Poppycock

This morning a friend of mine bought a poppy and was told he couldn’t have a pin to attach it with in case he hurt himself.  

This man, by the way, is 45 years old and has flown jet planes in war zones all over the world. He has a degree in engineering, jumps off tall buildings on a Saturday morning and has rowed a canoe single-handed up the Amazon to meet tribes who’ve never seen white people before.

Oh, and his granddad was back on the front line a month after being blown up in the second world war.

I promise I’m not going to get obsessed with the health and safety thing but, er, what now??

Of course we need to take care of each other and make sure gas boilers don’t explode and old people don’t fall down cracks in the pavement, but this isn’t even funny any more.

We are creating a generation of children who can’t leave their homes without crash helmets and elbow pads to walk to school.  Conkers are considered an extreme sport. Remember that shocking family who made headlines in the tabloids recently for allowing their children to cycle to school alone? We are talking about people who must grow up and run this world.  In future people will be asked to present risk assessments who have never been allowed to take any risks. How is that possible?

My mother will deny this because her memory is failing her, but I promise you when I was 11, my friend Susie and I used to pack a picnic, hop on our bikes, cycle the couple of miles to the harbour, catch the little ferry to the other side, cycle around a bit more and hang out with the swans on the other side until we ran out of food. Or it got dark. Without helmets.

Many years later, I cycled alone around barely inhabited Scottish islands for months. Without a helmet. Without a mobile phone, even, because as my lovely daughter pointed out, 'they weren't really invented in those old days'. I pitched my tent by the road a lot of the time and slept alone in the middle of nowhere and no-one worried that they didn't hear from me for days, because how could they? Even if I'd written a letter, there were hardly any post boxes and certainly nowhere to buy stamps. I did the same in Africa. 

But I admit it's getting to me. Would I want my children to do that now? Please God, no -but I suppose they might one day. And it will be worse because now you can phone from the middle of the rainforest so if I don't get a text every few hours I'll be sending in Timothy Cholmondely-Walker from the British Embassy to find them.

Talking of helmets, I came across another guy who had been racing at breakneck speeds in the pouring rain at Silverstone and went for a cuppa in the cafe afterwards – where they wouldn’t let him pour his own tea because ‘it’s too dangerous’. I’m not making this up.

Those brave soldiers who gave their lives for us would be turning in their graves, ashamed that we can no longer even wear a poppy to remember them because we are scared of a little prick......