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"Although I had been a boy scout for a year and knew the theory of woodcraft and how to tie knots and signal by semaphore, this was a side to nature that I had never seen before. They taught me to bowl curled-up hedgehogs over fallen leaves so the hedgehogs acquired a coat of leaves; where there was a good orchard for "scrumping"; the names of the birds; where to climb the wall of the pub to collect the empties from the yard and deliver them to the front of the pub and claim the twopence per bottle; and best of all, I was able to indulge my suppressed Tarzan instincts by having as many trees to climb as I wanted. In the two years that we lived in Broughton Astley I feel that I must have climbed almost every tree, no matter how tall or frail. In retrospect, I am surprised that I broke my arm only once by falling from a tree."

"I used to go out on the paper round after school and soon found that it wasn't too hard, and I suppose that within about three months I knew almost everyone in the village. The downside of this was that everyone in the village knew me and reports of my scrambling over the village school roof or scrumping quickly reached my father's ears."

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Copyright - John Peirson 2000