On Wednesday me and the boy had a day at home together, which involved nothing more strenuous than a bit of light play-doh work, some CBeebies, making a picture for daddy with glitter glue and pom-poms and endless re-enactments of Thomas the Tank Engine stories.
We did take a break from all this activity to nip up to the local park. Well it's more of a recreation ground really but it's got swings and slides, a goalpost, a basketball net and loads of green space to just run around on. It's really close to the new house too, which is a bonus. When we arrived at about quarter past four I was surprised to see we had the place to ourselves!
The rec backs onto a golf course, separated by a large wire fence and trees. Where the rec and the golf course join the ground slopes away into quite a grassy dip. As I was soon to discover you can sit, or lay in that dip and not be seen from the main body of the rec because the dip obscures you, and you can't be seen from the golf course because the trees shield you.
It's a perfect place to hide!
The boy was running around with full abandon, when he ran down to the end of the rec towards the aforementioned dip.
That's when I spotted them. They were probably 13 or 14 years old, 15 at a push. Both in the colours of the local secondary school uniform and both, shall we sat, slightly flushed in the face.
To use an old fashioned expression they were 'getting off' with each other.
"What are they doing?" asked the boy innocently
"Come over here darling" I said as I motioned for the boy to follow me back to the swings.
The young lad looked up and made awkward eye contact with me but the young girl was in another world, laying on the grass, one arm above her head, in an almost 'Mills and Boon' pose, that look of utter delirious joy on her face at having experienced a damn good kiss.
I must point out that no clothing had been removed, not even upstairs outsides; and from the small time I observed them they seemed to be just having a bloody good teenage snog.
And why not hey?
I left them to it.
We didn't leave the rec straight away though. The boy had come to play so play we did. A safe and discreet distance away from their youthful fumbling of course and up where we could no longer see them.
Every now and again the lads head would pop up (stop sniggering at the back please) and check if were still there but we stayed as long as we wanted to thank you very much. It is a public space after all. I was happy to leave them to it but I wasn't going to be intimidated into not letting my little boy play in, what is after all, a children's playground area.
When we got home I thought about it a bit more and wondered if I'd done the right thing to leave them to it? Should I have given them a 'Oi what are you doing?' to make them scarper? Or was I right to mind my own business? After all you never know what you're going to get with youngsters nowadays do you? I doubt they would've just sloped off with their tail between their legs (stop making your own jokes up). I probably would've been told to f-off!
So I want to know, what would you have done?
Because my other frankly quite startling thought was, in 10 years time or so that could be my boy.....
I'm beginning to think I should've chucked a bucket of water over them.