Twenty years ago, I contributed to a deathtrap playground in the name of charity.

Back then, it was called CSR. Now it might be an offering of S in the ESG fudge.

How or why did this happen, you might wonder. It all started with terrorists.

9/11 to 999

How should an organisation remember their fallen comrades? That was a question many faced in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. My employer decided that September 11 should be a day for service and giving. It wasn’t limited to one day. We received (a pretty enlightened allowance for 2002 standards of) annual leave for charitable or other worthwhile endeavours.

How we gave back was similarly open, and I chose to go to a primary and preschool in a neglected part of East London. I and about ten others pitched up early with little clue what we’d do or how. Our good intentions had hit the first of a bunch of potholes. In the pre-smartphone era, there was no YouTube we could search to plan the perfect playground renovation. Nor could we push a button and get building suppliers momentarily delivered.

Sweet tea and sweet FA progress

As a 20-something in London, I didn’t have a car. Not many people in our group did. Someone more successful (with wheels) drew the short straw and drove around aimlessly until they found a DIY store. The rest of us ate bacon rolls, drank sweet tea, and got in the way.

Having wasted the start of the day, we were under pressure. Like one of those pointless TV home makeover shows where someone yells at the camera about how little time they have to create a sense of urgency while simultaneously getting in the way of those busy working. Unlike those shows, most of us were presenters, not artisans.

Helpful stereotype

Luckily, I spent a summer holiday during university doing some basic labouring – mainly paving and pointing. One of our group was Irish and had worked in construction earlier in his career. I followed him and copied what he did. We laid some passable, if largely pointless, paving slabs to create a non-muddy patch outside the kindergarten playroom. Our compadres told us they’d work on “the garden” (on the other side of the building). A patch of uneven dirt – like a long-abandoned dog run in an inner-city neighbourhood.

Time flies when you’re doing stuff, and it was soon late afternoon – time to wind things down after a day of virtuous goodery.

The big reveal

At the end of those shows, the deserving recipients of a made-over home or workplace might be blindfolded and ushered into place for a big reveal.

As we rounded the corner to see the garden, I wondered if blindfolding my colleagues might have created better results.

The dirty corner they’d chosen for their Eden project was sloping, steeply. They’d dug a massive hole at the lowest corner, assuming (probably correctly) that rainwater would collect there. This was to be “a pond”. We knew this, as they’d stuffed a few sorry-looking water lilies in baskets at the bottom of the muddy WWI trench. Human-made ponds often benefit from a liner (usually Butyl). My brother and I had built one for my parents. The liner stops the water from seeping into the porous and oft-disturbed London ground, avoiding this trench warfare exhibit. It also helps to have a pump, filter, and some plan for water egress/overflow. Oh well.

Hope you can swim

The pond aesthetics weren’t the main problem, however. On the incline leading to the pond, our colleagues had laid swathes of turf. Not preparing and levelling the dirt beforehand meant we’d left the school with a grass mogul course sloping into a mud pit. Perfect for toddlers, as grass is notoriously good for grip on inclines when raining.

When it next poured down, we’d have created something else for teachers to worry about – how many kids might Eddie the Eagle it into the drink?

But it’s okay; they’d planted a few flowers around the side. I can’t remember what flowers. I imagine thorny roses. Something for three-year-olds to grasp onto, shredding their hands as they plummeted down the piste into the pit.