In a typical English residential street of Victorian terraced houses either side of a road, usually lined bumper to bumper with parked cars, children are playing in the manner of children everywhere: noisily; randomly; in small groups, pairs or just on their own.
Play perennials like skipping, hula hoops and hopscotch abound, although other games in evidence are more specific to this generation of children, this neighbourhood or this moment. Bikes, scooters and roller blades are in ample evidence but there are still more children on foot, though rarely walking. Running, skipping and jumping – or a combination of all three – seem to be the default modes of movement, leading nowhere in particular but full of intent.
The play seems infinitely varied, spontaneous and freeform. Although some adults are present, they are not in charge; no one is coordinating or directing save for the children themselves, who seem to be entirely at home in the happy chaos of it all. Much of the anarchic activity is happening in the middle of the road, the pavement being far too narrow to contain it all.
It is summer and at one end of the street someone has brought out a hose. Children are screaming with delight as they try – but not too hard – to evade the water’s cold, wet arcs. Others are having a race, which is fiercely competitive but none too organised. There is little agreement about the winner, but no one seems to care much – or not for long anyway.
Such a scene, one might imagine, is commonplace. A normal day, perhaps a weekend, a school holiday or an early summer evening, in a normal street where families live and children gravitate towards one another in the one common space that is within sufficiently easy reach of their homes that they can come and go at will.
But look again, as we zoom out from this picture. There are no children playing in the adjacent street, or any of those parallel to it, though they house roughly the same demographic. Zoom back in and notice that at either end of the street are adults in ‘high-vis’ jackets wearing badges and holding clipboards. They have erected barriers and are keeping out traffic, apart from the occasional resident’s vehicle, which is escorted at walking pace by one of these voluntary stewards.