We haven’t had much of a plum crop this year (although the apples look as if they will be fantastic). What fruit we have is lurking up in the highest branches. Unfortunately my husband Nick is away and at present I am wondering how safe I would be to climb up our little ladder to at least bring down a few before they fall. I expect in the end I shall risk it…
Risky activity is at the forefront of many people’s minds at present. Matthew Parris recently wrote an article about irrational fear in (what are in his case at least) quite extreme circumstances such as parachute jumping or exploration. ‘Stare hard enough at that bush’, he writes and you see the outlines of the lurking tiger. You might be paranoid, but then again there might be a tiger’.
As I am a bit of a wimp, much of the fear that Parris finds irrational I personally find perfectly rational. However, this rationality does not extend to other situations which are generally described as ‘health and safety gone mad’. The clown who is no longer allowed to make balloon animals at children’s parties in case one of them suffers from a latex allergy for example, or the old lady who was obliged to apply for a ‘licence to garden’ on a strip of her own garden that was close to a busy main road.
It is in part due to people’s perception of danger to children, real or imagined, that Babergh is putting in place a Play Policy, for which it hopes to receive lottery funding. Play (just in case you don’t know instinctively) is defined as ‘what children and young people do when they follow their own ideas and interests, in their own way and for their own reasons’ (Source: Getting Serious about Play, 2004 produced by the luminaries at the Department of Culture Media and Sport).
Is this policy really necessary? Sadly it seems that it is. Parents today are not keen to allow children to play freely outside, so places have to be created for play with which parents are happy. I would argue that some of the fears that parents have about the safety of their children are absolutely justified. Traffic is so heavy these days that I cannot imagine parents allowing their children to indulge in the lengthy solo bike rides that I indulged in from a very young age for example.
Other fears are however irrational. There is no evidence that child abduction or paedophilia is any more prevalent than it was in the past. We just know more about it. The sensationalist publicity given to sad, but truly exceptional, cases such as that of Madeleine McCann obviously stimulates parents’ worst imaginings..
Whatever one thinks about this sad state of affairs, the Play Policy, if it gets off the ground, will have some positive concrete results for Babergh’s children. A dedicated ‘play worker’ will be employed to work across the District, some ageing play equipment will be replaced and informal play areas will be created in rural parishes which currently have no play equipment.
