The three things that make us most proud to be British are, according to Ipsos, the NHS, our history and the royal family. If they’d asked me, I’d have told them it’s our parks that make me proudest of this country. Not so much the big, grand parks but the little local ones we’re all generally only a short walk from. I don’t come across these so much in towns and cities elsewhere in the world. We should be proud of them. Tuesday’s headlines about “parks at risk” from funding cuts were chilling. We must cherish these little pockets of green space. No matter if they’ll bag no horticultural awards; they give us all room to breathe. Wherever I go, I seek them out.
To name one of these tiny places feels pointlessly random, but I’ll do it anyway: Tividale Park, bang in the middle of the Black Country. I was filming at a pub down the road, a place called the Wonder, and I went for, well, a wander. And there it was, the entrance near a chip shop, litter from which was strewn around the park benches. No matter: I picked it up, binned it and walked right around the place, which didn’t take long. All around, the post-industrial West Midlands hummed away doing whatever it does or doesn’t do these days. There was a good view of a lot of it from this little haven.
Magnificent as they are, you can keep your fancy royal parks. These are the little green hubs around which our communities revolve. There will be one near you that the rest of us will likely never have heard of nor ever visit. It’s precious; do be sure to look after it.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
