You wouldn’t immediately see the connection between the ubiquitous radio/TV presenter Jeremy Vine and the fine, generous and wise guardian of Bintree Mill, Paul Seaman - but I’ll try and make a link that isn’t too tenuous. Wish me luck!

Both were in the media (Vine as ever) last week and both talking on loosely the same subject, that is high summer holidays spent roaming in the Swallows and Amazons way.

Vine’s radio talk show highlighted the plight of parents faced with stay-at-home kids draining their finances, patience and resources through the seemingly endless summer break. For working couples, the cost of childcare completely shocked me as well as them. For parents at home, bored kids, whinging kids and kids superglued to electronic devices appear to be the kids we have today.

Then a brave bloke stuck his head above the parapet and told of his summer holidays in the 70s when he and his mates were out dawn to dusk cycling, climbing trees, playing cricket and football and , yes, fishing. Well, blow me.

Parents, mothers in the main, phoned in to tell Jeremy that there was no way they’d ever let their kids of nine, 12 even, ever go out out without their supervision or that of family, teachers or Securicor. Goodness knows what these protective parents would make of the childhood I and all my mates had in the late 50s and 60s.

Because I walked to school on my own aged six, I was deemed responsible enough to fish the canal on my own, providing I had learned to swim a length of the local pool. Because I owned a bike, aged seven, I was considered adult enough to go anywhere on it, providing I had passed my Cycling Proficiency test - and remember, until I was eight I grew up in Greater Manchester which was far more busy then than Saxlingham or similar is today. It was just so for everyone in my primary school class. We were out 14 hours a day, got nut brown, explored, played, climbed, swam and fished... and fished and fished like we were little angels in heaven.

Which brings me neatly to the Bintree Mill and dear Paul’s appearance on BBC News which I tragically didn’t see but have heard all about. It seems that the Wensum has all but stopped flowing then, that the sluices at Bintry are dry for the first time in recorded history. How this must devastate Paul, who has lived for the mill and the river in the scores of years I have known him. How it has devastated me too.

Eastern Daily Press: Never let it be said kids don’t still enjoy fishingNever let it be said kids don’t still enjoy fishing (Image: John Bailey)

I was 10 the first time I cycled from Blakeney to Bintree to fish for the day. I shot along the road past Bayfield, half tempted to stop off there, was tiring by Briningham way, but found a new lease of life as I powered down the hill towards Guist. I threw down the bike by the mill’s sluices, drank my lemonade, ate my sandwiches and then enjoyed the first of thousands of summer days fishing in that wondrous place. In gin clear, quick flowing water I caught a six ounce roach and an old-timer told me not to bother with a photograph until it had grown six times that size... as if that would ever happen! But of course, it did! A decade later, I, Wilson and a posse of pals caught hundreds of roach weighing 36oz and more from Bintree and its surrounds. For a good while, Paul Seaman lived by the side of the best river roach fishing in history... all gone now, along with the water that once succoured them.

Imagine all those years ago, mid last century, and I had cycled all that way to find the river Wensum the excuse of a river it is now! Imagine parents today allowing a 10-year-old to embark upon that journey!

Rarely has our pattern of life changed as rapidly as it has done relatively recently, but we must look for light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. We have to accept that the Environment Agency, Natural England, Defra and the rest have proved themselves not worth a bag of beans and we need a root and branch rethink about how water is stored and used.

Some years ago, I had a plan for Lyng Eastaugh Lakes and the hundred acres of woodland surrounding it. It could have been fenced for security. A team of rangers could have been present to teach, advise and lightly supervise children as they boated, explored, climbed, swam and fished. Parents could have dropped off their offspring at 8am on the way to work and could have picked them up again on their return at 6pm... kids exhausted, content, happy in an age old connection with the natural world that electronics can never even begin to replicate.

There you are, Paul and Jeremy... job done!