I have the privilege each day during term times to be able to take my 6 year old son to school. Now after a spell working in the USA a few years back we’ve found ourselves as a family having to make a couple of moves, resulting in a move to our current location in South Gloucestershire.

Now having lived in an urban sprawl for quite a few years we find ourselves in the idyll that many dream of, perhaps in retirement! The place we now reside is an early medieval market town with the countryside not a stones throw away in any direction and beautiful it is too!

The requirements of a 6 year old are quite simple when you get down to it.  You need a good school, with lots of new friends and a decent playing field to practice his football on. Well that and the Play Station 2, the TV and DVD player not forgetting the CD player and a mass of toys to compete with Hamleys in London!

We moved here nearly a year ago now so I’ve had time to reflect on what’s happened in that time and in particular with my son Philip. We were drawn to the area like many because of the high standard of schooling, as is the way of parents for their children. We found the perfect school where we felt our son would be both nurtured and challenged in the years ahead. We’d decided that we’d moved enough and now it was time to put down some roots and get established in a community.

Both my wife and I accompanied our son to his first day at his new school back in May 2004. I don’t remember who was more nervous my wife or myself? Philip took the whole thing as 6 year olds always do, firmly in his stride! We stood in the playground with other parents with those looks you kind of give to acknowledge one another, not knowing them of course at the time. The pleasantries were soon over and the bell rang for the children to enter school. Strange what these things do to you as I had a flashback to my first day at school and the horror and tears as my mother left me with all those strangers for a whole day! My wife and I left with the dread of wondering what kind of day he might have!?

I know what you’re thinking! What on earth has all this got to do with detecting?

Well to me you see, it’s a picture of just where our hobby is at this moment in time. There’s been lots of moving around in the last few years, what with the advent of PAS and the improving relationship’s with many Archaeologist combined with the indecision of Government over many issues that continue to throw doubt or confusion into the ring that is our pastime. Time moves on as do the events that can sometimes catch up with and overtake us from time to time. I think of all those new participants to the hobby and the quest that they are about to undertake, along with the responsibility for what us older one’s in the hobby can do to help them. I’m grateful that they don’t have to live through our particular problems, but they will encounter new ones that we all currently face. I find myself being grateful for those in the NCMD who have given so much to preserve my way of life and hoping they can continue to do so with the new members and media at their disposal. To many this is all new or to those who have been around a while it’s like we’re the nervous parents wondering how things will go and what might happen. In the weeks ahead I’ll deal with PAS and the new era of co-operation we have, but suffice to say things change and we have to change too or get left behind in the mêlée

As for Philip, he came out at the end of that first day with a huge grin on his face and a few new friends surrounding him, all heading for home. Life is not just about the experience of learning, it’s about what we do with our experience that will really count. You see Philip is just growing up! And so are we as a community of Detectorist.  

Until the next time...Pete