The Park

After reaching near insanity earlier this week after 8 weeks of summer holiday, the last two days I have done nothing bar the washing up and just gone with it. Yesterday I was hoping to take the girls to the park, but it was very wet, so I decided to go for the soft play area instead.

As we missed out on the park yesterday, we made the most of the fine weather today and set off at 10 am for the swings and slides at Whitley Common. After exhausting the possibilities there, and feeling that the girls were nowhere near as worn out as I wanted them to be, we then headed for the War Memorial Park, where two sessions on the swings and slides, with a break for lunch in between (hot dogs for us all, ice cream and crisps for the girls, and a cappuccino for me), did the trick.

Something set my mind to thinking about the park when I was a little girl, and how different the play area is now. Now, within an area of enclosed fencing, is a bark floored, safe as humanly possible, array of equipment where no child is ever more than 6 ft from the floor. There are no roundabouts (far too lethal – it wouldn’t surprise me if they we actually illegal, as I haven’t seen one for years) and see-saws have springs to prevent too much seeing and sawing. The child in me mourns the loss of the slides they used to have. The smaller one must have been about 10ft, the larger around 16. They were steep, and they were narrow, and they were very slidy and shiny. Fantastic. Of course the surface they were mounted on was good ol’ concrete, and the mum in me is heartily relieved that they are gone.

The two sky blue paddling pools that were there when I was little are gone as well. They were filled in a number of years ago, and I can’t even remember why…not safe enough, not healthy enough, too expensive to maintain, something like that. A couple of years ago, they opened a ‘splash n play’ area, which is totally cool. There are all sorts of fountains and jets of water…just ace, as I would have said when I was eight! After an unfortunate incident just after it first opened, when a number of children got a tummy bug after using it, they have spent a ton of money and installed the most fantastic filtration systems ever, apparently, and it opened properly last summer, to great acclaim from Caitlin. She has been in it every time we have been there and it has been open, whatever the weather. Hannah also enjoys it, although doesn’t actually go in the fountains; she prefers to run around the outside of them and splash in the puddles. It is less fun for me to stand in there and try to avoid getting wet, so from my point of view it was fortunate that it was closed today as the school holidays are over.

Walking back to the car, I showed the girls the stones under the trees. Every tree in the park has a memorial stone at its foot, commemorating local servicemen who have died, particularly those who were killed in action during the two world wars. Caitlin ran from one to another, eager to know what each one said, reminding me so much of myself at her age. As a child I probably read every memorial in the park. I think it is important that children start to learn about things like the tragedy of war, particularly living in a city which had its heart ripped out by war.

Visiting the park brings back other memories too, because it has been part of my life for ever. Some of the memories are among my most vivid. In 1987, Coventry City FC won the FA Cup, and that year took part in the carnival procession, holding the cup aloft in an open top double decker bus. Standing on the roadside at the edge of the park, as the bus approached, my Dad nudged me and said, “There it is kid! The FA Cup!” His face was shining with pride and joy.

The park was also a place to hang out when I was a teenager. The last day of compulsory school, our whole year walked there en masse at the end of school, and proceeded to consume just one or two alcoholic beverages. I ‘missed’ one or two A-Level Physics lessons to go and play pitch and putt very badly. I sat there in silence with my first real boyfriend, in the pitch black late one evening, just enjoying being together and being quiet. I played tennis with one of my schoolfriends, with ancient wooden rackets with missing strings. We agreed to give up when we made a five shot volley, but never made it past three.

Among my favourites is a memory that I knew at the time I would always remember. I was about twelve, and at the park with my sisters and their children. I was running and carrying my niece Emma, who was a toddler (she is almost twenty now and engaged to a soldier!) She was just giggling in that way that small children and babies do when something is just the most fun thing they have done in their life so far. She got heavy, but I wanted to keep running and to hear that giggle. I ran as far as I could, until I ran out of breath, just to hear that sound of complete and utter joy.

When I see the same joy on Caitlin’s face when she runs in and out of the water fountains, despite the chilly weather, I remember exactly why the park is just the best place in the world to go.