The most public incident happened at Ravenstonedale Show, which used to have a carriage driving class, to which Rosie-the-Fell-pony and I had managed to get a lift. Graham took the kids along in the car, but after the show class was over and we’d all been concentrating on reloading the carriage up the ramp of the friend’s horsebox, we couldn’t find David. Until, that is, someone asked, “Whose kid is that, peeing up that post by the showring?”

Before he started school, David once accompanied me, my mother and stepfather to the Barnaby Rudge Tavern in Tebay for lunch. The landlady gave us all menus, and jokingly included David. Sitting there on the pub bench seat, with his legs stuck out in front of him and the menu upside down in his hand, he announced in elderly tones that, “Whenever I go into a pub I always like to see the menu.”

In another summer, both he and Jen were grounded following a phone call from the local motorway services shop where the supervisor, a neighbour, had recognised them nicking pocketfuls of sweeties. Well, it was serve yourself, wasn’t it? I told the supervisor I would send them back with the swag to apologise, which they did, and they didn’t repeat the trick – as far as I know. The disadvantages of being a kid living in a small village…

However, local knowledge worked in their favour when a police sergeant came knocking one summer day and asked if the children were about. We’d only been home half an hour, and the kids were playing in the garden, so I called them in and he asked if they’d been down into the village that day. They said No (well you would, wouldn’t you), and while I had to admit they’d had time, just, to go there and come back since we arrived home, I was pretty sure they hadn’t. It turned out the Fire Brigade had received several hoax calls from our village phone and that day someone had seen a girl and a boy in the red kiosk within the relevant period.  Jen innocently grassed up another family’s kids who’d been talking on the school minibus about emergency callouts, and we never heard any more about it.

Thinking of the minibus reminds me of David’s collection of china birds. We had a friend, Joe Davies, who owned the China Bowl in Penrith, and he used to give David a bit of discount on pretty Beswick models for which he saved his pocket money. David's bedroom sported a large kestrel and a kingfisher, and several smaller birds such as wrens, robins and bluetits. These, interspersed with model cars, occupied the tops of all the available furniture.

Fridays were “show and tell” day at school, and when it came to David’s turn he decided to talk about his china birds. He was very proud and excited, so we carefully wrapped the models in paper and packed them into a box nearly as big as himself. I think the show and tell session earned him a lot of praise, but when he climbed out of the back of the minibus as he arrived home, his foot caught on the step. He pitched out head first into the box, and they both hit gravel from a height of five feet. It took him a long time to forgive Friday the Thirteenth.

Then there was the cat. For many years our cats were of the Siamese persuasion, and since they were gentle, vocal and characterful the kids were fond of them, although the first of them loved to lie across David’s hot little knees and ignore plaintive cries of, “Get OFF, Moglington!”

After Moglington came Tristan, with whom David sat on the kitchen floor and contemplated the wonders of a new washing machine with a glass fronted drum; heads circling in unison with the sudsy sheets.

One day David enquired, “What’s Tristan’s coat made of?”

“Fur,” I replied.

“Yes, but what’s it made of?”

“Well, cat fur, I suppose.”

“Yes, but is it nylon or acrylic?”

After explaining the acrylic cat, the question about why Australians didn’t fall off the world was a comparatively simple one.