Playground

A hot, windy day today with a perfect blue sky and at lunchtime I went for a walk in Meanwood Park. It has woods and a stream and wild places but when Emily was little she liked the playground too and we spent a lot of time there.

Here's the playground from a distance:

Swings, slides, a rocket that rocks backwards and forwards, a seesaw and a climbing frame. Let's look at the climbing frame a bit more closely:

Yes, it's a tank. Left to the children's imaginations, of course, a climbing frame could have been any one of a number of things: a castle, a tree, a house or even just a climbing frame. But someone on the council did their thinking for them and decided that a tank would be the perfect place to play.

It's not that I think children's play should be all soft and gentle: far from it, I think a bit of controlled aggression can help them get rid of both energy and angst (and boy will they need some boisterous play when they've been shut in school from eight in the morning until six at night, see previous post).

But there's something about giving children a municipally-provided tank to play with that I really don't like.

Hours we spent there, anyway, Emily and I, over the years, while she slid down the slides and swung on the swings and rocked on the rocket and climbed on the climbing frame (she ignored its tankness). I could picture her running around in her orange coat, deciding what to go on next.

Perhaps I shouldn't tell you, but I cried all the way home in the car for the loss of that delightful little girl: how strange that she's gone forever. Of course, once I got home, there she was: a delightful big girl, writing an essay about Stalin. That made me feel better.