10am this morning. A liberal littering of bright blue bin-liners. Cast iron bin tossed on its side yards from its base. Smashed glass of white, brown and green everywhere, but particularly on the path and around the swings. This is a usual scene in Barnard Park on a Sunday morning when I take my son to the playground. He loves picking up the broken glass and putting it in the bin. Last Sunday there was a large pink plastic elephant on a metal platform, probably lifted from outside a shop somewhere, smashed and partially burnt, offered up as a ritual sacrifice. Toddlers sat and played on it nonetheless. The sandpit has been emptied, not by the slack-jawed teens but by the council, they got tired of extracting the shards of broken glass. What they’ve left is a 3- foot deep empty concrete pit with metal barriers around the perimeter chained together at intervals of a metre or so, perfect for the mangling of a toddler. Even the malicious yobs sucking down alcopops here at night couldn’t devise a more lethal kiddie trap.
The scene this morning was relatively peaceful though. No motor-scooters hurtling by the playground gates at full-throttle. The building site next to the Lark in the Park pub resting from the job of building a block of ‘luxury apartments’. All the kids are excited by the presence of a real-life ‘Cranky Crane’ dominating the skyline and they can compare their own plastic ‘Scoop’ against the real thing chucking up mud six days a week. Be interesting to see how the new residents of Barnard Park will take to the weekly sacking of the space beneath their luxury windows. Will the estate agents include it in their advertising pitch, “the authentic inner city experience, prime views of feral youths burning out stolen vehicles.” One violent rape and one attempted murder (a random stabbing at four in the afternoon) within the last year. A bouncer at The Elbow Room across the way in Chapel Market shot after refusing someone entry last week. A teenager beaten unconscious on Barnsbury Estate opposite the park. Tony Blair lived about fifty yards away from the swings.
The kids love it though, and so do we. The view from Barnsbury Road down over Kings Cross should have its own blue plaque. There’s talk of reclaiming the concrete football pitches – in two and a half years I haven’t seen a single match played there, only dog training. The chain-link fencing is routinely pulled down and left contorted with sharp rusting spikes jutting out at all angles. Grassed over there would be a long sweep of green down to the One O’Clock Club (a prime piece of the park fenced off to be used for two hours a day and not at all weekends and autumn-winter). In summer with the water plaything on it’s packed with screeching kids and sunbathing parents. In the London borough with the least amount of greenspace, we have to appreciate what we’ve got.