I grew up in a concrete jungle, but not as nice as the photo. This is where I now live, in a small village in Switzerland. We have our concrete but roads and streets, otherwise it is still very much country side where the cows are happy to still be able to chew their grass in Summer.
My concrete jungle in the fifties was London. It was not the tourist London you now might know. The only tourists were the soldiers returning from the war and still wearing their uniforms.It was some 10 years after the second world war and there was still signs of bomb destruction. There were streets with houses that were no longer houses. Just collections of bricks and morter and gardens growing wild because they were no longer inhabited, just ruins. I must say as a youngster they were ideal places to play. Everything growing wild and interesting ruins. If mum knew where we played as children she would probably have intervened. However, what she did not know did not bother her so much. Some of the streets were still inhabited by the locals, the cockneys of London. Many women worked in their kitchens doing simple assembly work and earning a small wage for the goods they delivered afterwards. My dad was working for the british railways, afterwards the Kensitas cigarette factory. At that time you took the work where you found it.
We had a few parks – in our area just two at the time. Other green places could be found in the cemeteries which were dotted around, another place of interest for us kids. We had no organised places to go, and the playgrounds were normally the streets or on the steps of various larger buildings. You chose what you had. We would play outside until the street lights came on and then we all went home. That was the unwritten law of our parents. Television? It existed but only for those that could afford it and we as a working class family definitely could not, but we had a radio.
Today the concrete jungle is organised and is no longer a jungle, more an organised space, no more adventurous places to hop around in.
