Valentines Park- was it Itchycoo Park or not?

Valentines Park - Ilford's one of Essex's finest parks.

During the 1960s The Small Faces, one of those Hippy Hippy Shake, far out, groovy and right on pop music bands, produced, or allegedly, a record called Itchycoo Park, one of the many pieces of pop experimentation and cool innovation so popular at the time. Throughout Itchycoo Park voices fade in and out spookily with varying degrees of frequency and the sound is one that somehow exemplified the music revolution that Britain was undergoing. Drums and guitars were given the full pyschedelic treatment and a nation marvelled at what sounded like echoing musical instruments with strange backing tracks.

But Itchycoo Park, as legend would have it, was written as a tribute to Valentines Park in Ilford or maybe it wasn't. Some maintain that it was Victoria Park in Hackney, East London or maybe it was one of London's more famous parks such as London's Hyde Park. But I'd like to think that it was my childhood park of Valentines in Ilford. Yes Valentines Park wins by a considerable margin, hands down by some distance but I'm open to debate. It could be that bias has once again intervened and favouritism has won the day after all.

So what about Valentines Park? Today I made my one of my increasingly frequent revisits to the suburb where childhood memories still take me on a multiplicity of journeys. It has to be said that Valentines Park looks much the same as it's always looked. Isn't it strange how some of our favourite places never change over the years? It could be that everything seems to be in the same place that it's always been and time has not withered anything. It is easy to see the things that you fell in love with as a child are now seen in an identical perspective because essentially there is a lovely timelessness about it.

The park is the prettiest tapestry of huge, domineering trees, vast bushlands, narrow streams, beautiful boating lakes, a Weeping Willow sobbing its heart out and then perhaps crying with laughter at the sheer absurdity of the political system. There are those two richly green strips that host frequent games of crown green bowls. Here men and women gently roll a black bowling ball  with all the grace and effortless ease they can muster during the summer.

But Valentines Park is one vast walking paradise, acres of long, meandering pathways that lead to wherever you want them to go. Then you reach the Valentines Park cafe which, for as long as I can remember, has always been there. The one fond memory takes me wondrously back to the summer of 1976 when the cafe became a huge tourist rendezvous although that may be a slight exaggeration. The summer of 67 may well have been the summer of love but once you'd changed the numbers around the summer of 76 became one long swimming marathon.

From early morning to the early evening hours Ilford was suddenly converted into one of the most popular and happiest of all parks. For one summer everybody seemed to turn up at the Valentines Park Lido. There may well have been other summers to match it but when the first rays of Mediterranean sun bounced ecstatically over the blue and white waters of the Lido everybody was infected by a remarkable sense of euphoria and freedom from the long, lingering darkness of winter. Oh the English weather. How I'm reluctant to join in with that topical and typical English discussion piece.

Rumour has it that Valentines Park was surrounded by squirrels. In a densely forested area of the park squirrels would occupy every bush, tree and hideaway that the park could provide the squirrels with. There was a sense that everybody had been taken hostage by these grey squirrels. There they would go, scurrying, scampering, nibbling, racing frenetically up and down branches as if determined to remain inconspicuous. If you were spotted running in that area you had to take your life in your hands because this was quite clearly dangerous territory for the human race.

And so I returned once again to Valentines Park, Sadly and most regrettably, the Lido is no longer there, years of neglect forcing the hand of Redbridge council. But even now you can hear the distant voices of children you grew up with, an explosion of enthusiasm, ear splitting screams that dominated the whole of Valentines Park for day after day.

I seem to remember hearing that one of the main reasons the Lido had been closed down was because two fatal accidents had left the local council with little alternative. But for most of the summer of 1976 the diving board and slide would enthrall  enraptured teenagers. Families would lay blankets on the ground where picnics and ice creams would overtake the Lido for the whole sun kissed summer.

It hardly seems possible now but my generation  just revelled in the electric atmosphere that seemed to light up this incredible amusement park. Unfortunately the slide and diving board had to be dismantled because one of the kids had died as a result of either the diving board or slide. But for one long, hot summer the Valentines Park Lido was the one place where tensions were released, inhibitions were dive bombed, you could be whoever you wanted to be and there were no boundaries. Or none that I could see.

All you could see was the gushing fountain, kids being whistled at by disapproving lifeguards, kids pushing the lifeguards patience to the limit. blue and white lockers with sopping wet towels on the door and swimming trunks that were just dripping with chlorine. Then large groups of rebellious kids would ignore the lifeguards, grab hold of one of their poor, unsuspecting mates and chuck them heartlessly into a freezing swimming pool that you felt sure had been filled with large ice cubes almost permanently.

Ah yes. The freezing Valentines Park outdoor swimming pool. Whose idea had it been to make absolutely sure that the temperature of the water would be so insufferably cold that it made swimming in it almost impossible? But we braved the elements and the kids, undeterred and undaunted, spent many an hour chasing each other into the water in a stubborn act of disobedience, almost militant in their refusal to behave themselves. The whole population of Ilford had now descended on the Lido and would not be moved.

Meanwhile for one serene week Valentines Park would hold its annual Essex cricket festival at the beginning of June. Once again and so sadly the cricket festival has been deemed surplus to requirements, a complete irrelevance and something Chelmsford may do rather better than Ilford. In the old days Essex cricket club would regularly patronise the richly green pastures of Valentines Park but now the ground, to all outward appearances, is now an empty shell.

 But you would always peer through the hedges and the crown green bowling just to catch a tantalising glimpse of Keith Fletcher and John Lever at their very best. It was England at her most restful and sedate, full of decorum and utter contentment. Maybe this was always the way Valentines Park had done things. The other Valentines Park cricket strip almost seemed like a forgotten piece of land where once the summer game had been celebrated and feted unashamedly.

Still the tennis courts have never been spoilt or affected by time. There were no umpires, no sets, no 15-30  nor was there a game that was finely poised at 4-4 and little in the way of competitive intensity. Oh yes there were no strawberries, ivy clad walls, Wimbledon hysteria and no Pimms. But there was something delightfully amateurish about the Valentines Park tennis courts that induced a good deal of mirth and private chuckling. There was nothing drastically wrong with the court but there were obvious faults and drawbacks that have yet to be rectified.

Most of the ground is embarrassingly cracked and the fault lines seemed to be zig zagged across the whole of the court. The nets seemed to be drooping almost apologetically and almost resigned to their fate in life. Large netting around the court looked moderately secure but there were moments when you wondered where players wayward shots would unexpectedly end up. There were no ball boys and this morning the whole of Valentines Park looked remarkably like a bird sanctuary.

Where ever I went huge blackbirds, crows and what looked like ravens had taken up occupation of the green fields. They were everywhere, proudly positioned next to their favourite trees and carefully observing the land with inquisitive stares, always in search of food. In fact it seemed to me that they were actually watching me and I couldn't help but feel ever so slightly self conscious.  It looked as if  they were almost determined to spend as long as they liked in one area of the park. Nothing would budge them and it was intriguing to note that they hadn't asked for permission and nobody had told them to keep off the grass which I once found so baffling.

So it was that the morning had passed off peacefully at Valentines Park and all was well. Next to the cafe is a thriving exercise park. How good it was to see that the local residents were doing their level best to keep fit, pulling and lifting light weights, cycling and pedalling up and down in bizarre looking cycling machines, leisurely jogging on small running machines. The modern health and fitness craze had broken out in Ilford and was here to stay which has to be a good thing.

I began to look round at the sheer wonder and magic of Mother Nature. The trees in thick green outcrops were furiously swaying and shaking in almost unseasonal strong winds. It was one of those blustery days of early June when the wind seemed to get its seasons mixed up. But my mind and reflective thought processes went back in time to that amazing summer of 1976 when the heat seemed to last indefinitely, the grass had been completely replaced by dust patches and everybody used that charming pitch and putt golf course, a course so small that you would hardly have noticed it on any other occasion. Oh Itchycoo Park. Was that really written on the swings and roundabouts of Valentines Park or maybe the Small Faces were just paying their own personal tribute to the glories of Valentines Park. In a sense you can hardly blame them.