St James’ Park playground – 22/05/12

Sorry for the radio silence lately. It’s almost like we haven’t been anywhere of note since the end of April. Oh that’s right, we haven’t. Meet the reason why:

Image

It’s Eva! She isn’t a toddler but she does live in London and she’ll be accompanying me and Roo on some of our travels. I doubt she’ll do much of note for a while but she’ll be there, wrapped in her Moby on my front…just like she was today.

Ah yes, today! Today was take two of St James’ Park, after the playgroundless fiasco of last time. Fiasco is a strong term. Let’s call it a mini-fiasco. A fiascoette, if you will…Anyhoo, they’ve finished cleaning up the playground and it was a lovely sunny day, so it was time to try again.

Luckily, it was open. And contained, which is always a bonus. We had a relatively successful picnic with Tammy and Jake, where Roo only wandered off a handful of times (it’s harder to chase him with a newborn hanging on to your boob. But not impossible). He has two new tricks that he was practising today. One is called “Help, Mummy! Stuck!”, which I believe is self-explanatory. He is never actually stuck. Almost never. But it’s a good excuse to get aforementioned Mummy to heave you out of places with her boob out. Joy. The other game is based on all those “Are you my Mummy?” books (see “hug” etc)…he walks just far enough that casual passers-by can’t see me waving. Then plaintively wails “Mummmy! Mummy! Where Mummy gone?” until someone takes pity on him. That someone is never me. Almost never.

So, after a few of these high-jinks we decided to take the boys somewhere more distracting. Playground! And it was open. Huzzah!

Image

Was it worth the return visit? Yes, I think so. It wasn’t huge (unlike these photos…I don’t understand what wordpress is doing today) but it had a slide, swings (3 sets), a seesaw and a sandpit. All the “s”s. All made of natural materials (which made for an extremely heavy log seesaw) and kinda sculpted to look like part of the park. I particularly liked the slide cut into some steps, also reachable by a little wooden bridge.

Image

There were also a few quirky touches – wooden things that looked like snails or possibly trains (with chains. Why chains?!), and a tiny wooden rocking-horse. There were also toilets, which I once again used my non-toilet-trained toddler as a passport to get into. Beware – the boys’ toilet is mainly urinals, which might blow your cover somewhat.


And now the baby’s crying (actually she started crying near the start of this post), so that’s it for now.Short by my standards, hey?!

VERDICT: A nice play area, not overly crowded and a calm kind of vibe.

More details here (official website)

This entry was posted in Token attempts at fresh air (parks) and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to St James’ Park playground – 22/05/12

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *