pollards, preferably higher.

This got me to wondering why I am interested in “the environment” and have my views changed in the last six years.

I grew up in rural Cambridgeshire, a smallish village surrounded by typical East Anglian farming landscape, medium to very big fields, growing wheat, barley sugar beat, oats etc. The fields at the end of my road, a development of 100 plus early sixties, executive detached homes, were farmed by old and young Mr Barton. I never understood the exact relationship between the two, brothers, farther and son, it didn’t matter. These two gents were the custodians of my playground. Once I had escaped my parents garden it was straight off to the brook , the tree house and best of all, the fields up the hill. Now lets remember that this is Cambridgeshire so the hill is not much more than a slope but to me it was a long uphill, exhausting slog with a great prize at the top. A pile of sugar beat.

For the enterprising and enquiring mind this hypermarket of fun could not only be used to build myriad defences positions for the endless games of “war” we indulged in. Armed with a massive arsenal of politically incorrect wooden weapons lovingly crafted by my Dad. We could hold off waves of assaults, real but mostly imagined with shotguns, tommy guns, pistols, bows and arrows and I have fond memories of a bazooka. If not re-enacting a mythical battle from one of the many War Picture Library comics that littering my bedroom floor, I would dream up endless ways to turn this sugar beat into sugar, then into sweats. Once we had poisoned ourselves, our pets, our sisters and filled my mums kitchen with mud. Our next task was to create Halloween lanterns by cutting faces out of the beat and creating candles holders with the sheath knives none of us would be without.

Sugar beat is a winter crop and for most kids, then as now, it’s the summer and its long holidays that really get the imagination going. Plenty of time to plan the great expeditions or better still the next campaign, many involving long periods of diplomacy, not to create peace but to persuade Dad to construct the ever grander props needed to achieve victory. Best of all the summer meant fields full of standing crops, brooks full of small fish, and gardens full of bugs and weeds. As the appalling prospect of returning the school came closer the greatest building block of all started to appear out of our windows BALES. There was almost nothing the 12 years olds imagination could not envisage being constructed from this organic Lego on steroids. This being said the opportunities were few and far between and the Mr’s Baron were quick to remove the toys from our playground.

The last great agricultural entertainment was kept for last, stubble burning. The “Apocalypse Now Live!” of my youth. The sight, sound, smell and taste that triggered the approaching academic term and the first sign of autumn was a joy for all small boys.

How do these above notes turn a war-obsessed child into a committed bunny hugger? Simple it was available, any day, after school, at the weekend and of course all holiday long. There were no turnstiles, Rangers, Wardens, Keepers or rules.

Separating our gardens from the fields was a brook, with a small road bridge, old willow tree and tunnels of stinging neetles. Tucked away at the bottom of one garden was a fun house all of its own, our very own sewage works. In the day before mains drains the developer of Millers Road had provided a sewage plant the filter the waste from our homes. A large brick container full of clinker, with a spinning wand on top, that pored the sewage out to filter through the tank and into the brook. Many hours were spent working out how to scale the side of this brick castle. Even more were spent staring at the glistening clinker, noses held and poo stories told. Once the science of the giant garden sprinkler had been understood and tweenage mathematics worked out how long we had to run across the clinker beds it was the sewage farm Olympics. Who dares to leave the safety of the walls last and still reach the safety of the other side of the Keep before poo soup being sprayed our plimsolls. Next cane the standing jump over the arms of the sprinkler. Shot put with the larger lumps of clinker and the final challenge, getting back to terra firma. It took days to work up the courage to jump, first with the safety of an ash branch to steady us in flight and latter in full freefall.

So now our recipe for the bunny hugger is a large cupful of adventurous war stories, a serving spoonful of sewage and a generous handful of freedom. I have no idea id my parents were worried about where we were, would we be run over by the traffic on the roads or fall into the various unguarded farm machines operated by the Mr’s Barton. I have clear memories of Ladybird books that told of the dangerous of haystacks and slurry lagoons, The Green Cross Code man and the very occasional mention if “strangers”. Yes wee hurt ourselves, stingers, cuts, gashes even, one brother broke his arm, we burn bits of ourselves on hot stubble etc. Nothing serious, nothing life threatening, we were not lucky, we were just not that stupid and we knew if we got any of it wrong someone cold drown, break more than an arm of end up inside a bale.

We took risks, as did my parents and those of my friends. This has made me a better Dad and I hope that my kids will carry some off my pleasure at adventure and discovery of the natural world on to their kids. The signs are good, recently they bother spent an hour sitting a field fascinated by the shape, colour and feel of flints. Before carrying many kilos home to live in our garden.