New Park (and old)

This is near F’s work.  On the right, behind those tall railings, is a park.  You know the kind – paths, trees, landscaping, park benches, gardens…

On the left has been a building site ever since I have been going to work with F (on and off, over a year).  F says it is part of some extension to an underground pubic transport system, but that it does not seem to be progressing particularly quickly.

The building site looks as though it might have had some sort of park status once – a huge fountain, or perhaps a paddling pool, a bronze statue of some ancient Greek warrior type – but it was all waste land until this week.  It did have a water stand-pipe with a tap on it and last summer we sometimes passed some people (read ‘women’) who live on the street using the stand-pipe to do their laundry.  They had found a small plastic paddling pool somewhere, had filled it with water and were washing blankets and hanging them on the park railings to dry.  Sometimes their children were using the tiny pool to cool off.

Now the wasteland has been ‘landscaped’.  It has new instant grass, a watering system, instant gardens filled with flowering geraniums and painted picket fences.  The standpipe has been buried under a ‘hatch’.  We guess it is now part of the watering system.

Meanwhile, the park, which locals tell us used to be used for a flower show, has turned into a completely unkempt wasteland and something of a no-go area of long grass, weed infested paths, piles of human generated rubbish, collapsing benches and fancy gates hanging askew off rusty hinges.

No doubt it serves as a home for wildlife but most of the wildlife appears to be in human form (read ‘men’).