There's something lovely about a playground in the winter sunshine. I was there with my son and my grandson in a small park in Kensington in Melbourne's west. The kid is pretending the slide enclosure is a giant engine. I'm stretching my back on the warmed yellow plastic slide - it's wide and comfy, with protective sides. I could lounge here for hours, apart from having to intermittently get up and play with a three year old, driving a car and dodging elephants and giraffes. Every now and then we stop for icecream and to fill up the car. The kid looks like he's accidentally filled up with petrol instead of diesel, but he assures us he hasn't.

That's the thing with imagination - you can make the world how you want it to be.

On the swing, my son teaches the kid how to kick forward to propel himself through the air. It'd be a sad childhood if you didn't remember a beloved parent teaching you this. Under the swings, and at the bottom of the slides, is a thick layer of mulch.

Last month when I was there, a guy from the council came along with his truck, picked up rubbish, and put a big stick in to measure the depth of the mulch and add more if needed, taking a photo of the measure. I had to ask him about it. Apparently the mulch had to be a certain depth. Protective cushioning for little butts. I quipped the stick was a mulchometer, and he thought he'd use that from now on - he just called it a stick. Adults lose imagination.

When I get home, I dig up this hilarious picture of me and Dad. I've got my Tigger shirt on.

Unlike the mulch protected, plastic high sided slide featuring play park of Kensington, this playground was a child killer.

Check out the slide in the background. Look at the angle of it.

That was a slide, I text my son, that gave you third degree burns in the hot sun.

'Into a pit of snakes?' he texted back.

'Well, you'd fly right over the snakes and land three mile down the road' I said. I tell him I ripped my little toenail off flying down that slide. It caught in the metal railing, poorly folded and sharp. My best mate broke her elbow coming off that slide. There was a whole list of kids claimed by that slide - broken arms, sliced skin, bruised butts.

Jamie interjects that when he was a kid in England, he used to play in buildings about to be demolished, so play parks were relatively safe.

My son texts back.

'Pah!' he said. 'Derelict? You should be so lucky! When I were a lad, the buildings we used to play in were still being used to manufacture explosives!'

Ah, the kids of today in their woke playgrounds with their woke slides and their woke mulch, we agreed - they just don't know how good they've got it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k

With Love,

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