Wasteland

My grandparents lived at 75, Burlington Road in New Malden, Surrey. When we were small, my brother, my cousins, and I would play in the back garden, despite it being primarily taken up by my grandfather's flowers and vegetables. But then, when we were older, we'd use the gate at the very back of the garden to go into the field behind the house. 

It was a piece of land that I can best describe as unmanaged: it was very uneven and wild. In the summer, you could almost get lost in the dips and high grass. Sometimes we'd encounter other children there and the rumour was that the land had been bombed during the war, less than thirty years before. Inevitably, there was talk of unexploded bombs.

I checked, today, and according to bombsight.org, only one bomb fell near there, on what, in fact, appears to be the site of my primary school. 

Later, the wasteland was converted to a park and they put up a fence around the perimeter, so that it was no longer accessible from the back gardens of Burlington Road, which I guess I can understand if you wanted to lock the park at night but it still seems a little churlish.

Anyway, I remembered this today as I made my lunchtime visit to Asda and passed this field, which, from the look of the planning permission, will soon be full of houses. 

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-11.6 kgs
Reading: 'Pauline Boty: Pop Artist And Woman' by Sue Tate