Sharon Griffiths: The danger of being too safe

It is really noticeable. Everywhere you go there are adults with scarlet faces, glowing arms, peeling shoulders, proof that - even limited by the working day - we have dashed out and soaked up as much of the sun as we could. But just look at the children - most of them still have that washed-out winter whiteness.

They look pale and pasty, like plants deprived of light. Those who are as brown as berries are probably the ones that have been taken out of school for a week or two in Spain.

Maybe the rest of them have just been smothered in sun block, but somehow I doubt it.

Don't children play out any more?

The answer, sadly, is no. Whereas the great outdoors was once one large playground for children, the world has become a more dangerous place. We worry about traffic, we worry about paedophiles, we worry, more simply, about all the broken glass littering the ground by the swings.

Playgrounds and open spaces that should be swarming with children are often almost deserted - until the teenagers congregate there at night.

So we keep our children safe at home and think we're doing our best for them.

Instead of being turfed out after breakfast and told not to come home till teatime, children are kept close, nearly always under supervision. No chance to explore, get in - and out - of trouble and learn to be independent. Not even the simple adventure of being able to walk to and from school.

No chance for exercise either, to stretch those growing muscles. So our children - who should, by rights, be one of the healthiest generations in history - are getting fat, succumbing to diabetes and heart disease. Couch potatoes, once a joke, are now cause for serious concern. Problems that were once limited to the sedentary middle-aged are now cropping up in childhood. We are killing them with kindness.

And, of course, the easiest way to keep your children safe is to keep them indoors, where you can see them.

Which is presumably what the parents of runaway 12-year-old Shevaun Pennington thought. She wasn't even shut away in her room, but, very sensibly, using the computer in the kitchen, where her parents could keep an eye on her.

Doubtless, hundreds of other young girls are doing exactly the same. They are spending five or six hours a day (is there time for anything else?) on the computer. They are engrossed in a totally unreal world where nothing and nobody may be what they seem.

The real world on their doorstep - with all its risks and dangers - might yet be safer for them. Once they're out there, they might even learn to cope, grow up and be independent.

Who knows - they might even get some colour in their cheeks.

YORKSHIRE Water has been praised for supplying water that is almost 100 per cent pure.

Excuse me? Is this the same Yorkshire Water that supplies the water that comes through my taps - occasionally brown, frequently cloudy and always stinking of chlorine? And that's without the chunks of limescale, which they can't help.

I drink lots of water, love the stuff, but now all of it is filtered and often boiled. I buy a lot in bottles too.

But it makes holidays extra special - never mind the food and booze, it's such bliss to go away from Yorkshire and drink water straight from the tap.

CHERIE Blair is really the most infuriating woman. She is in very many ways admirable - intelligent, successful and making a pretty decent fist of juggling career and family life.

So why does she think she needs a spin doctor? All she has to do to make us love her is to get on with her life - as quietly as possible and with absolutely no spin.

Just think of Denis Thatcher. He kept in the background, kept his mouth shut - and became a national treasure.

It's not a bad example.

CONGRATULATIONS to all who did the Race for Life and the Great North Walk on Sunday. To do it at all was brilliant, to do it in that terrific heat was absolutely wonderful. Hope you're not too blistered. Well done everyone.