Park life. (British Parks In General)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	British Parks In General
Date:	29/05/08 (152 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sun and escapism

Disadvantages: Yobs and Snobs

My favorite green space in my home town is Abington Park, my second favorite green space being the cricket club just across the road. Abington Park is one the top ten ornamental parks in Great Britain. With 352 different varieties of trees and ten times that of shrubs, second only to Kew Gardens for that eco badge of honor (although the Borough Council keep chopping them down because they over-hang the road and deposit on posh peoples cars who threaten to sue the council) it's a really beautiful and iridescent place, especially in Autumn.

'Abbey' really is a pleasant place and equal to any of London's Royal Parks if you ask me. We even have towering Redwood pines and Monkey trees, guarding the cute little aviary full of budgies and Peacocks. The other day there was a domestic parrot on the outside trying to get in to join the caged birds, presumably because they were the same color.

Because Abbey is immaculate the people off all social backgrounds in Northampton treat it with respect, no litter to be seen, even the roughians scooping up their fighting dos poo poo with a scooper and taking their shoes off to play soccer on the manicured bowling greens. This is Great Britain in action! The other prominent park in the town, 'The Racecourse', which houses the annual balloon festival, is a tip in contrast. If you are going to be mugged, raped or murdered then that's the place it will happen.

Parks are cool things because they are free of charge and great places to escape to in the summer, maybe with a good book and some snacks, or a pretty girl and some medium priced wine with an impressive label, one of the few places in England where the British class system actually mingles with no pretensions - although social groups A, B and C always keeping their distance from the D`s and E`s, as written in the British social class manual. When I spend an afternoon at the park I notice these subtle things. I am great watcher of people.

Last week I had a pleasant day in the Park, finalizing my audition piece for a regular article in a well know sports magazine that could be a nice little earner. The sun was out and I was writing well. Around me on my slice of grass were the usual groups of chatty, bright eyed sixth-form girls, sitting in neat circles, their faces alive with ambition and little make-up, dutifully doing their A-Level coursework. Thirty meters away to may left you have the opposite, obnoxious working class chavettes, very noisy and just as happy, but with no ambition and lots of make-up, and one group thinking of getting pregnant to get a house and call it a day, the other thinking the exact opposite. That is the British class system in raw flow. To this lot the word 'A-Level 'may as well be the latest boy band!

A posh pretty girl form the group is soon playing Frisbee with a boy who only wears cotton Rugby shirts (never seen dead in polyesters replica football tops unless its fancy dress), she letting the mesmerizing plastic disc hit her on the side of the head so she can let out a playful shriek like only girls can when they try to impress guys with their feebleness - although girls are fundamentally crap at catching things. The boy is chuffed she's crap at catch, allowing more giggles and a chance to chase and tickle her. The first touch beats the first kiss anytime. But they won't hook up and have sex just yet as they are too young to be thinking about wrecking their chances of going to university and not being like their parents. But the 'Chavettes' group has already had lots of sex, just a matter of time before the bump appears and her name is needled into her lovers forearm and on the windscreen of his untaxed Ford Escort. I hope she likes fighting dog, dog's hairs itching in her knickers!

Across the park you have the park café; expensive, homely and safe, young couples surrounded by kids, plastic footballs, ice cream and steaming tea and coffee (at fair-trade prices!). The café is called the 'Ye Old Oak' and it's the only one and so a bit of a monopoly. We like to think the adults are happy there, but probably not, the body language always interesting. She's 39 (she's been 39 for three years now), he looking around at the younger girls as his gaze drifts with the smells of freshly cut grass and sun cream, wishing his wife was the same lively and sexy girl he married ten years ago before she stupidly thought she needed to have kids to keep him around, her eventual millstone, making her feel haggard and resentful of those young innocent bodies. Love does indeed tear us apart.

Summer always smells of sex. Everybody's horny this time of the year, especially those thirtysomething mums shoving pushchairs around. This is not what they went to university for. My friend Joe is in that place - pretty, surprisingly young skin and fresh faced, but 42 and feeling lonely, the clocking ticking, somewhat deafening when she's alone in her 2 up-2 down. Jo has her own business and house and has had lots of dates with nice guys, including me, but her breath reeks from her veggie keep slim diet and she won't accept a guy earning less than her in her bed. Her chances are limited on finding Mr Perfect are limited with that attitude that modern emancipated women seem to wear like a badge of honor these days.

Parks can also be hectic as well as the marriage councilors waiting area. The other day I was reading my book, looking over the top of the pages at some pretty Polish girls stretching out in those tiny bikinis, they staring back at my green card potential, before a football game swept pass and broke our promising eye contact, the game violently off piste, the ball strategically landing amongst the irritated girls. I wonder if English guys ascents sound as sexy as their ascents do. They are not impressed with these 'Englisssh drunken menz'. Elsewhere, five teenagers begin to loiter, looking over at me in that way you don't like. Trouble. Three of them are dressed 'chav'and 'street' .They know they intimidate normal people and that's the kicker. I tuck myself back into my book with my paranoid thoughts. I'm hiding but wary. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt this time. It's just me thinking the news is all real and waiting for me around the corner.

A few minutes later my bag is dropped-kicked, my Ipod and notes from work being water bombed by a big red condom, wiping it all out. At least they are running away laughing. This is not going to be an 'incident'...Im not going to be the next Gary Newlove. They know im not going to react. They are 'hoodies' I'm the sort of bloke who reads books in parks. If I had a can of super strength lager with me then maybe they would have thought twice. I shrug my shoulders in their direction and afford myself a rye smile. Life sometimes can be a cliché. If only they knew what I was already thinking. But I think they do. That's why they did it.

Parks have lakes...blue always goes with green...Ours has three small ones. One is a boating lake with no boats, the armada of two seaters long since sunk by the 'yob culture'. The other lakes are for the birds, the water very grey and murky looking like the fish who are imprisoned there. But tragedy has struck, the water heating up in the recent sun and the water losing oxygen, 500 fish floating on the surface gasping for air. Because the weed hasn't been cleaned out for ages there was no oxygen left down there amongst the shopping trolleys and those training-shoes that go with the ones rapped around telegraph wires. A few disgruntled local lads with their dads passed down fishing kit are not happy, unable to catch the same scraggy trout they caught last week. Beats school work after tea though. A will known Cricket Test umpire chairs the 'Friends of Abington Park Group', his voluntary role to row out in a little boat and judge the conditions of the lakes. He was umpiring in Warwickshire at a County Game at the time of the mass fish genocide. The dead pike floating on the surface wasn't as big and old as the legend tells.

We have a 'pitch and putt'. It was recently reopened after a ten year absence. Council house kids had terrorized the booking clerks and torched their hut. I learnt to play golf there as a kid. Now its
up and running again ,but not quite the same, a half-mile treck to the other booking office to get the clubs (and usually the flags as no one ever bothers anymore). Another half-assed attempt by the Borough Council. For some reason the people with dogs like to take them to do their do-do`s.

Last year the park got sideswiped by Northampton's first tornado, next to the above pitch and putt, although the met office refused to confirm it was a 'twister'. But a quick walk through the park back then and you could see the pathway of damage, 80 year old towering trees not only toppled but flung across the spinney. Branches were everywhere and at least thirty trees were wasted in narrow corridor, 100ft wide. People who saw and heard it said it was a funnel clown. Actually, looking out of my window right now its gone very dark, this summer is looking remarkably like last summer, huge low pressure swirling the full breadth of the United Kingdom dumping hard rain on a increasingly heavily concreted country. That's not park weather and its not global warming weather.

There are always old people in the park, many cutting sad figures... widows without their hard working men, long since lost to dementia. The old guys who feed the ducks and pigeons long for conversation with strangers, but dare not approach younger people they see as a threat. Being a sports writer I have time for them, the Cobblers or cricket an easy opener. But it always seems to come back to the war, where their memories really sleep. They meant something back then. What would we have done without these guys?

The book I'm reading is tiring; maybe grab 40 winks in the gentle sun and breeze. You can't beat that. A snooze in the sun! Two pretty school girls look over at me with confused sexual feelings they get at that age. I'm flattered but no Gary Glitter. Maybe one more chapter of the increasingly tedious book to get me off for my guilty snooze.

An emaciated druggie root marches across my eye line with a purposeful gate. Making his lapidary £250 fix a day with no social skills and call-centre isn't easy. Some poor sod is going to be mugged today. I avert my gaze. The police are not going to catch this waste of space as they don't have the resources. Hell...there not even going to bother. Modern policing is about stopping anarchy not crime. We don't want the 'Rossers' hurting their backs rugby tackling 'wrong uns', do we, off sick for three months with bad back and an improving golf handicap, lazing in the park with me today. Hey, that bloke over there looks like a copper on the sick. No one in authority wants to know anymore. The lawyers are on the bad guy's side now because that's where the money is under this human rights decade. Drugs flood into society like a corrosive acid when that happens, seeping in to the most respectable cracks. The lawyers snort the powdered version before meeting their clients that pay their big mortgages. Business has been good in Britain under Brown and Blair.

Looks like rain now, the clouds edging in from the east. Big gray ones too. The type of clouds that even look cold. Rain is a parks enemy. No one goes there when it rains. But maybe that's the way the trees and shrubs like it, rustling and swaying in gentle resonance, left to their own serene conversations. I'm of now because, as you can see, I'm not relaxed enough to be still sitting in the park. What happened to my country? Is the great British park all that's left?

Summary: A cheap day out..