The equipment was simple, heavy and made of metal, and it produced exactly the same set of behaviours in every park in the country. Here are twelve.
1. The Metal Slide and the Weather
A tall sheet of polished metal was freezing in winter, burning in summer and only comfortable for about three weeks a year.
Everybody tested it with a hand first. The temperature problem is the first thing anybody remembers.
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2. Going Down It Wrongly
Nobody used the slide as intended for long: head first, backwards, standing up and in pairs were all attempted within the first ten minutes.
The correct method was the least interesting. The improvised descent is what the equipment actually produced.
3. The Swing Chains
Chains rather than ropes meant cold hands, a distinctive smell transferred to the palms and an unmistakable rattling sound.
The smell stayed on your hands afterwards. The chain is the sensory memory of the swings.
4. Going as High as Possible
The goal on any swing was maximum height, judged by whether the chains went slack at the top, which everybody claimed to have achieved.
Slack chains were the benchmark. The height competition is universal and unverifiable.
5. Jumping Off
Leaving the swing mid-flight was the natural conclusion, with distance the measure, and it was done repeatedly.
The landing was rarely elegant. The jump is how every swing session ended.
6. Winding the Swing Up
Twisting the chains as tightly as possible and then letting go produced a rapid spin that was disorientating and immediately repeated.
It made everybody dizzy. The wind-up is the alternative use of a swing.
7. The Roundabout Being Pushed Too Fast
A flat spinning platform was fun at moderate speed and became something else entirely when several people pushed, which is exactly what happened every time.
Somebody was always pushing. The overspun roundabout is the equipment most frequently misused.
8. The Seesaw and the Person Who Got Off
Balance depended entirely on cooperation, which meant the person at the bottom could simply leave and drop the other one.
It happened once per friendship. The abandoned seesaw is the standard betrayal of the playground.
9. The Thing That Nobody Knew the Name Of
Every playground had one piece of equipment of ambiguous purpose that children used in some way nobody had intended.
It was the most popular item. The unidentified apparatus is a fixture of every park.
10. The Surface Underneath
Grass, tarmac or bare compacted earth lay beneath everything, and the ground was simply the ground.
Nobody gave it any thought at the time. The surface is the detail that has changed most.
11. Adults Sitting on the Edge
Whoever brought you sat at the boundary and watched from a distance, intervening rarely, which gave the whole area the feeling of a separate territory.
Supervision was remote. The watching adult is what made it feel independent.
12. It Being Replaced Entirely
At some point every one of these playgrounds was taken out and replaced with different equipment on a different surface.
The change happened almost everywhere. The replacement is why the original is a memory rather than a place.
A Few Pieces of Metal and an Afternoon
A slide that was the wrong temperature all year, chains that smelled of themselves, a roundabout pushed harder than intended and ground that was simply ground.
The ninth item is the one that varies and is somehow always present. Every park had one thing whose purpose nobody could name, which children used for something entirely different, and which was invariably the most popular piece of equipment there.
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