The Power of Imagination

In 1986, I discovered a penny. A large, brown penny that seemed to have come from the old, old, olden days. It was dated 1961 (or somewhere thereabouts), so, in reality, it was only about 25 years old but to 7-year-old me it was literally ancient.

I found it buried in the “Den” – a small dip in the ground in the middle of a hedgerow of gnarled trees about three minutes from our house in Derbyshire – where me and my 5-year-old brother would go and play whenever possible. Things were different in the eighties; the Den was near enough for my mum to shout for us but way out of sight of the house or any parental surveillance. Simpler times.

Me and my brother were the sole visitors to the Den – no-one else knew about it. Yet somehow it always seemed to be full of bands of pirates, Viking warriors, Roman soldiers and, on the day I discovered the penny, archaeologists.

I don’t know why me and my brother decided to become archaeologists that day. Nor do I remember what specialist equipment we took with us. I suspect that lugging gardening equipment to a desolate piece of shrubland where, no doubt, it would be left to languish for weeks afterwards, would not have been looked on too highly by my mum, so, rather than being equipped with trowels and brushes, I imagine we embarked on our archaeological mission with two old spoons and a couple of sturdy twigs. To us, this was exactly the equipment you needed to be an archaeologist. And, to my mind, the discovery of the penny proved me right.

The great archaeological discovery took place in the dead of summer. On days without rain (which seemed to be every day in the endless summers of childhood), the Den was a dustbowl. I remember digging around in the dust that afternoon – teaching my brother how archaeologists wield sturdy twigs and old spoons to unearth hidden treasures – when I saw the dull glint of metal poking out of the ground.

Being experienced archaeologists (we’d been at it for twenty minutes by this point), we didn’t feel the need to cordon off the area, record our findings or draw careful diagrams of the exact location; we just yanked the artefact out of the ground. Or rather, I did. My assistant archaeologist was too junior to be involved in the important process of treasure extraction. He still had a lot to learn. I was 7 and he was 5, after all.

The penny was covered in soil and needed cleaning. I continued my brother’s archaeological education by explaining the methods used to clean finds: blowing on them very hard and rubbing them on your t-shirt. And as I did this it became clear that this treasure was something I had never seen before. And I was instantly fascinated.

On one side of the coin, a young-looking Queen Elizabeth II turned sideways with a ribbon in her hair, looking away as if disgusted by the messy state of the archaeologist who had just wrenched her from the earth. The image of Britannia graced the other side. Wearing a plumed helmet and holding a trident aloft, she also looked to the side, equally as appalled, perhaps, as the Queen by the state of my once-white t-shirt.

The Queen and Britannia were only mildly interesting to me; what really fascinated me was the date. Simple and small. Four digits – 1 9 6 1 – sitting squarely beneath Britannia’s throne. Four digits that instantly set my mind whirring with questions. Who had held this coin before me? What had it been used to buy? Who had lost it in this field? How long had it been buried? Was this the kind of penny my grandmother had been talking about when she said that as a girl she had been able to buy sweets, take the bus and go to the cinema with one coin?

I don’t remember if I ran home immediately to deposit the precious find on the shelf in my bedroom. Quite possibly me and my apprentice archaeologist stayed around a bit longer to look for more treasure, probably finding only roots and the odd confused worm, but, whether I ran off immediately or stayed to mentor my trainee, the penny definitely ended up at some point on display in my shelf museum, in between the weird shell we’d found at Skegness beach the summer before and the punctured whoopee cushion that had long since given up its practical joking days.

Some time later, possibly months, I must have given my grandad a tour of the shelf museum because he went on to give me some even more ancient coins to add to the collection (including a half crown from the 1930s that became my new prized possession). And from there my interest in things from the past blossomed (unlike the museum collection, which remained rather small until it disappeared entirely as a result of the Great Shelf Collapse of 1987. But that’s another story).

It is possibly unrealistically romantic to think that my lifelong love of history was sparked by the discovery of that penny in 1986. But if I was pushed to trace it back to one moment in my life, this discovery would be a strong contender. Throughout my childhood, I became increasingly fascinated by objects from the past, creating a love of history that led eventually to under- and post-graduate study.

Whilst I enjoyed the academic study of theories and other historians’ opinions, what has always really fascinated me are the objects themselves; those pennies from the past that spark a million questions. Put me in an archive to this day and I am very happy, opening boxes, discovering documents and artefacts that have not seen the light of day in decades, if not centuries.

And all of this stemmed from the time my brother and I decided to be archaeologists, using our imaginations to fill time in one of the long summers when school was a distant memory; mum was wandering the kitchen trying to work out why the cutlery drawer was missing two spoons; and dad was out doing his day job of mending school photocopiers that had been broken by teachers misreading the instructions and inserting paper into the wrong end.

Children’s imaginations are wonderful things. Before the vicissitudes of adult life try to dull the edges, they are joyfully playful, endlessly expansive and fiercely creative. To a child, a spoon and a couple of sturdy twigs are obviously the prized trowel and brushes of an archaeologist. The leftover kitchen roll tube is the telescope that sees further into space than any telescope ever has before. And the old penny found buried in the dusty soil is the long-lost treasure of a forgetful pirate.

These imaginative flights of fancy are powerful in many ways, perhaps the most powerful being the development of an “anything is possible” attitude. The child who plays at being an astronaut, an archaeologist, a scientist, an author, a dancer is, from the earliest days, developing the belief that they could do those things. And that’s a powerful attitude to have. The childhood years are not called formative for nothing. Growing up being allowed to dream big – and the creativity, positivity and resilience that that builds – is a strong protector against the times when society and tradition tells children they cannot or should not follow certain pathways.

As the summer holidays begin, we have arrived at the perfect time for children to use their imaginations. Hopefully, amidst the trips and summer camps, there will be time and space for them to say “I’m booooored!”. For when children are bored, with no screens or scheduled activity to occupy them, their imaginations come into their own.

And I would wholeheartedly encourage you to enjoy it when they do. You might end up with a living room that’s unliveable for a day as it’s transformed into a spaceship or a garden shed that becomes occupied by the headquarters of a spy agency. You might lose a couple of spoons to digging for long-lost treasure or find an intrepid mountaineer tackling an Everest of Amazon boxes up the stairs. But it is 100% worth it to see the imagination experts in action. As adults, we could learn a thing or two from them. Who knows? Maybe this summer you too will go on your first space mission.

I wish everyone a wonderful summer and, in the best possible way, I hope that it is filled with boring moments. In my experience of working with primary-age children, they won’t be boring moments for long. And the imaginative play that fills them might just spark a love for something that runs through the rest of their lives. I can’t think of a better way to spend a summer. Enjoy!