Listening to bats

On days like this I would look out of my bedroom window in Surrey and see the golden angel of Guildford Cathedral twinkling on the smoke-blue horizon, fifteen miles distant.

Being the youngest by ten years, I spent most Summers on my own doing nothing, with more than enough time not to do it.

I have always been gifted with the ability to day-dream at will, or maybe it is the lack of will which gives me the ability. On more than one occasion I watched the school bus arrive and leave before I realised that I should have got on it when the doors opened. Also on more than one occasion I did get on it, only to find that the school was closed for the Summer break.

I didn't care about other children laughing at me for being in uniform when they were in holiday attire, because being legally able to go straight home from the closed school gates was as blissful as it is to be horribly woken by the alarm clock which you forgot to switch off on Friday night, then rolling over and going back to sleep.

The things which figure the most in my collection of childhood Summer memories usually feature water. Staring into the misty greenish channel of the virtually stagnant Basingstoke Canal, or into the limpid depths of a disused mill-pond inspired the longest periods of revery.

Near to our house was an area which you could probably describe as a bog, were it not a series of very dry little islands surrounded by shallow, crystal clear water from a hidden spring which never failed.

It was set - almost secretly - right in the middle of deciduous wood, and the leaves of the trees allowed just enough sunlight to dapple through, keeping the still air cool on the hottest of afternoons.

The islands were so small that it was possible to jump from one to the other to get to the centre, where you could sit down on the grass-tufted top and begin daydreaming in the security that having your own personal moat affords.

This was a magical, ancient area, of which Surrey has a surprising quantity - surprising because of its proximity to bustling London, linked as it is by a chain of detached houses and gardens stretching a mere thirty miles through country which has seen little change since the Bronze Age. This was classical stock-broker belt, and in my day they all got on the weekday train to Waterloo wearing bowler hats, with an umbrella under one arm and a copy of The Times under the other.

Back in our mock-Tudor house (I think Surrey invented mock-Tudor), I would lie on the bed with all of the leaded windows wide open, watching bats flit around the room looking for stray insects, or perhaps just exploring for the fun of it. I could hear bats in those days.

I was looking for some evocative pictures of Surrey countryside when I found that photo. What it has to do with Surrey (ask the BBC) I do not know, but I had to use it.