London Parks by Hunter Davies

Author:Hunter Davies [Davies, Hunter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

7 BURGESS PARK

I feared I was going to be late for my appointment at Burgess Park, which is not like me these days. When my wife was alive I was always late for things, relying on her to get us there on time. Now I am always early, especially when I am going into foreign and strange lands, which is how I always look upon south London. I was very early, but somehow I missed the stop I meant to get off at, Elephant and Castle, and found myself at the Tube terminus at Kennington.

There was no escalator so I had to queue for one of those massive archaic lifts. A sign above one of the two lift doors was flashing away ‘No. 1 lift shall be the next lift’.

I wrote it down, this ponderous wording, wondering why they did not say ‘will be’ the next lift, or, even simpler, ‘Next lift…’ The word ‘shall’ made it sound biblical, as if some great god of the Underground had issued a blessing, commanding the lift to obey and bow to his wishes.

I had arrived at the wrong station because I’d got engrossed reading something absolutely fascinating, so well written and informative – a piece by me. I wrote it back in 1983, the last time I’d visited Burgess Park. Not been back to it since.

People who move to London from the north tend to arrive at Euston or King’s Cross and look for somewhere relatively nearby in north London to live. They think it will be handy when they visit the old folks in the north. Once you settle in north London, you never leave. I assume it is the same with people from other parts of the UK. I know lots of people from Wales and the West Country who first arrived at Paddington, then end up living their lives in west London. That’s my excuse for so rarely having ventured south of the river – at least until the last year. I now do so regularly for romantic reasons.

Once out of Kennington Underground, I jumped out and got a bus back to Elephant and Castle. I then caught another bus down Walworth Road to Albany Road.

On the old map I was clutching, photocopied from an ancient A–Z, there was no clue to any greenery beginning so close to the main road. Burgess Park was marked, but still looked fairly small, which was how I remembered it from almost forty years ago.

I came to a park entrance. A man was drinking from a bottle of beer, right beside a notice saying, ‘Alcohol Control Area’. I continued along a long strip of grass – just a path, rather than a park. There was a tennis court with a large notice which said there was a cafe, open every day, entrance at the back. I was still early for my appointment, so I went round the back to investigate. Everything was locked up.

I walked on and eventually came to a proper cafe, the Park Life Cafe, which was open.

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