So there I was, minding the kids, walking the Park, full of the joys of the sprung Spring and celebrating The Rising, as you do, when a flyer flew up at me! Jumped me from the pathway. Screamed to be grasped. Arrested my eyeballs, held them to the task of reading its advertising filth. An open invitation for children to attend a “Spy School” at a Museum not a million strides away. In the beat of a toddler’s heart I noticed an eerie absence of both Squirrels and Buzzards.

I scanned the lush grass in a slow, deliberate pan but the Grey’s camouflage was too fine, his agility too highly tuned, he’d found the shadows. I scoured the bright, open skies but the Birds of Prey were flying high, all eager beaks and beady eyes. In desperation I resorted to Plan D; I lobbed spent gum from mouth to right foot, volleyed it to a grassless patch of earth, passing it off as a nut (it sometimes works!). No bushy-tailed treebunny arrived, no wide-spanned boyd glid down from invisible heights to snatch, what I assumed he’d think was, a sparrow’s foetus. Aha! I thought, they’re getting clevererer. Then I had a Eureka moment. KABLAMM! Maybe they’re all at Spyskool, inculcating new strata of fear and loathing, drip-feeding doses of paranoia, perchance spreading cynicism from on high onto naïve and unsuspecting kids.

Seriously though, and I know the Skool’s meant to be a laugh but, is this what we want our kids to be spending their time doing? Mistrusting  classmates at this early age? Running to Top Buzzard with reports of covert kissing and the like? Celebrating the punishment of others and living in fear of getting caught themselves? Wearing Buzzard Badges on their uniforms? Ending up Head Squirrel at the age of 11? These impressionable sponges we propagate soak up our hopes and fears, our joys and sorrows, walk into adulthood perpetuating the same and if we fill them with notions of paranoia and deceit, the need for mistrust and a joyless, suspicious mind what kinda green, pinched adults are they gonna turn into? Doesn’t bear thinking about.

I am not sooooooo naïve as to think that we can live today in a world without espionage and covert actions. Our greeds and needs have made it a requirement. We can but live in hope of a day when we will unilaterally decommission our weapons of mass dissipation and learn to look each other in the eye. Until that heady day we’re gonna haveta live with the cctv and the phone-tap, the loyalty card and the memory banks in our lives. But are we gonna sacrifice our children’s future at the altar of this behemoth? Conscript them into an existence that we can’t be bothered to investigate? Deny them their own voyages of discovery, heartbreaks and elations to live in a Civilisation that is rapidly decreasing their avenues of choice? And for what? Automobiles will drive themselves with their slidey doors and foldaway mirrors? Widescreen TeeVees that show us every nook and cranny of our globe, sate our every sense with vistas of unimaginable beauty or horror, but leave taste, smell and understanding withering unused? If we are choosing to slide effortlessly into trepidation, obesity and loneliness then so be it. BUT, and here that terrible word Duty rears its big head …

Can we really believe that it will end with us? Do we have an inalienable right to carry this on beyond our own brief existence? Have we forgotten our duty to future generations? The responsibility to encourage; to understand more than we’ve even contemplated; to travel further, both inwardly and outwardly, than we have ever been; to see more than we’ve beheld? Or perhaps the sum-total of our Parental Duties are the emburdening of infants with the shadows of our own neuroses and trousseaus of ‘stuff’ that they must trundle to the grave?

Yeah, it’s all a bit heavy in the morning on a train to a desk, but let us stop a second and imagine… place yourself a moment in a park without cctv, no roving binoculars from the local Spy Shoppe, nor eavesdroppers all plugged into the Grid. It is spring and the daffs are out, the few clouds transmogrifying from whale to spaniel before your very eyes, the sparrows fearlessly chirruping away and bladers blading away gracefully. What would you really rather do; write a poem; sketch a flower; make a dog-calling whistle out of a blade of grass; smell the newness and the nowness, or encode a secret memo for the Buzzards, to be picked up by The Squirrelmeister from a prearranged Dogpoo Bin? More importantly what would you rather that your kid did? And then think, even if you are being watched/listened to, what would you have them see/hear? From these little choices we make our lives. From incremental changes of direction we arrive at unimaginably magnificent destinations or blank walls of fear. If we spend our brief hours and days sneaking glances at other travellers we do but miss the road we are on. Spy Skool might be a frivolous diversion and the road you’re on a little wearisome at present, but a trip into mistrust and envy will not better equip you for the avenue that lies ahead. And not your kid either.

If today, on your way to The Desk, you discover something of note, carry it with joy, for you have noted it; explain it as best you can, for then you will find it; share it with others, for then you will connect. Most of all cherish it. And if you receive but sneers and sarcasm, know this: You have added to the day and not subtracted, given and not snatched, ridden and not hidden. This is what we have found. This they do not teach you at Spy School.

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