Keep walking for the rest of the day, under the pylons and past the depots, and you can feel the city fading behind you, the skies opening up. Walk north on the Lea, west or east on the Grand Union, south on the Wandle or the Waterlink Way and you can see the ghosts of London’s old industries, cranes and disused warehouses and old pumping stations. I discovered the canals and waterways that link them too, the bloodstream of London, captured so brilliantly by Sophia in these photographs. On early morning bike rides I discovered Bushy and Ruskin and Trent, Peckham Rye and Beckenham Place and Ladywell Fields. London is supposedly a city of 3,000 parks and while I’m a little sceptical ofthat number, it’s true that the city had never seemed greener than that summer. In the space of six months, they’d been repurposed as meeting rooms, nightclubs, concert halls, theatres and cinemas, cafés and restaurants, impromptu markets, family living rooms, gyms. All over the city, the parks began to resemble the sites of the festivals that had all been cancelled and if Londoners had ever taken their green spaces for granted, there was no danger of that now. Last summer, there were queues at the gates of Clissold Park and anyone want- ing to exercise in Highbury Fields was advised to go early to avoid the rush hour. And so we loitered on that great barren prairie, an immense waiting room, wondering why anyone would go to the park out of choice.
#Parklife 2021 tv#
I hated the rec, partly because of the threat of team sports, partly because of the possibility of violence – the two seemed to go together – but during those long, endless days of summer, when the glare of sunlight on the TV screen became too much, we were harried out of the house to ‘get some fresh air’. A flat, featureless oblong of patchy grass, sodden in winter, parched in summer, scattered with ring-pulls and dog mess – this was the late 70s – its great featureless expanse broken only by buckled goalposts and a few skinny, unclimbable trees. We didn’t call it the park it was the ‘rec’, as in ‘recreation ground’. In short, Parklife is my love letter to London’s green spaces. Parks touch the lives of all Londoners – from family gatherings to first dates, walks with friends to solo rambles – and for this they should be celebrated. For while these spaces have been a lifeline for capital dwellers during lockdown, their importance precedes this time and will extend beyond it. It is my hope that these images will transcend the time in which they were made. Last spring, I decided to pick up my camera to capture the diversity of people whose lives are enriched by these extraordinary green spaces.
#Parklife 2021 free#
These enclaves occupy some of the most expensive real estate in the world (and with some of the most breathtaking views) yet remain free and communal spaces for all – making London a unique capital city.
40 percent of London’s surface area is made up of publicly accessible green spaces – from parks to commons, greens, cemeteries, woodlands, waterways and marshes. In a world increasingly motivated by profit and status, the park is a space that symbolises democracy. I’ve always been captivated by the life reflected in them – an almost utopian microcosm of our wider society. We were restored and calmed by the natural world on our doorsteps.ĭuring this time my love of London’s parks deepened. Without the steady hum of traffic and the airplanes in the sky, the birdsong became our new soundtrack. We ventured to our local parks for our single dose of daily exercise and, perhaps for the first time, we noticed the crocuses appear and the slow blossoming of the trees. But then something magical happened: the first buds of spring appeared, and the bright April sunshine beckoned us outside. The world became untethered – all our rituals of normality removed against the backdrop of a global pandemic. In the spring of 2020 I found myself, like many, knocked sideways.
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