Isla Campbell on ninety years of a Bloomsbury park, one very competitive nine-year-old, and the death of adult dignity
My sister asked if I’d take her daughter to Coram’s Fields for their big ninetieth anniversary Playday while she dealt with a work emergency, and I said yes without really registering what “inflatable obstacle course” would actually mean for my own participation in the day ahead.
Ninety Years Of This Park
I didn’t actually know the history before we went, that the whole park exists specifically as a place where every child has the right to play, tied to Article 31 of the UN charter on children’s rights, and there’s something quietly lovely about a green space in the middle of Bloomsbury that’s existed purely for that purpose for nine full decades.
The Trampolines Were Fine
I want that on record. The trampolines, I handled with grace and dignity befitting an adult woman. It was the inflatable obstacle course where things fell apart, specifically the bit where you have to climb over a series of increasingly large inflatable humps while a nine-year-old who does actual gymnastics on weekends absolutely destroys you in a footrace to the finish.
The Specific Humiliation
She beat me by what felt like several minutes but was probably closer to fifteen seconds, then turned round, offered me a hand up off the mat with the kind of patronising kindness only a nine-year-old can genuinely muster, and said “good try though.” I have not fully recovered, and I suspect she knows precisely what she’s done to my ego.
The Reading Corner Saved My Dignity Slightly
After my public defeat, we retreated to the reading corner, which was blessedly stationary and required no athletic ability whatsoever. We read three books about a very confused hedgehog and I began to feel like a competent adult again.
What My Sister Said When I Told Her
She laughed for a genuinely uncomfortable length of time down the phone, then asked if I’d take her again next year. I said yes immediately, partly because I love my niece and partly because I have unfinished business with that obstacle course and I intend to train properly before the next Playday rolls around.