Pond Life

Did you have a Pond Dipping Kit as a kid?

I must have done but I don't remember anything about it apart from a net surrounded by green plastic and a handle. Finding a newt this morning in a drain outside the house in which I reside at the moment, memories came flooding back of putting tadpoles and water boatmen in an old tea chest or tea caddy with a plastic lining. I remember that it was wooden and you could only observe from the top. We used to go looking for tadpoles and there was something mesmerizing about pond life when you were a kid. Happy Days indeed before Secondary School & Examination Boards wrung the joy of life out of you like an old tea towel. How many kids today are daydreaming of ponds looking out of the classroom window? Maybe more than we think. They are thinking of the future of the planet, that we comfortable and complacent adults are taking for granted, that's for sure. So what am I going to do with this single adult female common smooth newt? 

Any suggestions? I've got her in an old empty Nutella Jar at the moment and I have given her the name 'Nigel'. Nigel the newt. I have her imprisoned in this jar as Nigel Farage has us all imprisoned in Brexit Britain. I feel like being compassionate and releasing her but I know that some male newt will come along and impregnate her without so much as a 'by your leave' so at the moment I am doing my bit for female newt emancipation. It's amazing how such an innocuous event can bring the memories flooding back. Carefree summer days of going 'taddying' What was it about the combination of water and minute life that was so appealing to a child? Could we relate in some strange way of being under the adult's microscope and magnifying glass. Were we, the tadpoles of the world who didn't count? I am so relieved that the tadpoles of today have found their legs and are joining Extinction Rebellion Protests 

The more I write, the more I feel as if I need to be compassionate with Nigel. I might have to release her into a bigger bowl.