THE lithe brown skinned Italian boy - about eight perhaps - was being coached by his older brother as they splashed in the hotel pool. "Doo yoou larve mee?" he recited, for all the world like Manuel in Fawlty Towers practising his English.

He tried it over and over until his brother agreed he'd got it about right - or at least as near as he was ever going to get to "Do you love me?" Then he slid out of the pool and splashed his way to where the blonde English girl - twelve years old, I would think - was playing table tennis with the middle brother.

Shyly, the younger boy crept closer, almost within reach - then, before the girl spotted him, his courage deserted him and he turned and fled. There was a bit more practice at the poolside, then he tried again, edging towards the girl. This time, suddenly bold, he clasped her hand and blurted out his carefully rehearsed question: "Doo yoou larve me?"

He didn't wait for an answer. Pink all over, he ran and hid round the corner, out of her sight.

After that, the moment he saw her coming, he would run and hide - until at last she ran after him, and they chased each other round the pool, giggling and shrieking with laughter.

You could say it just goes to show that Italian lads start young, making advances to girls. To my eyes, it was rather the sort of innocent fun that children playing together have always had, feeling their way towards the agonies of their teenage years.

But for all their differences of language - none of them really spoke the other's language - these children could still play happily together, enjoying each other's company.

I found myself thinking suddenly about a very different scene, glimpsed in a London playgound four years ago. It was a spring day and music came bouncing on the air - a very traditional English sound, some kind of folk dance. And there, in the middle of the playground, was something I'd not seen since my own childhood - a Maypole, with children dancing round it, the many-coloured ribbons in their hands weaving a pattern about the pole. Looking on, their classmates clapped in time to the music, jumped up and down to its rhythm. The thing that marked it out from the Maypoles I remembered was the colour of the dancers - no, not colour, but colours. There must have been representatives of almost every race on earth dancing in that playground, sharing in that most traditional of English dances. It was one of the most joyful sights I've ever seen. If that's the kind of thing people mean by multi-culturalism, then I'm all for it.

The thing those two different scenes have in common is children of different races, with different languages and cultures, playing happily together, merged in their common childhood. It's what most children do naturally, if adults let them. They see other children in their companions, not little Italians, Greeks, Nigerians, Pakistanis, Koreans or whatever.

Wouldn't the world be a better place if we left it that way? It's adults who teach children suspicion and hate, who tell them they mustn't play with Protestants or Catholics or Muslims or Infidels. It's adults who teach them to despise their neighbours, to see the differences, not the things that bind them.

We could all learn a lesson in happy coexistence from our children, if we would only let them teach us.

Published: 29/09/2005