Last updated 13:34, Thursday, 18 September 2008

WHEN did anyone last see an oak apple?

A quick poll around the office has revealed not a single member of staff has even heard of one of the environmentally friendly and naturally occurring staple educational toys of my childhood.

Every schoolboy of my era used to carry a couple on these wooden wonders in his pocket, usually as highly unsatisfactory emergency marbles.

Their only claim to fame in the marble panoply was that they were roughly round, but that was as good as it got.

They refused to roll straight, and were ridiculously light, so they were never known to win a game – even one between two oak apples.

If you have never seen an oak apple, they are about the size and shape of a biggish marble, and a buffy, browny colour.

They could be found sprouting alongside the acorns on just about every oak tree in our neck of the woods.

Our fascination with them was once we had tired of playing marbles with them, or firing them out of catapults, they could be cut open with a penknife.

This would enable us to grub out the little creatures that lived inside the wooden carapace, and marvel at the patterns they had created in chewing their way through the living wood.

We used to call them beetles, but I now know they were the larvae of the gall wasp, which laid its eggs on oak trees, which in turn had thrown a cocoon of resin around them.

It used to be a tradition to wear an oak apple in one’s lapel on May 29 each year, to mark the restoration of Merry Monarch Charles II to the throne after the English Civil War.

The oak apple was chosen because the King had escaped Cromwell’s Roundheads by hiding in an oak tree – hence the abundance of pubs called the Royal Oak.

And, anyone caught not sporting the emblem risked being pinched or kicked, or worse still, lashed with nettles.

That’s the sort of punishment I occasionally feel like meting out at the lamentable lack of basic natural history knowledge these days.

I was stunned to learn that global warming and carbon footprints have taken over in many schools from what we called nature study.

Before the days of 24-hour, infinite channelled television, we were never in the house from dawn till dusk, exploring new galaxies in the fields round the house, having stone fights with the kids from the next street or gleaning sticklebacks from beneath the green scum of a stagnant pond.

We knew where all the birds’ nests were, and could tell a blackbird’s nest from a thrush’s by the way it was lined.

We could also read animal tracks in the snow, and tell when a fox had passed by because of the thin line its brush left behind.

And we knew where all the best blackberries and conkers could be found

We knew you could eat vinegar leaves for a refreshingly bitter taste, and chew red clover for sweetness.

Bobby Morton said hawthorn leaves tasted like bread and cheese, but I think his taste buds may have been affected by the stalactites permanently dangling from his nose.

We also knew that conkers from a horse chestnut with red candles would only produce waterbellies, rather than proper fighting conkers.

Children are doubtless more aware of the wider world than we were, but they don’t seem to have been taught how to have fun.

In those pre Nanny State days, building sites were regarded as wonderful adventure playgrounds, where clambering over heaps of sand, stacking bricks and simian swinging from rafters could be combined with a battle of wits with the nightwatchman.

“Ah know where yer live, and t’bobby’ll be waiting for yer when yer get in, yer little boogers!” was a favourite cry, as half a dozen urchins would scatter in a dozen different directions, like woodlice from under a rotten log.

My brother and I once spent a happy afternoon hiding inside a stack of roof trusses, throwing pebbles at the trilby-hatted, walking stick wielding watchman, as he threatened retribution of the vilest kind from just a couple of feet away from where we were stuffing our jumpers into our mouths to stop ourselves giggling.

We knew if we had been caught, we get a clip on the ear and that would be that, rather than the referral orders and supervision orders of today.

I know which era I prefer!