It has been quiet in Treverlen but now the Hi-Viz jackets are back and a skate facility is well under construction. So much so that the wee Lego people doing the work have taken to arriving at 7.30am on a Saturday and Sunday morning so it may not be long before the final skate structure can be seen.
Seen already, of course, by the many kids who now scale the barriers and lark about in the Park, evenings, Friday afternoons and weekends. An early morning recce revealed quantities of lager cans, broken bottles, broken mobile phones which is possibly a guide to the kind of user we can expect if the moderating influence of parents with toddlers, dog walkers, leg limberers and so on is not admitted soon. Opening at the end of October still looks possible, just.
We hear that the original contractor for the skate facility was so cheesed off by Council dithering that he abandoned the project and the new contractor is building something different to what we grudgingly saw from the Council back in the early months of the year.
The whole area is now covered in a flowering meadow, with flowers. It won’t have a municipal look and it might take a bit of getting used to. A good number of the trees planted seem to have died as has a substantial portion of the beech hedges – they might recover over the winter. Many of the equivalents at Portobello High School have also died and been vandalised with no sign of replacement – it may be that the community will have to take matters into its own hands (and why not?). Any new garden needs nurture and, if the Council can’t do it, we could and should.
Beech under stress
