Regent's Park by Lola

Lola  Jan 2011

The best times I’ve had going to the park with my mum, are when it’s around five PM. It’s a warm, late summer afternoon and my mum’s made a picnic – a full, colourful three course meal that’s so tempting and so good you can feel the fresh smell on the road when I’m carrying the bags of food and tableware (or picnic-ware) on my lap in the car, passing the posh, huge houses by Queen’s park, and the busy grey tube station. Though the area wouldn’t win many awards it does have one of the best ice-cream places in London. The summer evenings are a bit colder now, so we go to the playground with my sister or for midday picnic instead, surrounded by people sunbathing in the heat.

 My dad and I go to our closest park. I put on my flowered bike helmet and get on my purple bike and get ready to go to Regent’s Park, my dad next to me on his bike. Best on a warm summer’s day (mild – it’s never too hot in London!) We go past our block of flats and turn the corner around a patch of muddy green grass. We pass the immense Lord’s Cricket Ground with the pictures and quotes from famous cricketers. Then down the steep downhill, by Regent’s Park mosque and into the park for a drive, an ice cream or maybe a boat ride.

The mint green grass, its cooling moisture on my hot arms and feet is delightful, whether I’m eating roast chicken and feta salad or taking a rest from biking around the park and dodging the hungry, grey pigeons. The sounds of ducks, geese and seagulls in Regent’s Park Boating lake and the laughing, running and shouting children in Queen’s Park around the playground or bandstand spraying cold water out of bottles and running, completely drenched, to their mothers.