CHAPTER 2
Its late summer, and the grass in Greenwich park has long gone yellow now. This grass is now ideal for sliding down on if you also have a hill. All you need is a piece of cardboard box to slide down on. We go to the local newsagents and sneak around the back and get some old empty crisp boxes from the rubbish pile.
As we start to walk towards Greenwich park we go up “Blisset Street”, and pass Greenwich fire station where next to the station there used to be an engineers and car wreckers’ yard.
Since this site had been vacated, we had been in the yard many times. There had never been much in there to play with, and fencing had been put up around the site for the last year.
But recently the old fencing had been taken down and new bigger fencing put up, and now heavy machinery like bulldozers and tippers were digging the ground up on the old site.
There were poorly fitting gates at the entrance, so we all squeezed through the gate opening to see what was going on as we were passing by.
To our amazement we came across a big wide hole in the ground. When we looked down this hole, we could see that it was lined with bricks that looked like a train tunnel. We all peered down the hole for quite a while.
ME: Look, you can see that bulldozers tracks going across the hole, I bet that made the roof collapse, looks like a train tunnel,
JACK: Yeah! It looks like that bulldozer fell in almost,
TOBY: I didn’t know trains went along here, the station is over a mile away, I wonder if we can get down there,
ME: I bet there is a ladder around someplace,
JACK: Lets come back later and have a look,
We all squeeze back out though the gate and make our way to Greenwich park.
We spend around an hour sliding down a grassy slope near the café in the park until we get told off by a parkkeeper for ruining the grass and making it flat and worn out, which it was anyway before we had turned up.
We wander off towards the large open grassy area of the park which is near to the Greenwich Maritime Museum.
TOBY: What’s that big tent there for?
ME: Dunno?
JACK: It’s the concert,
ME: What concert?
JACK: Mum told me there is a concert band playing music for people who sit in that big tent thing,
The huge tarpaulin tent is open on one side with terraced seating inside like you would find in a cinema. Its roof slopes back a few degrees and the frame is made from scaffold tube.
All the green tarpaulin is tied down to the framework with rope throughout.
It’s about 8 meters high and around 40 meters long, the seats go back around 20 rows. It faces a slope where a concert band performs at night.
A metal barrier fence surround’s the area with appropriate signs of “Security monitor this area, keep out, do not climb”,
To us this was just a big climbing frame, the metal barrier fence was nothing more than an obstacle in our way.
But, the sign to us reads, “Welcome! Come on in for free, and have the time of your life, Excitement! Fun! Thrills!”
And so, we did…
We all went off in different directions to start running around on the tents framework. Jack went left I went straight ahead and up some stairs to the back, and Toby went right.
We started playing tag for a while, running along the seats of chairs, then slowing walking across the chair backs rather than using the stairs, eventually running across the chair backs when we were more confident.
We were playing Tag, and I was it. I was chasing after Jack when he started climbing a vertical scaffold pole, I followed him up the pole. He had got though an opening in the tarpaulin roof. When I got onto the roof though the same hole, I saw that Toby had joined us on the roof as well.
I had just started to chase Jack again when we all herd some shouting. We all walked to the edge and saw a couple of policemen who were looking up at us and yelling.
POLICEMAN: COME DOWN, ALL OF YOU, RIGHT NOW!
Toby waves and shouts down to the police,
TOBY: OK THEN!
Me and Toby decided that the best thing to do was run, so we ran in the opposite direction of the police, while I see Jack go back the way he had come.
Toby must had been around six meters in front of me, it was hard going running on the tarpaulin as every time you stepped on the roof it sunk down and you had to step up.
I could see that Toby was having the same problem, but he seemed to be sinking further and further, eventually he vanishes into the roof like he is being sucked downwards.
I could see the tarpaulin being pulled across the scaffolding frame as he sunk out of site.
I got to where Toby had been and stood at the edge and looked down, the tarpaulin had formed into long slide to the bottom, I saw Toby scramble out. I jumped into the “V” shape that had been created in the tarpaulin and slid down to the bottom onto the chairs.
I saw Toby climbing the metal fence and followed him running up a grassy slope and into some bushes.
ME: You seen Jack?
TOBY: No
From inside the bushes we see the policemen take a careful look around the area before getting in their police car and drive off across the grass.
ME: Come on let’s go,
We both cautiously walk back to the big tent and look around,
JACK: Hey, you two, look what I found!
TOBY: You made me fucking jump Jack!
ME: Where you been?
JACK: I hid behind the tarp, in the space under the frame, which is underneath the seating, there’s a box in there with these brochures about the concert, and these yellow vests the ushers must wear when they show people to their seats with these torches. Look! Torches!
TOBY: Torches for that train hole!
ME: Do they work,
JACK: Yeah! A bit, sorter of,
We make our way back to the old car wreckers’ site with the train tunnel hole, we find a wooden builders ladder laying on the back of a trailer and drop it down the hole.
The ladder goes down the hole about four meters. We put on the Ushers, “I am here to answer your questions” that is written on the back of the yellow vests on, turn our torches on and climb down the ladder.
Jacks torch seems to be brightest, while mine and Toby’s torches give off light like candles in brown beer bottles.
The ground at the bottom of the tunnel is covered in bricks and goes up about a third of the way to the top of the tunnel. You could tell it was a train tunnel by its shape and the walls were covered in soot from what must had been from Smokey steams engines some decades ago.
We shone our torches up and down the tunnel, but could not see either end, we all decided to go east. It was hard work walking over these bricks, they were loose, and you kept bending your ankles awkwardly.
It seemed like a long time had passed when we got to the end, it was very hot in the tunnel, and we were all sweating buckets.
At the end of the tunnel was a brick wall from top to bottom with a few bricks knocked out near the top. We piled some bricks up to stand on and shone Jacks torch though the hole.
We all took turns to look, but all you could see was what looked like old rusty industrial machines, and another brick wall. It was not what we had expected to see, it was strange?
We sat down for a while and looked back down the tunnel. We had walked for some distance, and you could just see the light from the hole in the roof at the other end, and it looked like it was a long way away.
As we made our way back we all started to get headaches, and all felt sick, we realised that the air was thin, and to make things worse mine and Toby’s torches had given up, while the output from Jacks torch was getting fairly poor now.
We decided to get back as quick as we could. We found ourselves short on breath and gasping for air, eventually crawling across the bricks.
We got back to the entrance and out of the tunnel, then went straight over to a working water tap we had found earlier and quenched our thirsts. We could had died and not been found in that tunnel. Adventure over, we all decided not to go back.