SSW001.adventures.indd 62 20/07/2018 18:16 S S 1 8 : 1 6 SS 18:16 062 SlingshotWorld 062 SlingshotWorld NEVER SEEN W ell not THAT far actually, as the wood is still there, right next to where I went to school for nine years. Over- privileged but miserable, as the place was a factory churning out entrants for Oxford and Cambridge universities, the only way such schools were ever judged back then. I’m a lover of the outdoors and natural history and like Charlie Darwin and Gerald Durrell, I had this strong urge to possess! To collect and keep specimens. I fished and I wanted to hunt. A bit tough for a suburban lad growing up in sight of Wembley Stadium’s twin dome topped towers. Still, famous fisherman John Wilson did, too. But I’m also a voracious reader. My mama wrote a lot of books and I inherited the love of them. Before I was off to secondary school, I read a lovely tale for children of the last gnomes in Britain, called The Little Grey Men, that starts; “This is a story about the last gnomes in Britain. They are honest-to-goodness gnomes, none of your baby, fairy-book tinsel stuff, and they live by hunting and fishing, like the animals and birds, which is only proper and right.” and I loved that. It won the This column is about the slingshot-related adventures you got into as a kid. Nobody can make your mistakes for you but if you do learn vicariously right here, what things can get you into terrible real trouble, then just maybe some younger readers might not do it even in a moment of devilment. In any case, all this will perforce have to be about a land long ago and far, far away… Carnegie medal when it came out. Then, I found Brendon Chase at my stifling ‘public’ school’s library. Same writer, but about three public school boys who run away and live in the woods. They nick the gardener’s .22 rifle but also take a catapult. It’s old but a brilliant read. That book has inspired generations of schoolboys to run away to the woods. I wanted to as well, as I looked out of the window in geography lessons. I could see the woods’ edge. All along the top pitches, the ‘all weather’ pitch and the distant soggy rugby fields, the trees overhung the fence. Their shades of green mocking my captivity. One misty September morning, I was gazing out of the window instead of concentrating upon geography and saw something that made my thumbs itch. For along with the gulls, crows and pigeons, and even a moorhen or two from the school’s own old wooded moats, there were a dozen pheasants on the rugby pitch, milling around near the fence. I can see them now… I decided I needed to hunt one. The oppressive school siren went ‘WHEEeeeeee’ at last and I got out of there. I scurried downstairs and out, along the buildings until they ended and off along our own school wood’s edge to see the field covered in game. The school campus was huge. with two wooded parts. This meant that straying birds were often on our side of the Pheasant reserve’s fence. But now, I was about to appear on the field and walked out of the trees. I had no idea what I was doing but the pheasants seemed a bit daft. I had herded geese in our garden back into their pen at night for years, as they were my mum’s idea of guard honkers. So I avoided all the holes in the fence that I knew all about and tried to drive one against the chain link. The pheasant went up to the wire and poked its head through the chain link and pushed. It didn’t work. So it pulled its head out and tried another, comically doing this again and again as I got closer, seven feet away, before finally exploding off sideways in a mad blur of wings. I was exhilarated and within days had recruited my mate, who tried to double-herd against the fence with me as a team. It still didn’t work. Flappppppppp…. NEVER SEEN SSW001.adventures.indd 62 20/07/2018 18:16