BLIMEY, another week gone by, and the 1st of July today, where does the time go.

It seems, as you get older the time goes so much quicker.

Do you remember when you were a nipper, and the summer holidays from school seemed to go on forever. Were we off from the middle of June until the end of September?

I always recall as a lad when four of us were out biking in the summer hols, and we bumped into this old character Mr Eastman. He was a lovely old chap, always into sport watching the football and cricket in our village.

Well, he stops us lads and says: "Have you ever seen a water otter"?

Well, one of our party reckoned he had but I hadn't and the other two hadn't so we were mightily interested.

"Well," says Mr Eastman, "there's one down in the brook, but you have to go across three fields to see it", and pointed us in the direction of said otter.

We crossed three rather large fields, over a couple of hedges that ripped the backside out of my mate Bill's trousers, and eventually got to the stream. We approached with caution hoping not to frighten the animal, but could see nothing, only an old kettle which had stuck on the low branch of an overhanging tree when the stream had flooded earlier in the year.

We looked all round for about 10 minutes, and being thick country boys we suddenly got the joke.

The kettle was, of course, used for heating water, a water hotter, rather than a water otter.

After that we always called Mr Eastman 'Otter'.

Fruit picking was another thing we did in the summer holidays, well towards the end anyway.

Now, I didn't mind a bit of damson picking up the ladders, the bits that stick out of the branches could be a bit nasty and you ended up with scratched arms but it was fun, and plums were OK as well.

Apples, not too bad to pick, but the one thing I used to hate was picking blackcurrants.

Even as a nipper I used to go home with a bad back at the end of a day's current picking. Mind you the "experts" who came from the towns were amazingly quick and had the knack of sitting down to do them. All that Ribena !