swings and roundabouts

Dear Marianne,

“Down the Park” is a phrase which fills me with dread. Play parks are places filled with things for children to fall off, run into and hit their heads on. Mike bit right through his tongue on a slide at my Mums Park, Stan broke his arm on the Monkey bars at a Park in Primrose Hill. Anna cut her knee on gravel at Priory Park in Crouch End, then she regularly reopened it by falling off other things at other play parks throughout the summer. The knee only really healed after Grandad (whilst I wasn’t looking) went at it with TCP – the Scottish version of TLC.

Play parks are dangerous and boring too. They are places where I am forced to watch and worry and where I make my children lose their self confidence by continually shouting “watch out...stop...careful...don’t”. A day at the park with me is not a good trip and I avoid it. All the kids have learnt that if they want to go to the park they need to talk to their Dad/stepdad. When he says yes he makes sure that he has a good book and/or magazine to take with him to read. How is that possible? If and when I am forced down the Park I don’t take a book – nappies, change of clothes, bananas, water, sweets, crisps, wipes, bucket and spade, summer clothes, winter jackets - maybe, but a book, when would I read it?

Down the Park I have to make sandcastles, push swings, be a train driver, climb up behind the smaller ones on the big slides, play catch the hat on the roundabout and generally join in. But Craig doesn’t join in and more significantly isn’t asked to join in; it is not discussed, just understood. He creates a kind of invisible forcefield around him which can only be broken if urgent first aid, toilet trips or football retrieving are required.

I was tempted to the park yesterday by the promise of fresh air and company. I arrived with three of my five to meet my soulmate Bonnie and her two boys. I began as usual with the: be careful of swings, people, dogs, cats, dog poo, cat poo, bicycles, tricycles, scooters, skates, skateboards speech, and segued into the more direct, “watch the swing, don’t go round too fast, mind each other, stop..!”
But then something beautiful happened, Archie, my Archie (aged 10) not Bonnie’s Archie (aged five), but don’t call Bonnie’s Archie little Archie because he doesn’t like that. Anyway, my Archie, took over! He has grown into something of a hero for Anna and Mike and Bonnie’s boys and for once in his life, he was the oldest and most interesting person ever and from the admiring look on the face of Archie (5) the most loveable. He orgainsed them into groups of cubs, x-cubs and mini-cubs, don’t ask me what that’s about, I only lasted two weeks in the Brownies, I couldn’t stand Brown Owl’s abuse of power, the festering heirarchy and the mini dictatorships run by the “sixers”.

Anyway, the little kids loved being told what to do, they climbed, jumped, slid, swung and skipped according to Archie’s commands. This continued to Bonnies’s house where we landed for tea. Archie securing not only high levels of food intake for the young ones, but general all round good behaviour by dint of his position as unelected team leader. I think all parks should provide this form of child labour, with ages relative to the group they supervise, pay given in massive gobstoppers and MacDonalds, quantity of pay based on overall performance and targets met; that is quantity of fun enjoyed per injuries incurred.

But then if Archie was in charge what would I worry about, who would I shout at, and how would Craig manage without that quality time with his book?

Rx