• BOB Warnock, the superintendent of the Heath, who presided over the £23million dams improvement project, continues to cause upset and confusion with bizarre diktats and edicts.

The legendary Ladies’ Pond, most popular of the three swimming ponds, has always enjoyed a good degree of autonomy thanks to the efforts of the Kenwood Ladies Pond Association in liaison with their gorgeous lifeguards.

Mr Warnock, inexplicably, will not permit any so-called personalisation of the newly-erected changing rooms which the women are keen to adorn with potted plants to soften its brutal appearance. Also, his pedantic dedication to planting only “native” species even in hidden corners of a built environment leaves many incredulous.

As part of the dams improvement the corporation ripped out the famous stunning hidden garden that past staff and swimmers had cultivated over many decades.

Since then, swimmers’ donations (100+ plants) have enchanted thousands of visitors – apart from a handful who have complained the pots are too pretty and municipal-looking. As a result the pots have had to be secreted all of five feet away to the table tennis area.

To be clear, the potted plants would in no way contaminate the rest of the Heath. No previous “super” has ever meddled in such minutiae, so why now?

What is happening with the rewriting of the Heath Act 1871 which we all know is the corporation’s manoeuvre to gain greater revenue-raising powers from the Heath. Since opening, the swimming ponds have always been free.

TESS E LAINE
Lady Margaret Road, NW5