HERE we are, barely a week into the seven-week school holidays, and already many of the kids I have spoken to are bored. Oh, they do not want to go back to school, but "there's nothing to do".

It's a while since I was a lad, but I can remember those far off days very well, and I cannot recall ever being bored for want of something to do.

We made trolleys from bits of wood and pram wheels, or put an old book on a roller skate and roared down the street like Stirling Moss. We played kick-out-ball, marbles, and countless other street games. But most of our time was spent in the vast Seven Acres and Jolly Brows parks, where we could follow the river as it meandered through the fields and woods, from Bradshaw to Darcy Lever.

We caught sticklebacks in the river, and newts, tadpoles and other pond life, in the newt pond.

There were two football pitches by the river. We had countless trees to climb in the woods, where we would put up rope swings and build dens, and smoke the odd Woodbine, far away from prying eyes.

There was wildlife to watch. The song birds, herons, swans and kingfishers. Rabbits, hares, squirrels, water voles, even foxes and deer, but I was never lucky enough to see a deer, back then.

Bored! How could we be bored!

Funny how the kids then, who got little or no pocket money, didn't use drugs or alcohol, who were smacked at home, slippered at school, and clipped round the ear by the local bobby, when they deserved it, seemed far happier and much more contented than their untouchable contemporaries of today.

Brian Derbyshire, Ribchester Grove, Bolton