This is a piece of un-designated land about 70 metres from my house. There's nothing there except for a patch of rough grass. There used to be a chain link fence and two goal posts, but they were all removed about 2 years ago and the 'Anti traveler' fence was erected to keep them from parking their caravans on the site I'm guessing. Thankfully, the cowboys that were contracted to remove all the fencing didn't do all of it so there was some fencing left behind albeit covered in brambles, bushes and Ivy. As well as not taking all of the fencing down, they didn't take all of the wire, posts and concrete bases away either - instead they dragged them into the woods and dumped them in there.
The local council do very little with the space by way of maintaining it - they mow it about 5-6 times a year and keep the grass relatively short. I've contacted the council in the past and asked them to replace the fence when it was still there albeit with sections missing or vandalised. They came along and had a look and deemed it wasn't worth it saying that it wasn't a designated space for recreation. That aside, people have played football in there since the 1970's as well as other games and when my kids were small we started to use it to play cricket in and practice in and still do - helped by the fact that some of the fencing - about 65% of it was intact so that we were able to play without the ball disappearing into the woods. Why the fencing was taken down - still alludes me and almost feels like an attempt to stop kids from using the space?
So for the last 8 years or so I and my sons have cut and rolled a wicket in the space and utilised it, going so far as putting nets up
In the image/video above you can see the fence on the off-side and there's a good piece of fence directly behind where I'm shooting the video from, both these sections were removed and dumped in the woods by the contractors.
We now have to put the blue scaffold fencing stuff up any time we want to bat. Thankfully the contractors left behind some sections of fence and we're able to at least bowl in the space up against the fence. This wicket you can see here was also ruined by the contractors they parked their transit on the wicket area in October when the grass was wet and left enormous indents on a length for fast bowlers - Joe the kid batting is now a fast bowler and is 16.
Back to this season 2018...
The other thing the council don't do and I'm not sure if they've ever done it is - prune the bushes back. I noticed a few years back when the bushes hung low enough, the bloke on the mower drove around the bushes and therefore left the perimeter grass uncut and over a period of a couple of summers the grass area was noticeably being reduced by virtue of the trees being left to grow into the space. Just down the road there was a similar open space that wasn't fenced off but was still mowed and over the last 8 years the grass has given way to bushes and now there's almost no grass at all - but a hand full of bushes and this I reckon is what would happen to this space if no-one maintained it.
So in the Autumn and spring I maintain it, cutting the brambles and bushes back to stop them encroaching on the space and cutting the light out so that the grass doesn't grow and the bushes and weeds take over. Each year I ponder whether to continue and so far I have done as it's one of the things I still do with Joe and it's also one of the ways I keep fit and it makes me feel a bit like Clarrie Grimmet who bowled in his back yard into his 80's every day that he could. (he obviously liked his cricket)
So, this year will I be doing it again? Yeah I reckon so, last year we used it quite a bit for batting and it got very worn. I'm even contemplating trying to get this wicket you see here back in action, so once the snow has gone and while the ground is still soaking wet we'll get over there with the roller and see if we can flatten out the areas we'll be bowling into.
No comments:
Post a Comment