Desolation in Old Street

When I feel that human beings can do nothing but mess up this really quite nice planet we live on I like to retreat to the idea that in a bleak dystopian future, the unloved bits of waste land will be some of the only places that wildlife will survive*.

Well you might think that the Old Street area is desolate enough already, but the car park where I park my bike during the day, while by no means a latter day Garden of Eden, was until recently a happy little place of sprouting buddleias, opportunistic nettles, the odd bramble and copulating lady birds.

I loved smelling the buddleias when I got off my bike. I kept on leaving my bike nestling against them even when the purple flowers were making it quite difficult for me to get to the railings to chain my bike to.

I think having some contact with wildlife must be really beneficial. A few years ago some researchers found that inmates of a prison with a view of greenery (trees etc outside the prison) had better mental health than those looking at the prison yard**.

Anyway, I think nature’s a powerful thing. I always feel calmer walking back to my Mum’s house along past the woods and the fields.

So last Monday I got to the car park to leave my bike and knew there was something wrong instantly when I arrived to see big yellow skip. The place isn’t really run by house-proud owners – in the brambly and nettly corners there were layers of everyday rubbish that must have built up over years…

But looking around the rest of the site I was met by desolation. Some neat and tidy person had scratched up every living thing in quite a terminal way. No more buddleia, no more happy little ladybirds, and no more the excitement of tying up my bike without being stung. It was rather sad.

May be I should do a bit of guerilla gardening and scatter some wild flower seeds. This could be another pledge!

*In fact this is not necessarily true – humans have intimately managed the land for so many years, particularly in the UK that we actually need to keep on managing it to preserve diversity. So on patches of railway land you get sycamore and Japanese knotweed – invasive alien species that distort the natural balance of things, so although “nature thrives” it’s not necessarily the “right” nature, or at least the nature that needs preserving most, or at least the most diverse bits of nature. It also doesn’t help that abandoned land is prime dumping ground for fly-tipping morons.


**I haven’t been able to find this on Google, so I hope it isn’t an urban myth. Also, it occurs to me that the yard side might also have been more depressing because they might have felt even more isolated from the outside world.