I miss the dreamy lost time of chaperoning young children – though they didn’t seem so memorable at the time | Nova Weetman

There is fondness to my memories of those endless, unstructured days, when it was as simple as just being present

On the final day of the last school holidays, my friend and I went to the Royal Melbourne Show. Neither of us has young children any more, but a while back we were reminiscing about times we'd gone as kids - and then as teens, and later as parents with our own small people - and we decided we wanted to experience all that again.

The last time I'd been to the show was pre-pandemic, when I took a tribe of my own and other people's children and I trailed along behind as they ran from ride to ride, from showbag stall to showbag stall, spending all their pocket money and eating as much sugar as they could. I was a sort of hanger-on that day, a chaperone, only needed to ensure nobody got lost or wandered off with somebody else's family.