If you have read some of the earlier columns in this series you will know how highly I rate play as an element of a “good enough “childhood. Whether considering health (and obesity), developing skills of analysis, spatial awareness, motor co-ordination, teambuilding and relationships, it is pretty obvious that play is one of the most effective means to such an end.

I am so grateful that I was taught chess at an early age and learnt different processes of analysis or “trees of thought”, and it has begun to dawn on me that the greatest minds in human history have made their breakthroughs and discoveries by playing with ideas, data and formulae as much as by linear calculation and rational thought. I am also grateful that I grew up at Mill Grove where there was so much opportunity for every kind of sport and game.

Put simply, it seems to me that play, though it can be a delightful form of little more than “messing about”, can also be an elegant method of learning, ideally suited to the child.

Taking this insight with me into the Redbridge Children’s Fund Partnership Group (established by the Government to administer the Children’s Fund), it is not surprising that when we came to develop our plan for action on behalf of children in this London Borough, we made play our overarching theme. I think this is rather unusual from what I have discovered elsewhere in England, and it is proving difficult to get this message and emphasis taken seriously by the adults in positions that matter. They are basically in the business of providing services, delivering outcomes and achieving targets. The notion that “play is children’s business” doesn’t seem to be represented on their mental maps.

So how to begin a process that might lead to a paradigm shift? One slogan that is being tried is “creating children’s spaces, not children’s services”. Our hope is that if it is repeated often enough it might just cause a few policy-makers to ponder what sort of activity by adults might help produce a more child-friendly borough. But we are not holding our breath on this.

Meanwhile I have been pondering the whole idea of “children’s spaces”. You can think about rooms, nooks, Montessori-type classrooms and environments, and playgrounds. My eyes were opened when a youngster who was with me on an overnight expedition on the Welsh hills came down to our campsite after a little scramble and declared: “You know what? This is like one big adventure playground!” From that moment on I experienced every aspect of Snowdonia in a new way. And from that moment on, I have always looked upon constructed adventure playgrounds as very poor, sanitised versions of the real thing.

Whether it’s to do with my engagement with “Child Theology” and the Sociology of Childhood is hard to say but for some reason conversations with colleagues and friends recently have often made reference to where children played during the blitz. And there is a common component : all of them without exception have described bomb-sites as the ideal spaces for play. I guess now that with our increased awareness of, not to say obsession with, risk, it is highly unlikely that we would ever again let children loose in such areas, and we are all aware of the dangers of modern weaponry and the ghastly injuries inflicted by landmines and unexploded devices.

But the fact remains that for a generation of children, bombsites represented the ideal places to play. And so I have probed what it was like to play in such places, and have found that these sites were full of the most creative materials for play: bricks, wood, nails, slates and all manner of bric-a-brac. It’s hard to think of a richer source of raw materials for play than you would find on your average bombsite.

Then, it was a space that nobody patrolled or owned: there was no park-keeper, schoolteacher or equivalent. In some ways I sense that these spaces were miniature versions of the island in The Lord of the Flies, or Coral Island, where adult presence and institutions were marginal to the point of invisibility. I have mentioned materials, but of course one of the common features of bombsites was the amount of space in which to run around, play team games, and hide and seek.

I wondered why we couldn’t learn from these places, and perhaps even create something similar. But then it dawned on me that although bombsites are adult creations (in that they were made or caused by adults, not children), yet they were unintentional play sites. In fact, the intention behind the bombing was to destroy, to frighten and to undermine the fabric of social life. It was a contradiction in terms, or a paradox, to think of creating bombsites as places for fun and games.

This in turn led me to two reflections with which I will close (for the time being at least). First I realised that the best children’s spaces were probably unintentional play areas (forests, caves, mountains, beaches, trees and the like), and that any adult attempt to make such a space (Disney World, Alton Towers and so on) simply could not compete with the sheer variety of opportunities for, and freedom to, play and explore.

But more profoundly I realised that when children played on bombsites they were engaged in what was probably an unconscious, but far-reaching challenge to adult politics and institutions. When adults had done their worst, the child’s response was to clamber among the ruins and the debris, and to create a world of imagination where laughter and games, rhymes and jokes typified hope at a time of anxiety and fear. When children played on bombsites they were making a statement, as well as having fun. War and destruction do not have the last word: there is always tomorrow, and the future dawns bright among the ruins of the past. Nature, too, played its part, covering the bombsites with masses of purple willowherb, echoing the message that destruction provides opportunities for growth.

As always I would be delighted to hear from readers of Children Webmag about their experiences and thoughts. If you weren’t around during the Second World War then perhaps you could ask your parents or grandparents.