So, rumour has it, there is to be a repeat of 'Winter Wonderland' in Exeter's unique Northernhay Gardens. I would not be surprised! The city-council appears not to have a ha'porth of imagination. The scars of the last 'wonderland' have not yet healed.
Last year the park was turned into a construction site. It was closed, effectively, to the people who appreciate it as a public park for seventy-two days and later closed again in favour of the great lizards.
Last year Exeter's Remembrance Sunday was, somewhat farcically, observed, by kind permission of the winter wonderlanders, at the edge of a half-constructed funfair. (The county's remembrance in the cathedral-close was not much more dignified. It was tainted by the booths of the sons of Mammon, - but that's a separate issue!)
The governors of Devon's county-town seems to have a hankering for the lowest-common-denominator. Exeter, the city, not the suburbs where the councillors live, has many advantages. A castle famed in story, pleasing city walls, a most ancient guildhall, where now the homeless lay their weary heads, a grand Victorian museum (ditto), catacombs with neglected potential, underground passages, a brilliant riverside - more potential there! though the Quay is one thing that has been well done, a green belt where funfairs and circuses could hold sway and do no harm, (although some attraction less short-term would make more sense .) and the one glorious valley-park, miraculously preserved to the people, which is Northernhay, and which for at least three months of the year is being consistently denied to the people whose free inheritance it is and to visitors to our city.
The Gardens are becoming shabbier and shabbier because of lack of intelligent management and common-sense policing. (They no longer have a dedicated manager nor a dedicated team of gardeners. - and dedication is what is sorely needed!)
Their future calls for some deep-thought and the Council's new games of neglecting them as gardens, using them as a site for vulgar amusement, limiting access wherever possible, wiring off footpaths and installing, very costly no doubt, close-circuit television cameras are not going to help.
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