PLAYGROUND
Prompt - Playground : Whether it is the swings or the sandbox or the sliding boards, write about your memories of being on a playground
I do not know if I am odd or not, but my memories of my childhood seem to be far less clear than many other people I've talked to about the subject. Or less clear than they claim their recollections to be. For we all know memory is fallible. We are able to recall particular highs and lows, but the daily habits of existence become strangers to us, to be replaced by new habits, and replaced again, as our lives change. So I feel I am unclear about my earliest memory, and some of the contenders only really exist in my consciousness because of photos I've seen. All of which is by way of saying that what I am about to relate comes through rose tinted vision and is both selective and unreliable.
The word playground primarily conjures up images of hard concrete and tarmac expanses at school, either kicking a small ball around, or playing the sort of games children played in the sixties. But a playground with swings and slides and the like? There would have been plenty around, yet none stick in my mind, bar one. And that one carries with it the (imagined?) golden magic of summers outside the city.
Each year the family would take a cottage in the small village of Stow, which sits on the A7 a few miles to the north of Galashiels, and I would spend a good part of my summer holidays there. Sometimes with my parents, mostly with a grandmother and great aunt. There may have been others who came to stay for a time, but I don't remember other kids being among them.
So I'd explore the village, go for walks, make my own entertainment. There was a burn in the woods, down in the valley (probably only a slight dip in the landscape, but to a small boy...) where I wasn't supposed to go, but still managed to fall in a couple of times. The graveyard, which dated back many centuries, became a place of fascination. But the one place that was both a parentally approved destination, and somewhere I wanted to be, was the playground in the public park.
It's a few years since I drove down the A7, but the last time I did I saw there was a still a play facility there. Easy to see as it's on the right , in open space, a bit before the village proper starts. It didn't look much like the playground of my memories, for it had been updated, and made a lot safer. No more falling onto the solid concrete of my day.
I remember a slide, a roundabout and some swings. If there was more then it's been consigned to my mental dustbin. I remember lots and lots of sunny days, but this was Scotland so even I'm suspicious of that one. Mostly I went there accompanied by elderly relatives, who would sit on a bench and watch me entertain myself. It's strange, but I don't recall there ever being any other kids there at the same time as me. Where were the locals? Maybe they were all holidaying in Edinburgh! There must have been some, but not a single one has lasted in my mind over the decades.
It's the roundabout I remember best. Especially for the days when my dad came down, for then it would move much faster and for longer that I was capable of managing on my own. Plus he was the only one of the family up for that bit extra speed. But mostly I still see myself propelling it round and round on my own, until I was too tired or dizzy, or was called home for my tea. I have no recall of what I was thinking, other than 'faster, faster', or sense of whether I felt privileged or lonely or excited. It was what we did, it was what it was, and I was a child used to spending time on his own and in my own head.
My playground is not a sociable place.
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