Sowing the Seed

Thursday, 1st September 2005

tiger coatFrom Watch the Environment, issue 6, November 1993

In the afternoon, an old friend, Melvyn, spots us popping into the post office as he's driving by and stops to chat with us. His children came to the wildlife group we helped organise at Bretton Country Park in the late 1980s and early 90s. His son is now an environmental consultant, surveying wildlife all over the place, while his daughter, now qualified as a doctor, is currently working in a hospital on North Island, New Zealand.

yellow rattle'So they've both followed the biological message you gave them,' he suggests.

Melvyn has now retired from his original job in land reclamation and now has a business harvesting wildflower meadow seed and advising individuals and organisations on establishing and managing meadows.

From Bretton to Boggle Hole

cat
sheep's skull
anemone
Drawings from Watch the Environment, issue 3, Spring 1993. Sheep's skull by Paul, aged 8. Sea Anemone, from a rock and fossil weekend at Robin Hood's Bay.

Looking at the magazine the children of the group put together, these drawings brought back vivid memories of the Rock and Fossil weekend we spent with the children and some of the parents at Boggle Hole Youth Hostel, Robin Hood's Bay in November 1992. Memories that include:

  • A landslide blocking the footpath that led to the Youth Hostel via a gulley

  • Taking a boy to Whitby Hospital after he'd been hit on the head in a pebble throwing battle

  • Helping break into a car for a mum who'd locked her keys inside

  • Losing children in the fog

And, until I read the children's account of the weekend, I had banished utterly from my mind the 'delicious dinner of burger, chips and chocolate mousse!'

Hey, why did we ever give up running the WATCH group?! And how did all those children survive to become useful, eco-friendly members of society?

No, come to think of it, how did we survive?!

Boggle Whole

View from the CasbahThe View from the Casbah

Another trip to the printers - this time for the final set of proofs for the book - and we decide to call in for lunch at the Café Casbah, at the Redbrick Mill, Batley, once a regular stop for us.

The view from the window of Hanging Heaton is as drawable as I remember it, but the bruchetta isn't quite up to the standards of a few years ago, when they'd just opened. Next Page

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk