This is a view we have been looking forward to for years: the playground from the community centre.  Yes, we are opening ourselves up to criticism and the cynics will be waiting for the first brick to smash the first window, but we believe that we should be able to watch our children play in safety and that the Dean Court community will take this building to their hearts and act as its guardians. Please prove us right!

The windows may not be completed until the building has been in use for a while.  They are acting as our kind of “slush fund” or contingency plan to be completed as and when the money is available. If the available funds are used up before we get to this stage then the windows will wait.  But parents will surely agree this is a sight worth waiting for.

So how will we protect our windows from accidents or – Heaven forfend – from vandalism? That is still to be decided.  The preliminary work is taking place now because we won’t want to be hacking out spaces from new plaster on to a new wooden floor, so we have time to think about it.  And to get fundraising.

What would you say to some funky brightly coloured shutters that I reckon would look a thousand times more attractive than the predictable first option of window bars?  And could we perhaps find a sponsor?