This evening, after tea, we took a short trip to our local playground. It’s a short walk/bike ride skirting round the edge of a council estate, overlooking open fields – at most 5 minutes away. The kids love it, because it’s a good place to ride their bikes, even when there are other children there nearly running into them because they drive a little erratically…

However, when we got there, the ground under the main climbing frame was covered in shards of glass. And I mean, covered. After 5 minutes of picking up this much glass (click to embiggen – it’s worth it):

The ground was still this sparkly (the white spots are all glass):

I noted, with interest that (in a not pissing in your own back yard manner), there was no glass on the ground around the “youth shelter” (the white spots here are chewy):

Also, I’m told, by my handy source of information about the council, that this CCTV camera:

…has never worked. Maybe if it did, the incidents of antisocial behaviour that lead to this mess could be prevented, or at the very least, followed up.

I’ve approached my councillors before now about maintenance of this playground – in the summer it’s often a flowery garden of ice-pop wrappers – and periodically it’s quite good. Over the summer it’s generally been pretty clean. Today was properly shocking, though.

It’s a shame, because it could be a really good playground.

I guess this is partly down to the council not cleaning up often enough, but also down to the thoughtless selfishness or downright viciousness of whoever puts the glass there in the first place.

To end on a positive, they have at least replaced the side panel of the half-pipe which had turned into a smoking and who-knows-what-else den:

You can see it’s already been accepted by and decorated by the community…

I’m pointing my councillors in this direction, in the hopes of raising the profile of this problem. Thank you in anticipation, chaps!