How long has childhood been around in England?

As long as children have. They were put to work, first on farms and later in the factories, foundries and mills; but tiny pockets of their being remained childlike, as their rhymes tell us.

Those sing-song shreds of bawdy raucous life are as unsuitable as the lyrics of the pop songs our little ones trill today. They have, it seems, always adopted fragments of the grown-up’s lives and woven them into strange play which makes little sense but carries the ghost of substance, dislocated wisps of reality.

Much of what they say about the origin of these rhymes which have been handed down to us is, sadly, supposition.

But it is worth a listen to hear the history of man echoing, sing-song, off the walls.

Goosey Goosey Gander is a case in point.

Our land is full of ancient houses filled with long-abandoned secret chambers and passages. In our town, indeed, there are a couple of Tudor mansions sporting rooms which lie very still behind he panelling, accessed by secret staircases, with passages which lead between the two little fortresses.

This, once upon a time, is where the Catholic priests used to hide, muttering wordless prayers for deliverance, during what is known here as The Protectorate. An attachment of Roundheads would be sent to raid a nobleman’s house: they knew all the places to look. They had raided such places before. And a search would be conducted.

A dramatic event in the life of any child, peasant or noble. They have eyes: they watch and they make a kind of childlike sense out of such deeply grown up business:

“Goosey, goosey Gander, where shall I wander? Upstairs and downstairs, in my lady’s chamber. There I met an old man who wouldn’t say his prayers; so I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs.”

There are cheeky child-names: ‘goosey’ can conceivably be traced back to the marching step used by the Roundheads; and sly symbolism picked up from the grown-ups might be glimpsed in the reference to the left – an ancient code for Catholicism.

Children live in the world, and make a kind of sense of it. Sort of.

Just after our last general election, my husband arrived home in a Gordon Brown mask. My children were enchanted. They laughed long and loud. Phil customarily spends election nights with his old friend Bill. My husband had acquired the mask of the last Labour Prime Minister to add a frisson of insolence to the proceedings, which it duly did.

Phil was showered with questions about his avant-garde facewear by his children. They absorbed his answers with – if such a thing is possible – a merry gravity. I could see every fact hitting home. They went away to plot.

The next day, Baby Gordon Brown was created.

The children play together and with their cousins. The girls like to play girlie characters, but that holds no charm for my son. He needs a character with attitude, an impish conduit for his fledgling wit.

That conduit was Baby Gordon Brown: the former prime minister, it seems, as a baby. His mother, so my children’s story goes, is a high-flying working mum who leaves the house early in the morning, and returns late at night. There is nothing for it but to employ that bogey-woman of my children’s imaginary world , the Childminder.

Baby Gordon Brown, naturally, is highly intelligent and deeply Machiavellian. His subversive agenda is simply this: to lead The Childminder a merry dance through plot after plot, recapping and doubling back and revisiting the funny bits and the frightening bits, rather like a stream-of-consciousness novel or, indeed, a dream.

That was all very well while the result of our election hung in the balance. Who would rule with whom? Would it be Tory David Cameron with Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg? Or Brown and Clegg? Britain whistled and twiddled its thumbs and rolled its eyes, and waited with thinly veiled impatience.

Finally it came: Cameron and Clegg. Brown was out, and two brothers would battle it out for control of the Labour Party: Ed and David Milliband.

My children adapted with fluid diversification. The game changed overnight and became Baby David Cameron. I have not once ventured to ask if this baby was as bright as the last one.

The plots are colourful and occasionally gothic as children are wont to be. I believe Baby David has recently fallen through a manhole cover and down a drain into the underworld. He has become accustomed to what he found there – The Afterlife – and is not happy about plans to repatriate him to the world of the living.

I don’t make this up. Honest.

On Sunday the clan came to tea and scones.

The children sat noisily round the table and started on bread and fruit and salad and graduated to crisps and cake and if they were lucky, there was lemonade.

The grown-ups chatted over the week and calculated the calories in a scone, jam and cream before weakening and partaking, washing it down with a mug of hot tea.

The children completed their culinary romp and fired out a question with the speed of a Kalashnikov: “Please may I get down from the table?”

And off they went with undue haste to play in the middle sitting room, up on the first floor, while we talked and sipped from the mugs of plenty.

I popped up to do one of those Grown Up checks on the gathering on the first floor. And I heard a class being introduced. “This is Baby David Cameron”, the teacher, aka Maddie, was explaining: “….and this is Jane…” gesturing to my youngest niece, the littlest princess.

There was a pause while Maddie cast around for a suitable surname. Four large pairs of eyes were fixed on her face, four little minds attendant on her every word.

“This”, Maddie finished with a flourish, “is Jane Milliband.”

The honourable house welcomes the leader of the opposition.