Traces: The Memoir of a Forensic Scientist and Criminal Investigator

by Patricia Wiltshire

There are hedgerows in Britain several millennia

old. Our oldest hedgerows hark back thousands of years, past the Iron Age Celts, past the Dark Ages that took hold after the Romans had left, past early kings and queens, and on, and on into our own history.

When I look back on our sheer freedom, I can only feel sad for today’s children who are packaged and sealed up, their flights of fancy being satisfied by electronic wizardry. I marvel at how young we were, how far we wandered unsupervised, how nobody felt the need to walk us to and from school – and how entirely normal that kind of free, wild life was compared to today.

Your body is your own for only a short time; the elements from which it is made are only borrowed from the outside world, and you must give them back eventually.

Death is coming for all of us, for you and me, and everybody out there. Better, first, get a life.