LET’S PUT A STOP TO THIS CRAP

I have three sons, and I try and get them outside once a day. They complain, or rage, when I suggest a walk. They sulk, they bicker, they tell me they don’t care about fresh air, they want to play Zelda . They don’t want to find five different types of leaves, they want to go home. Sometimes they can be convinced to walk down the canal, or do a longer loop along the river, and at weekends I will take them further afield, for a proper walk.

A lot of the green spaces we visit are old quarries, ex-industrial landscapes turned into nature reserves, carefully managed faux-wild spaces. My children know about conservation, ecological collapse, about inequality and ownership. We talk about these things. I have shared with them my fairly extreme opinions on litterers. They know a bit about the class system, and privilege, and why the idea of nature and the natural are very complex issues. It’s not just saying hello, or get well soon, to the old