LONDON, U.K. -- I have something to show you.
There is now a sizable green sign attached to the fence at every entrance to the beautiful Regent’s Park. It’s an indignant sign. The words are scolding. The intention is to humiliate.
It doesn’t seem to be working.
As someone who walks the limits of this glorious green space almost every day, I have become proprietorial. It is my park, you see. I care about what goes on there.
We wave at the man who lives under a big tree. He has a bushy beard and God knows how long he’s been there. I hesitate to call him homeless, because the park is his home. He must have special dispensation to stay.
It has the best manicured grass and playing fields I have ever seen for a public space. There’s a lake with boats you can rent, and breeding grounds for birds and hedgehogs.
The sign on the fence says: “This is a park, not a toilet or a rubbish bin.”
Somebody must have been very angry to compose that.
(Yes, it’s back to the subject of garbage, garbage everywhere, scattered like bilge from a passing ship.)
The sign also says: “Please respect this space, plan ahead and take your litter home with you.”
See for yourself how that’s working out.
I feel a lot of sympathy for the park employees who walk around every morning with large trash bags making it spotless again—before the next wave hits.
The great London Zoo is also in Regent’s Park. It was closed for 12 weeks during the lockdown, and now that it’s reopened, desperately needs money to stay afloat.
It costs a lot to feed 18,000 animals. A lion eats 170 kilograms of meat a week. There are four western lowland gorillas that munch through huge amounts of lettuce, spinach, leeks and chicory.
None other than Sir David Attenborough has agreed to front an urgent fundraising appeal.
“The immediate prospect of the zoo going financially bust is too awful to think of,” Sir David told the Sunday Times.
He started his illustrious career on a TV show called Zoo Quest. That was like a hundred years ago. Just joking. Sir David is only 94.
“What happens if you can’t raise the money to keep the animals?” he asks. “Are we supposed to put them down?”
If you’re walking through the park in the morning, you’ll often hear the wild, rising call of Jimmy and Yoda the gibbons—the “singing, swinging apes.” It’s beguiling.
The zoo holds 16 species that are extinct in the world. Officials now talk about the zoo itself becoming extinct.
I can’t imagine that happening—but the financial crisis is real.
Get to work Sir David. Jimmy and Yoda need you.
