Finding the secret places...

We built a den once. It was on the bank of a stream hidden in dense foliage. A sheet of rusty corrugated iron, some old fence posts and bits of old tow rope. It was great - we could watch the stream replete with minnows and sticklebacks, nip through the fence behind to scrump in the allotments and discuss the great matters that concerned us as 10 year old children. It was away from the boring world of grown ups - a secret place.

Except today we're not allowed secret places. Such things frighten those who know better - its not just the idea of "young children" playing out on their own next to a stream but the whole idea of the secret. That place we think is just ours - our den, our magic dell, our place of safety.

Today we just assume the worst. If it isn't that the children are indulging in "anti-social behaviour" (which is an unspecified and general allegation describing any noisy, slightly risky activity undertaken by people younger than us) or else that the riverbank is riddled with funny men just waiting to snaffle the passing 10 year old.

But those secret places are still there. We still seek them out - either in the real world or in that fairyland our minds create. And in those places we are free and calm - content to while away time unbothered by the angry, the interfering and the officious. Those secret places are where we dream our dreams. Where we make the armour that protects us from the horrid real world. Where we can experience the magic that makes living tolerable.

In those secret places dwell the things of our imagination - mythic creatures of our choice. And these things are as real as the dusty, dark, dreariness of the world we head out into from the secret place. The world of money, of toil, of anger and of duty. That world of the busybody.

I plan on spending more time in my secret place - when I find it again.

....