Hilary Fannin: As a child, this park was a place not to go to alone

The park is aglow with autumn. The oak and pine, the ash, beech, elm and lime trees are letting their hair down, carpeting the paths in orange, in reds and yellows, peppering the walkways with smooth brown chestnuts to hold in your palm. It’s all kind of gorgeous.

I remember this park from when I was a child; it was a foreboding place then, a place not to go to alone, or even with your pals, though of course we did.

Our mothers, variously arranged around the suburban streets, rubbing Atrixo into their chapped hands as they talked, would tell dark tales of children falling into ditches there and climbing out again with polio. We knew what polio was from the collection box outside the butcher’s shop, which took the alarming form of an almost life-size sculpture of a crooked and beseeching boy in calipers and ugly shorts. In one of his arms — the one that wasn’t holding a crutch — was cradled a donation box, saying “Give to Fight Polio — Now!”. It was too late for him though, entombed, for eternity, in plaster.

There was a ruin in the park back then, partially demolished, damp and crumbling, a graffitied place that smelt of urine and fear. There were broken bottles strewn about, and cigarette stubs and empty boxes of Major cigarettes. There were rumours of seances being held and evil unleashed, and there was talk, too, of more mundane and temporal disturbances.

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It was an era when gangs of teenage boys in tight denim jackets, parallels and polished boots met to fight other similarly attired gangs of teenage boys from a little farther down the road. They fought with knives and chains, or so they boasted anyway as they leant against the wall of the neighbourhood chipper, staying tight under the shelter of the doorway to keep their beloved mullets out of the rain.

They’re old men now, I suppose, those mighty fighters, or at least oldish men. They’re probably the benign men I observe each time I walk in the park nowadays, patiently following their grandchildren around the playgrounds, watching the next generation as they zip line through the trees.

Those frightened boys (because they must have been frightened, of each other, of themselves, of their yearning and burning for love) most likely turned into the men now standing in line at the outdoor cafe to purchase frothy babyccinos for grizzling toddlers from lovely young nail-polished boys with studs in their tongues.

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I’m pretty sure that those boys I knew in childhood and adolescence, boys with kung-fu posters on their walls who head-banged to Black Sabbath on a Saturday night and were unceremoniously lifted out of the bed for Mass on a Sunday morning, are the same men I observe at the park’s weekend market. Maybe they’re the ones left soothing snorting pugs called Amber and Ruby while their own less bellicose sons queue up at the flower stall to buy bunches of orange and pink gerberas for their sleeping lovers.

Regardless of the temper of the times, or whatever tortuously machismo culture was once at play, this was always a beautiful park. It is, without doubt, a more lovingly tended place now, populated, it seems to me, by a more assured and compassionate citizenry.

I walked around the well-kept plots, looked at people’s marrows, at their caches of deep-green courgettes, at their muddied potatoes and purple beetroots

There are allotments there these days, half-hidden behind an old stone wall, private working spaces that are not usually accessible to the public. At the tail end of a recent open day last summer, I walked around the well-kept plots, looked at people’s marrows, at their caches of deep-green courgettes, at their muddied potatoes and purple beetroots.

In the far corner of the allotment area there was a trestle table, on which rested a tea urn and the remains of a cake sale. Madeira cakes and slices of apple sponge wilted on paper plates; there was some spilt sugar, an empty carton of milk and a plastic bowl full of coloured raffle tickets with phone numbers scribbled on the back.

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I bought myself a cup of black tea and accepted an iced bun that a generous gardener behind the table wouldn’t take any money for, asking me instead to pull the winning ticket for a hamper from the bowl.

“You’re not one of us, so no one can accuse us of cheating,” she said, nodding towards a seated group of allotmenteers at a nearby table, who were putting their boots up at the end of a busy day.

I pulled the ticket and handed it to her. I certainly am one of you, I thought to myself, I know this place in my bones.