A Fathers Wisdom

The rolling dark green hills, signifying the latest summer rain, were home to a random collection of brilliant wildflowers whose sweet fragrance floated towards the glistening lake. As our car came to a halt beside a grey stone castle, I yearned to be released from the prison of the back seat and to begin exploring the countryside I had craved for so long. My somewhat short sighted eyes scrutinized the surroundings and explored all of my favourite places which remained as beautifully intoxicating as they were sixty years ago. I can still remember vividly the many summers that I spent here developing and exercising my ingenuous imagination.

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I climbed from the confinement of the sulky and trembled with excitement as I assured my parents I would return before tea time. I followed the thin gravel path that surrounded Wray Castle and made my way around to the back in order to find the one thing I had missed the most during the cold dull winter. There, sitting in Mrs Winton's garden, nibbling the corner of a carrot was my beloved companion, Peter the Rabbit. As I held him close to me the heat coming through the coarse grey fur that covered his body warmed me from within and the slight tickling sensation as he rubbed his whiskers along my neck always made me laugh. It felt like time was frozen.

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Leaning heavily on the knobbly stick that my legs had come to rely on, I slowly etched closer to a place of distant memory. The place which had once grown a variety of vegetables and fed many of my friends was now reduced to a square patch of neatly trimmed green grass and a towering water fountain. Gazing with a sense of futile hope, I searched for that special small grey form,but,alas all of my friends had long disappeared..

My tired old eyes are framed by an array of lines a product of countless nights of straining to create magical stories in almost complete darkness. Today they traced the path that gradually sloped towards a weather beaten building made from large pieces of timber; home to a childhood hero and a man who held my utmost respect, Hardwicke Rawnsley; more affectionately known as The Vicar. A child trapped in an old mans body is how I now describe him, but when I was a child, he was