Rouken Glen park: My heart is broken by damage that greed has done

Now my poor family will clearly have to divide me in two, and I’m cool with that, I’ll be dead and cremated, after all, so it shouldn’t hurt. The second site of my dusty depositing is Rouken Glen Park on the edge of Glasgow. I’d like the rest of me scattered there, in some little nook in the woods maybe, into a stream perhaps, some place with significance for my daughters, that reminds them of the times we shared there when they were children.

Half of me in Ireland, half in Scotland. I like that. It represents my life, my heart.

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I love that old park. I moved to Glasgow in the mid-90s. After a shiftless existence as a single guy, I got hitched. We set up home not far from the gates of this gorgeous green treasure. Rouken Glen is embedded in so many of my memories.

I guess millions of folk out there feel the same about the parks which have woven their way into the fabric of their lives. Places matter, they imprint themselves upon the soul. The places that have been kind to us are sanctuaries: pure and special. The places where we’ve been damaged, well, we seldom go back there, do we?

My wife and I walked around that park hand-in-hand the day we moved into our new home - a home we still share - and kissed and dreamed about the life we were going to forge. Our children took some of their first steps in Rouken Glen Park. We taught them to ride bikes there. We skated and sledged, and snowballed and played.

Mohsen Amini of the folk band Talisk performing at The Reeling Festival, one of a number of such events held in Rouken Glen Park recently (Image: Ryan Buchanan)

I’ve felt joy there: going for a walk after some personal success or other, or a loved one’s triumph, just to let the sun shine on me, so the world outside felt as good as what was going on inside.

I’ve confronted agony there too. I’ve walked there alone, and with others - and cried - when times have been hard, when I’ve messed up, failed, hurt or been hurt, when I’ve felt loss and grief.

Where else can a frail, small human go when they’re sad or in pain but into nature in the hope that whatever’s been broken can stitch itself back together again through a little peace, tranquility and beauty?

So I love that park fiercely. I guess if you don’t know Rouken Glen, it’s maybe not that special. But think of some little spot of green, some safe haven in nature, that you love. What you feel for that place, I feel for this humble park.

But let me boast: it’s great. It’s big, with wide open spaces and deep dark woods. There are rivers and waterfalls, an elegant boating pond; swans and ducks; wild unkempt places too. It’s both safe and wild.

And it’s egalitarian - a place for all. That’s another reason to love Rouken Glen. Nearby are the homes of the comfortably middle-class in Giffnock and Clarkston. Yet also nearby are some of the least wealthy parts of Glasgow: Darnley, Arden, Kennishead.

So it hurts me - infuriates me - to see the destruction that the local council, East Renfrewshire, has wrought on Rouken Glen. Lately, it’s staged a series of naff festivals that last all weekend and leave the park in ruins. A food festival has just finished.

Now, as tents and platforms and stages are cleared away, the park’s largest green space looks like tanks have driven over it. A field of pristine green turned to mud. Tyre tracks gouged deep into the earth. Yet nothing is done to fix the mess that’s been made.

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Rouken Glen was a ruin for months after one festival. Grass struggled to regrow; broken earth laboured to recover.

Honestly, I’m no nimby. I’m all for festivals bringing money into the local economy. In fact, there are huge, empty green fields just up the road from my house, a literal stone’s throw from the park. Put the festivals there, for pity’s sake. Let people have fun without ruining the park for others.

Nor is this isolated. Such vandalism goes on in parks all across Scotland.

The council, apparently, makes much money. A report by its chief executive into “income generation” talks of “building on the commercial success” of festivals “held in Rouken Glen Park”.

Allow a suggestion, from a mere resident and taxpayer. If the council cannot find the common sense to choose empty fields - which one imagines await the bulldozers of tycoon property developers - as the sites for money-making events, then use some of the cash festivals raise to fix the mess left behind.

Obviously, festival organisers could also be taught some responsibility and contractually obliged to spend some of their profits to tidy up behind them too.

Now that the most recent festival has gone, parents and grandparents, their children, old folks, dog walkers, average punters like me and my neighbours, are left wandering in a melancholy quagmire.

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A park isn’t just a "thing" to be exploited for money and trampled over. It’s an integral part of the hearts and souls of the thousands of people who live beside it and visit it every day. It’s part of our lives. To see it torn and battered, is like seeing a scar on the face of a loved one, left there by unthinking councillors and corporate greed.

I promise, unless that park is respected, I’ll rise from my ashy scattering in its woods one day and return to haunt those responsible. Or at least, half of me will.