Tag: park

The Radlett Festival. Were we downhearted? Not really

Yes, it rained all day. Yes, the dog show lacked its usual glossy sheen in the downpour. But the Ricky Lopez Ratpack Show proceeded with pizazz worthy of Palm Springs and Clive Glover, one of the organisers, tweeted on Monday that over 1,000 attended the festival during the day so I expect that the event will still have raised a substantial sum for the charities and local organisations it supports (I’ll try to update on that once the details are available). I was taking photos and recording audio of the event (which I’ll publish later) and literally everyone I spoke to during the day was relentlessly chirpy about the whole thing. A proper British Summer treat, in fact.

All the photos on Flickr are published under a Creative Commons licence, which means you may use them without permission and for free. You just need to provide a credit or a link back if you use them. Let me know if you do. And if you’re in any of the pics or you know the names of those who are, please add a comment or a note to let me know.

World-beating shelter up at the Rec

It wasn’t long ago that Radlett’s policy on kids hanging around up at the Phillimore Rec was to hire a security firm to move them on (a parish council leaflet boasted of the success of this policy) but that all changed last Summer when Hertsmere erected a clever shelter at the edge of the playing field. It’s a warm-toned wooden affair that acknowledges the need for teens (and pensioners, for that matter) to just hang out.

It’s not meant to provide real shelter from the elements but it’s got some seating and it’d probably protect you from a shower. It’s an intriguing enhancement to the park. Annick Collins is a partner in the small firm of architects that designed the shelter, Superblue. She emailed me to tell me that the Radlett shelter has been included in a ‘top ten’ list by architecture blog Architizer – alongside some quite awesome structures from all over the world. Since it’s reasonable to assume Hertsmere won’t be building anything like it for the foreseeable future, I think we should make the best of our one world-beating structure.