We were in Portlaoise last weekend, and I took my daughter to a playground in a small town park, while her mum and brother were off watching a football match. She was too young to watch the game and too old – and too mad – to sit still on our laps.
The playground was a decent one; the type made mostly of wood, cut into the shapes of different creatures. It was a bit small and worn out, but pretty much everything worked, and there were some unusual things like a swinging bowl and a snakey thing on springs that could rock from side to side with four or five kids sitting on it. It was a nice place to take a young child, though there wasn’t much to do for anyone over six or seven.
It got me thinking about a couple of things. First, that we don’t have enough playgrounds in Ireland, and a lot of the ones we do have aren’t great. When I was a kid, our family spent one summer driving across Europe. They have a completely different way of doing things for kids in places like Germany, Denmark and Sweden.
Playgrounds were often made with logs and tractor tyres and car tyres and big springs, rather than just thin steel frames and plastic. They were great for climbing on, and hanging off and swinging round and jumping off . . . and not just for little kids. This picture shows a well-worn playground in Copenhagen. See the kid hanging off the cable car in the background? See how small he is? See how high he is? Can you imagine that in Ireland?
Actually, many of the playgrounds we now see around Ireland look a lot like the ones we played in that year in Europe, but a bit tamer. But that was over twenty years ago. That’s how slow we are at catching up. We should have more playgrounds, bigger and better playgrounds. There are few enough places to play in our cities without parents worrying about their little darlings being hit by cars. There are few enough places to play out in the countryside, where the farmers won’t put up with trespassers any more. Ever tried going for a walk off the roads in the countryside?
Ironically, I think this lack of space and facilities (mostly space), is causing problems for reading, particularly for boys. If you want to read more about why I think that, check out this article.
I recently read an interesting article in the Sunday Tribune from the 16th of May. It was about how playgrounds in Dublin were being vandalized. What kind of pathetically sad git do you have to be to vandalize a playground? But then that’s the nature of vandals – they’re a very sad bunch altogether. The weirdest part of that article was the mention that, in one playground: ‘cleaners had to be called out to clean “human excrement” from slides, swings and other equipment in the area.’ For any kids reading this, ‘excrement’ means ‘poo’. Somebody wiped poo on the swings and the slides. What? I mean . . . what?! What goes through a person’s mind to make them even think of doing that? Did they use their own crap, or someone else’s? How did they carry it around the playground?
But then, maybe it’s because they’re growing up in a culture where kids don’t feel that these are their areas. Maybe the older kids who most likely did this, feel that the playground is just one more place where adults are telling them they’re not wanted.
And speaking of not being wanted by adults (see that link there? See it?), I sat down with my stepson to watch ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ on DVD. For those who don’t know, this is a very famous picture book about a boy who charges around the house in a wolf costume, causing so much havoc that his mother banishes him to his bedroom without supper. Trapped up there in his room, his imagination comes to life. A great big sea and an island with a forest appear, and he discovers the land of the Wild Things.
The film actually stays very close to the plot and the themes of the book. I really enjoyed it . . . but I’m a thirty-six year old adult who still reads children’s books and remembers the original picture book. A child, on the other hand, might wonder why everything in the film seems to take so long. Or why there’s so much confusion and discussion about how the characters are feeling. Or what exactly is the problem between the child and his mother. Or what the hell the ending was about.
My stepson is an intelligent, perceptive, articulate film fan and a voracious reader. And he’s nine years old. He found it very good in parts, desperately slow in other parts, a bit vague and seemed generally underwhelmed.
This is a beautifully produced children’s film for adults. If you’re old enough to be nostalgic about the original book, by all means, watch this film. If you’re still at the age where picture books form the bulk of your reading material, and are most enjoyed sitting on a parent’s knee, rent a Pixar film.
