Figure 1.-.

We had a nice park near our home and school. We used it a lot as children. It played quite a big part in my childhhood - like it did for many city boys I suppose and it changed even over the time I lived in the area. We'd see ducklings and things in the Spring at the lake but the main thing were the trees and especially the conker trees.Although, as I told you, I wasn't into conker fights I loved the trees. When we were very little Mum would take us out to the park. I don't remember much of those times but I suppose we played with other children and it also gave my Mum a chance to meet other Mums. When we started school we would walk through the park to get there and back so I always crossed it twice a day for the whole of the time I was at primary school and sometimes on Sunday afternoon Mum would leave us in our best Sunday school clothes and take us walking in the park. Other parents did the same as my Mum and I suppose that it why I have mixed feelings sbout the park - it was a place for play - but it was also a place of order where there were adults around and "rules".

Nature and Seasons

We'd see ducklings and things in the Spring at the lake but the main thing were the trees and especially the conker trees.Although, as I told you, I wasn't into conker fights I loved the trees. There was a big one just before you came to the gate where I left the park and got onto the road where my school was. Because I passed it every day I noticed the changes - bare in the Winter,then the buds,the leaves,the flowers,the conkers appearing and finally the leaves falling as Autumn came on.I don't think that you'd notice the seasons like that in the city without parks. Of course as a boy you don't fully appreciate all of this.

Early Visits

When we were very little Mum would take us out to the park. I don't remember much of those times but I suppose we played with other children and it also gave my Mum a chance to meet other Mums and also learn from them about schools and such in the area (she wasn't from London originally).

School

When we started school we would walk through the park to get there and back so I always crossed it twice a day for the whole of the time I was at primary school and sometimes on Sunday afternoon Mum would leave us in our best Sunday school clothes and take us walking in the park.

Adult Supervision

Other parents did the same as my Mum and I suppose that it why I have mixed feelings sbout the park - it was a place for play - but it was also a place of order where there were adults around and "rules". The real places for play as we got older were the secret places away from adult eyes like the bombsite or the island in the river but the park would do if there was nothing going on elsewhere. The rules were posted up at each gate - "byelaws" they were called but I never read them properly - things like not dropping litter and keeping dogs on the lead and such. I remember a new one (as it was added at the bottom) - "No transitor radios" and that was because older teenagers had started congregating there in the Summer on the big open green spaces where families wanted to picnic. These rules were enforced by park keepers or "parkies" as we called them and we had a lot of fun winding these people up. They were both men and women - mainly older people and they wore a brown uniform.They always carried around long sticks with spikes on the bottom and as they walked around they speared up litter (mainly ice-crean wrappers and such) from the grass.

Layout

The park was in several sections and each had there own rules. If you went in by the gate near where we lived there was an open grass section with a tarmac path through the middle To the right was the gravel football pitch where we played our school football matches and this had a high fence around it and was locked a lot of the time. When it was open it still had a notice on it "under 14's only" but it was normally older teenagers who used it as it had proper goalposts. We played football on the grass outside using a tree for one post and a jumper for the other and the parkies never seemed to hassle the older kids like they did us even though they were breaking the rules. Maybe they were scared of them. The open grass ran out into the netball pitches (the girls school game) and then a round well -cut grass section with a flower bed in the middle and "keep off the grass" all around it. Then came the artificial lake - fenced off but we'd still get in there sometimes - where we used to feed the ducks when we were little.Beyond the lake was a huge expanse of grass - room for football matches, picnics and everything all at the same time and with the ice-cream pavilion and the bandstand off to one side. They still had bands when I was a boy on Sunday afternoon - mainly army or works bands and my Mum used to stop and listen when she took us to the park. There was a sunken grass area beyond the large grass area - this was where we had our school sports days in the Summer and there were tennis courts next to it and a putting green (which you had to pay for). Further back - by the gate that led out to the road our school was on was a "secret garden". It was a high-walled rose garden and completely different to the rest of the park. The notice on there was "no unaccompanied children" and you could look in and see older people sitting on the benches in the quiet. The contrast was the kids play area at the other end of the park. This was set up against the arches of the overhead railway that ran through the park and had the paddling pool, the sandpit and then the little kids' swings and seesaws and such. The older kids swings and things were set beneath the railway arches. The best was the last arch which had the "witches hat" in it. This was a conical shaped swing/roundabout which you could all stand on and rock from side to side and twirl round until you could hear the mechanism creaking. Once it got going it would be great and then when a train passed overhead eveyone would scream. The last bit of the park beyond the railway arches was a small triangular well-kept sectiom with a sundail in it. It was nice - but I didn't like it as we only went through that way when we were on the way to the dentist which I hated even though I rarely had anything done. It was more like when we had to go to the barbers and I resented having to sit around indoors waiting when you could be out playing. There were other parks around of course - but nothing as various as this one - it had something for everyone but, as I say, around the age of 10 or 11 it just wasn't enough for us so we used the bombsite or went down to the river. When I went back through a few years later (we'd moved) they'd built an "adventure playground" with tyres to swing on and ropes to come down on pulleys but the kids there were being supervised by an earnest young man with a beared and it was nothing like we used to get up to on the bombsite. Again - this was all organised. To me it looked like the cubs or scouts which were not for me.Later still it became a skateboard area but again kids didn't want to use it - preferring to use the paths around the lake outside (which was against another new byelaw and would have the "parkies" chasing them on bikes - who were the only people allowed to ride two-wheeled bikes in the park - tricycles were allowed though).

Park Clothing

Our clothes

As far "park clothing" goes it was all different - playclothes if we just went in on a Saturday, school uniform when passing through, best if on a Sunday afternoon walk with Mum, football shirts for school football, our team bands and plimpsoles for school sports day, underpants or nothing at all for the paddling pool - I must have worn all of the clothes I had at some point in the park depending on what I was there for but it was always fun in one way or another to go there.

Other kids

I probably got a lot of my information about what other kids were wearing from the park too.For instance my little brother had a friend from Trinadad at his school.He was born there and had a brother.I normally only saw the Trinadian brothers in school uniform or playclothes like ours but in the Summer holidays they'd be playing cricket in the park with their Dad and then they's be wearing! really brightly coloured shirts with exotic patterns on them (the Dad too!) which were probably from Trinadad as you rarely saw such bright and exotic shirts for sale in England back then - only later on the market which I'm thinking of writing something about as it was one more place where you could buy clothes and my Mum did occasionally,

Cubs

The cubs my brother went to also used the park for playing rounders and things as, although they had a meeting hall behind the church, there wasn't much outdoor space there.

Sandpit

I noted the HBC page on sandboxes and I can tell you a little about the subject as far as England is concerned. I already told you about the paddling pool in the park near us that my Mum used to take us to after school sometimes in the Summer. Well next to the paddling pool was what we called the "sandpit". It was quite a large area of sand sunken a couple of feet below the path around it and it had a concrete rectangular block in the middle that kids used to climb up on and jump into the sand.

Paddling Pool

When we were very little we used to sometimes use the paddling pool in the local park. That was before my little brother started school and my mum hadn't started back at work. She used to pick us up from school then and when it was hot we sometimes went to the paddling pool along with a lot of the other kids and their mums from all of the local primary schools. I often didn't want to go as I wanted to go straight home for some reason. The pool was just for the under-eights and most kids just went in in their underwear or even nothing – it was no big deal then. The pool was only about a foot deep with a wall all round it where the mums sat chatting and occaisionally telling their kids to behave or they'd have to go home. I didn't like it as the kids were running around screaming and kicking water at each other.

Bill