• PRIMROSE Gardens has a small square with two small gardens either side – there are no primroses but while one side remains a garden with bushes and grass the other for some time has become a dogs’ toilet.

The dogs’ toilet is no longer totally covered with grass but has large areas of bare soil. The bushes are dying, partly due to lack of rain but also because dogs foul and lean into them.

Dog owners; dog walkers; and others arrive in their cars, sometimes with several dogs. People arrive who do not even live in the area. It had been a little more tolerable when only people who live on this street brought their dogs.

Starting at about 8am, and earlier, they arrived. From nine to 10, especially on weekends, the number of barking dogs peaked to an average of 10. A still larger number of people, for whom it had become a grand social event, accompanied the dogs.

One person in a first floor flat, who was working from home, said someone had asked him if he had a dog. He replied he did not, and that the barking came from the dogs in the garden. He had to close the window because he could not concentrate on his work.

I was on the doorstep, engrossed in some reading. A dog startled me with loud barking when passing with its owner after leaving the garden. I am not allowed to stand on my own step without being barked at. It is as if I have no right to be there.

Neighbours had enough of being woken up early or being disturbed by the commotion. One weekend they all shouted from their windows in complaint.

Since then there has been less a congregation of people and their dogs at one time. But the barking continues. To have them so close feels a bit like an invasion of privacy.

One dog owner called it a dogs’ park. Hardly a dogs park or garden, and there are no primroses, nor such a pleasant view as once before. But there is a dogs’ toilet!

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