On Soldiers' Field

Soldiers' Field, near Roundhay Park in Leeds, has always been a part of my life - only ten minutes' walk from where I live and very pleasant too, with lots going on.

The field got its name, apparently, from the fact that soldiers from the nearby Chapeltown Cavalry Barracks used to train there.

Once, many years ago, my mother, brother and I came across a very respectable-looking Indian gentleman holding a piece of string which went up into the clouds - he informed us that there was a kite on the end of the string. Can this memory be real? My mother remembers it in exactly the same way, so unless it was a hallucination on the part of both of us, it probably was.

More usually, there are people playing cricket or football and here are some I saw earlier this week:

Lots of little boys kicking footballs about at some kind of football school.

They were very small and very cute: I enjoyed the way they were concentrating as they tried to make the ball obey their feet.

Nobody noticed, or cared if they did, as I moved in to take the photographs and in fact I wished later on that I had taken more.

Of course, gentlemen, if you had tried this you'd be in a police cell by now. That's one thing that's changed since my childhood, all right.