 From
Watch the Environment, issue 6, November 1993
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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.
 '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.
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From Bretton to Boggle Hole
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| 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. |
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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
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Helping break into a car for a mum who'd locked her keys inside
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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?! |
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 The
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. 
Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk
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