On Bicycles And Parks · Monday April 30, 2007
(Wind distortion warning – but not too bad; it’s worth it).
There’s something about parks that’s beautifully soothing, taken for granted, and rarely mentioned. At least, I’ve never seen it referred to: the melody of birds, breezes, and people talking out of doors. There’s a spaciousness to parks that antidotes the claustrophobia of big cities in particular, where social and architectural environments cramp and constrain us. You have to shout over traffic, break conversation to avoid dodgy looking people coming towards you, and generally hustle and bustle like everyone else.
“What is life if full of care”, the old poem says, “we have no time to stand and stare”. And not only stare, hopefully at trees, flowers, and general nice stuff, but also enjoy the sounds of a relaxed outdoors scenario…maybe discussing bikes and parks.
There’s a relaxed ambience to it, reflected in voices foregrounded in a big space. Bicycles wheel past, dogs bark, there may be (although I didn’t manage to capture it) ice cream vans in the distance.
Sunday April 29th, Platt Fields Manchester, a remarkably sunny day when everyone was happy, including a photographer on a bench and a nice lady, reflecting on bicycles and parks. A few weeks previously on the same bench, I’d been approached by someone called Andrew. I was initially suspicious, because he seemed so intent on getting my attention. He was, it turned out, a barrister who had to return to work 20 minutes later, after an interesting conversation about politics and world events. He specialised in immigration, and told me he spent a large amount of time in Middle East and Arab countries. I think he just badly needed some normal social contact. We established a few shared references, for example a friend I once had who worked at London law firm Mishcon de Reya. The senior partner there, Anthony Julius, represented Diana Windsor who, my friend said, was “sweet”, or something, for bringing cough sweets and tissues to a meeting with an afflicted Julius. He’d never met Julius, “Andrew” said, although he had met Lord Mishcon. He didn’t know Julius had developed a literary TV career opining on novels like, as I recall, those written by Philip Roth.
And so on…
But overall I think I prefer the chat about parks and bikes, on a beautiful sunny day. This is Platt Fields Park during a summer festival event that sadly no longer exists:
