Lacey Green School Outdoor Club

Ed Mueller

It was a chilly late March morning. A group of children assembled outside the gates. Neither they nor their accompanying parents could wait to see inside the mysterious compound. They had heard the rumours; one of the parents lived on the perimeter. She had told of strange noises, mysterious coming and goings in the night. And now they were all going to SEE INSIDE. HOW EXCITING ...As the hour chimed, a mysterious, dashing figure opened the gate. ....

It was Richard West, accompanied by his daughter Charlotte! They gave us a most interesting tour of Stocken Farm. Everyone loved it, and he repeated it for 30 more of us a week later. We learned that cows needs to keep giving birth to produce milk (of course I knew that!), and that wireless pedometers hooked up to a computer can tell you when a mummy cow is ready to be....ahem....well....Richard glossed over that bit with a slightly discernible twinkle in his eye.

This was the inaugural event of the new Outdoor Club. The inspiration was my 6 year old daughter, pupil at the school, who I felt needed to be rescued from Ipads, Ipods, minion rush, pacman, my little pony, DVDs, Netflix kids, and a 52 inch flat screen TV it’s not as though my own childhood was all jumping down from a hayrick and spitfiring through alpine meadows pursued by Julie Andrews. But we were freer to come and go then….

Next it was Chris Dignan’s turn. Equally public spirited, Chris insisted on coming despite the fact that his young son was being operated on. He greatly intrigued the kids with his statistics....did you know that if the sun was the size of a grain of sand, the nearest star in the Milky Way would be 18 miles away, the furthest as far away as the moon? We also saw the International Space Station pass overhead, and wondered what the astronauts were doing inside. And we saw Jupiter, Venus and the constellations.

Then it was the turn of multi-talented Tracey and lan Chitson, parents of Fable. We met up in the Hampden Arms garden (graciously lent to us by Louise the landlady, parent of Evie, who sold the refreshments in aid of the school). We went to find sticks....the woods were alive with the sounds of ...stick finding! Then with a bit of magical help we turned them into wands. And then we were disappointed when we couldn't postpone bed time using them.

Finally, most recently, Paul Green from the Risborough Countryside Group gave us a truly fascinating prehistory tour of Whiteleaf Hill, and let the kids handle Roman things he had excavated.

A small fee per child per event raises money for the school. It all adds up. Sincere thanks to all who have helped and those about to help: | shall thank the next article.

Don’t miss our fundraiser astronomy hour on May 26th, (falling back to the 28^th if it rains hosted by Chris Dignan and open to all folks of all ages and their friends. Please all come, watch out for posters around the village. Chris is bringing a telescope and Saturn will be up. After contemplating the size of space, your cares will shrink to the size of a grain of sand, and if you’ve got kids they'll love it; in fact, it'll be a bigger blast than Apollo V!