Wednesday, 1 October 2025

A Sliding Doors Moment

 

On Friday, I was out walking with two friends.  It was a five mile country ramble which we know well.

Being women of a certain age, we have noted the most discreet place to visit the bushes should the need arise. On this particular walk, there’s only really one opportunity - where the footpath skirts a wood, there’s a gap in the hedge, and a private path into the wood.  This has provided us with a useful convenience many times in the past. 

On Friday, as we approached the wood, however, there was already something there.  Parked just in front of our gap was a tractor.  Behind the tractor was a substantial trailer. Sitting on hay bales in the trailer were the children of a nursery school, accompanied by an almost equal number of adults.

As we watched, the farmer let down the flap at the back of the trailer and the people climbed down and made their way into the wood, by the very path we would normally take. 

‘They must be doing a nature trail!’

‘Just think though, what if it had happened in the other order?’

‘You mean if we’d got there first?’

‘…and were having a wee when an entire class of children arrived?’

‘Can you imagine? – “Mummy, what’s that lady doing???”’

We concluded that it would have still been an educational experience for them, just in a very different way.

 

 

 

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