My wish for a better, less crazy world has just taken another plunge, and it took just one pithy newspaper report to do it.

"The Tracking of Children Fuels Anxiety,” read the headline.

Good Lord above! What are we coming to? Apparently, over- zealous mams and dads want to keep an eye on their little lambs. Poor things, oh dear, oh dear. Bless their little cotton socks.

What a crazy planet we inhabit. I’ve just about given up trying to understand this modern world of ours: a world that is inhabited by an army of parental soft buggers who reject any possible attempt to sever the apron strings.

In complete contrast, the parents of my generation, especially mothers, were glad to get shut. In other words they wanted a bit of peace, they wanted them out of the house, out into the fresh air, running wild and free.

Back in days of old, our "Adventure Land” was all around us.

And as everyone knows, it was a better world.

In my developing years, just past Pagefield Locks, and close to the canal towpath, there stood a thriving, unruly, flowering bush with an abundance of delicate pink dog roses and, just beyond this, on the lower parts, lay a stretch of land that was covered in long grass where courting couples spent their bountiful time and energy on unbridled passions, trying their very best to please one another.

And where we cheeky sods did our very best to spy on them, crawling through the tall grass, just like an invading army of Japanese snipers, but still trying our best not to giggle or make a noise, and where we learned more about sex than any playground banter could ever accomplish.

Mention sex in today’s world of anything goes, and it soon becomes apparent that nothing is secret.

If you don’t see it on your TV, it is all there in your morning newspaper, to be read with relish, chewed over and digested.

Where have the childish ways of normal, slow development gone? Where have the street games gone? Where have the playful challenges gone? Where has the childish questioning gone?

Where have the parental “put-offs” gone? Like dad’s usual blustering answer to an embarrassing question: “Ask thi mam, lad, she’ll know.”

Surely, the mysteries of growing up is part of living. Everything doesn’t have to be straightforward, simple and put on a plate. That’s what life is all about: mysteries, challenges, questions and answers.

Our generation may have had numerous disciplinary restrictions, but ours (where I lived, anyway) was a world of discovery and, yes, of freedom. Freedom to roam and run wild and free.

There were no mardy buggers where I lived. When one of our mates, Colin Bradshaw, broke his leg, it was so bad, it was encased in plaster of Paris from his thigh to his ankle and for a while he never left the house, and became very depressed.

Then someone came up with the idea of turning an old pram into a stretcher-like vehicle on wheels and, hey presto, that did the trick. We pushed him around on that old pram day after day, dashing around like mad dervishes across our back field and down by the canal, shouting and whooping like the daft idiots we were.

We were an odd bunch of lads really. If a task was easy, we would make it more complicated.

One Saturday afternoon a few of us took a walk along the canal to Gathurst, but on the way back, instead of sticking to the canal towpath we walked up the slope to Gathurst railway station, and just below the station went into a nearby field and began to follow the railway sidings.

We were clambering over fences, crossing private land and keeping our distance well away from curious cattle, especially the bulls, right through to Martland Mill bridge and the Old Roman Road that ran from Kitt Green to the last remnants of an old clay pit at the bottom of Scot Lane. This was where clay used to be cut and carved into blocks to use as house bricks and baked and stored ready for delivery to various brickyards, just like the one that was in Hindley.

Like many works and landmarks of old, they have now gone for ever.

I am quite aware that all of my memories mean nothing to the younger generations and sound pretty tame; but we didn’t have the distraction of television and the modern gadgets of today’s world and, like I’ve said in the past, our drug intake was a packet of Woodbine fags, a bag of Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls and a bottle of Whites Lemonade, all packed up with a few of Mam’s butties and away we went, trudging the dusty canal bank, staying out and about until sunset.

But sometimes, for me, anyway, it also meant a gathering of herbs for dad, like comfrey, and the bitter leaves of dandelions, and venturing barefoot into bullrush pool, to pull free from their watery roots, the bullrushes, to admire the soft blush on the brown plump heads, just for the hell of it.

Just simple acts of doing something that had never been done before.

Because I was born and raised a few hundred yards from the "cut” and because my grandparents, Richard and Margret Dakin, made their living on the cut, I have always had this feeling of belonging and the happy days of my growing years were happy days of the outdoors and adventure.

I was always looking for something new, like helping a passing boatman, opening locks and cadging a lift to the next one and the next one after that.

That sometimes meant my mates and I would end up going as far as the village of Parbold and further still, before hopping off and walking all the way back home, tired and sun-browned, and happy.

What more can a growing lad ask for? That was decades past, when the world didn’t seem as crazy, and when the jingle in your pocket was only a tinkle, when you drank your lemonade with relish and sucked on your Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls as slowly as you could to make them last longer.

Now that is what I call a happy childhood, in days of old, never to be forgotten.