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block LOCOG’s planning permission.
Parkies
To enforce all these rules you needed a parkie.
Most of us remember the park keeper of the past.
More often than not a man, uniformed in green or
brown, probably close to retirement age, carrying a
pointed stick for collecting litter and ever ready to
deliver a clip round the ear for any youthful
transgressor of bye-laws. Blakeys? Little Hitlers?
Maybe but also custodians of safe, orderly and tidy
public parks. In the past twenty years most parks have
lost their keepers so it is rather ironic that popular
children’s books such as Nick Butterworth’s
Percy
the Park Keeper
series celebrate parkies while being
aimed at children who’ve probably never seen one of
these mythical beasts. Perhaps Percy the Park Keeper
in reminding parents and grandparents of the Great
British Parkie and their role in creating a safe haven
in the city will encourage local authorities to look at
their return to protect what are after all very valuable
public assets. Homburg hats to be optional.
The Park Bench
On a bench on London’s South Bank, near the Royal
Festival Hall, in a nodding reference to the Tomb of
the Unknown Warrior, is this memorial to the
unknown husband.
“Often Imagined, Much Desired,
Never Found”
.
I couldn’t pin down when memorial
benches began or whose idea they were but I suspect
they are essentially a British invention. In recent
years throughout the country spoof bench plaques are
appearing, often dedicated to members of the fictional
Devenish-Phibbs family including one in Brighton to:
Dutch Devenish-Phibbs (1900-1999)
He spent his life married to the sea, and his last
twelve hours married to Fang-Hua, an 18-year-old
Korean acrobat.
And this one in the Midlands:
Is there a parkie in this photograph? It is
1891 and Sir Spencer Maryon is opening of
Maryon Park in Charlton. The Maryon family
donated the Charlton sand pits to create the
park. The old sand pits were once part of the
Hanging Woods where highwaymen captured
on nearby Shooters Hill were hanged.