[West Ender]

I find it hard to credit that anyone can assume a 6 year old should be "savvy" enough to be left to his own devices for several hours, particularly when he lives within yards of a busy motorway. No, of course the little boys shouldn't have tried to cross that road but they were little boys. Common sense doesn't always prevail when you're 6.

Kate, I used to roam too at that age but, though I lived on a main road, there was little traffic around and motorways were something you wouldn't have imagined. I had a friend who lived at Harwood Bar who used, regularly, to ride her pony from there to West End to visit me. She did that from the age of 10. You'd be crazy to consider it safe to let a child do it today.

All that aside, however, my point was that these kids were completely unsupervised all afternoon. I seem to remember a good many people who said, in response to a thread of mine about my granddaughter being allowed to ride her bike in front of the house, that they don't let their children out of their sight. Where's the difference with these poor children?