You’d be forgiven for thinking this picture was taken on a beach. Tanjong beach in Sentosa maybe.  Nope, this was taken yesterday at Raffles Place which has been transformed in to an old fashioned playground complete with roundabout, swing seats, seesaws and picnic tables.

It’s actually been done beautifully, there’s sand underfoot, trees have even been planted and flower beds dug:

The comparison between suited and booted office workers and the idea of sitting cross legged, barefoot on the grass isn’t as jarrring as you might imagine and it took at least a few minutes for me plus my five year old accomplice (bought along to play here as well as validate my childish enjoyment of swinging) to snaffle a swing seat.

The view from the swings proper, when you tilt your head back in total abandon, is fabulous and looks something like this:

The swing set is reassuringly very well pinned down…I checked…which allows for soaringly high swinging which I can’t recommend enough.

This roving playground of yesteryears (as it’s called) will be here until mid May and is designed to take you back to a time when Raffles Place actually looked like this, (it did believe it or not) fifty or so years ago.   In the coming few weeks there will be group activities including yoga, picnics etc before the exhibition moves on to another area of open space.

This is all in aid of the NParks initiative celebrating ’50 years of Greening Singapore’ – which I think means 50 years of Singapore being covered with trees, all of which have been strategically planted in order to make it the garden city it deservedly calls itself.