A cool morning in early July 1998, deep in the Dumfries countryside. The ancient forest canopy whispers to gurgling river by which we camped and in which this morning we swum. 20 children aged between ten and 15 had just spent their first night wild camping, cocooned in their sleeping bags, bedded down on a huge tarpaulin sheet on the ground and beneath an equally vast sheet tied between a dozen trees, Above that the trees and the stars. Nothing else.

This is as far from south London as you can get without travelling to another planet.

We have struck camp and are making our way back to the cars. I’m carrying a small child, smaller than the others and the three year old son of our camp leader. This small child does not know me but they cling to me, tired and trusting. I feel his warm breath on my neck. For the first time in my young adult life, I feel my paternal instinct rise up though my stomach and into my chest.

Fast forward 22 years and am now that father I first conceived of back in that Scottish forest.

Small boys, and girls, should climb trees (and camp under them) but instead for the last three months we’ve been filling them with our own fears and anxieties about the outside world and the dangers that others represent to us. We could fit the risks from the virus on a pin head - turns out that it really isn’t any more dangerous than flu if you’re under a certain age (and if you care to do some research., which of course most people don’t), and yet the stunted looks on our children’s faces tell a very different story.

Time to climb trees again and live free.