WE are two months or so from the official season and yet midsummer madness is already upon us. The annual catalogue of childish stupidity or outright vandalism - put whatever description on it you wish - has reared its ugly head earlier than ever in 1996.

On Good Friday the hills were alive with the sound of fire engines as appliances from a number of brigades were sent into blazing moorland on Bleasdale Fell in the Trough of Bowland and around Belmont.

Both were serious incidents with the emergency services tied down for many hours trying to control the flames.

Police and brigade investigators officers were pretty much convinced that the fires had been started deliberately and were universal in their condemnation.

A Darwen spokesman said: This is only the first week in April so it does not bode well for the future." This was no doubt a reference to last year's dry summer when fire crews were tied up for long periods battling to control moorland fires.

What motivates people to act in such a wantonly foolish manner? Do we dismiss these as the acts of irresponsible children with time on their hands and nothing better to do, or the criminal lunacy of dangerous misfits hell-bent on causing as much disruption and destruction as possible?

Either way the end result is the same: the disfigurement of huge stretches of countryside and countless valuable man hours wasted by the emergency services.

And it is the latter which worries the men and women who work in those services. They predict with genuine foreboding that there could be a tragedy of major proportions if they are involved fighting moorland fires when a domestic or industrial blaze occurs - and they can't get there in time.

Parents can do their bit by stressing to children that lighting grass fires is a very dangerous and stupid thing to do. Fire spreads with horrifying speed when grass is tinder box dry. Anything in its path, including those daft enough to cause the blaze in the first place, could be cut down.

But I suppose the solution is make the punishment fit the crime. As long as we continue wrist-slapping the mini and major nutters, they will carry on chucking bricks and other assorted objects at passing trains, putting obstacles on railway lines in the hope of causing a derailment, torturing and killing domestic pets for the 'fun' of it and starting fires.

The ONLY permanent solution is a serious sentence: a lengthy spell of youth custody and the guilty, including parents of irresponsible children, made to pay significant compensation.

What a pity we no longer have corporal punishment in the UK.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.